I would like to see an article on this... I've been using Ebay quite a lot recently and i find it quite interesting how good a bargain you can find when it come to components. I was wondering, given a budget of say £800, how powerful a system you could build buying parts new from retailers and compare that to a system bought with parts from Ebay. Seeing as many of us are still unable to afford top-notch new hardware, Ebay seems like a worthwhile option, though some luck will of course be needed. If anyone from Bit-tech or CPC is reading this, could you please accept this challenge?? Give yourself a time limit of a month or 6 weeks. What do you think?
I'm not sure what the point of such an article would be. Its not news to say that used parts are cheaper than new ones. Not only that, because the price that an auction will end at is not predictable, the PC that Custom PC built for £800 on eBay would not be the same as a reader's PC built for £800 from eBay.
i quite like the sound of this. i myself have recently been using ebay alot for buying hardware. and i agree you can get some pretty nice bargins. although alot of the time i find myself been out bid by using a pound, which can be annoying. only thing is, i wonder how long the components will last before they stop working...
I haven't bought from him lately but there was seller on ebay that was selling new oem and retail i7 CPU's depending which model upto £200 cheaper than Scan.
That would hopefully be one of the points to the article, reliability and personally i would do a follow up a year later and then again after that. Also i wasn't just talking about buying used parts but preferably searching for new parts as all warranties will still be intact. Also the unpredictability of the bidding is another reason why i would like to see it done, just purely out of interest.
I tried looking for bargains on ebay, but in my experience so far, the price skyrockets 2 minutes before the end of the auction, usualy to around 70% of value of a new boxed product. I'm not so sure anymore that buying used items with void warranties for 70 % of their cost is worhtwile. Especially when you consider anyone on this forum can have free shipping from Scan/CCL Computers. If you bid for a 100 pound item, add 10-15 for delivery and can get a new one from scan for 130-140 total, suddenly the deals are not so hot. Maybe if you are more mobile than me and can do personal pick up easily, maybe that makes it worthwile. Or auctions with a low buy now price rather than auctions. Seen two or three really good deals on modern components, but they weren't the stuff I was looking for. Needless to say, they were bought rather fast too. Altogether I'd say that finding a significant price reduction on eBay (say 50-60% of a new item including delivery) is rare and requires constant browsing and attention. At least that is my experience so far. You can check the average price of a component by advanced search and only looking at auctions with completed listings. New items from etailer shops are generaly at the same level at Scan or more if you include delivery charges. Manufacturer refurbished items might be a nice idea though. You often get a warranty on those (even if it is shorter) and 60-70 % of the original price is not a bad deal at all.
cooler master sniper £40 CoolerMaster 600W Silent Pro Modular £42 intel core i7 920 C0 £105 Gigabyte EX58-UD4P £143 Corsair Dominator 6GB DDR3 3 x 2GB PC-12800 1600mHz £55 samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB £44 normal optical drive from scan £14 Sapphire RADEON HD 5970 £320 akasa fredom tower from scan £28 and that brings a grand total of £791 might want to buy some fans for the case though but cooling won't be an issue with that case
Sure, you can get older, or even new stuff for great prices. Some times, and with luck. There just isn't really anything to make this into a full article. Reliability is always down to luck, new stuff just has warranty when things go wrong. That said, I believe (and remember seeing a study) that hardware usually either breaks within the first months of usage, or don't break at all/breaks after years of usage. In that sense used HW is a pretty safe bet. For budget builders and people looking for older hardware it's a great place, but on new stuff you just aren't really saving enough to justify all the time and hassle included. (edit: also there's no Ebay in Finland, maybe I'm just wrong. This is based on other 2nd hand hardware buying/selling experience)
actualy your right that isnt a bad list at all, id prob buy that.. perhaps if this idea was to take off, a lower budget could be given?
This is true... it's called the "Bathtub curve", because for most complex technological systems (not just computers), graphing the number of failures as a function of time is bowed in the middle like a bathtub. Defective parts generally fail early, so there is an initial high failure rate. Non-defective parts usually last their normal life time, so there is a high failure rate at the end of their designed lifespan. In between, however, there are very few failures.
Sorry, but from my experience those prices will go up drasticaly before the end of the auction. Especially the RAM, case and 5970 you listed. PSU is not so great in the first place. I'd expect the final price on these parts will be ca 900 pounds if not more. Only completed listings make sense for comparing prices (this is the amount that the items actually were sold for). For example Novatech's auction of GTX 275 refurbished cards was around 40-50 pounds level most of the time, but an hour or two before the end people started putting bids. The 5 or 6 listed cards sold for 95-110 plus delivery. I'm not saying all the components you listed will double in price, but prices from auctions in progress mean nothing. Completed listings or buy now prices only.
ebay is great but it can be tough to get a popular product, great for older or less fashionable products. also worth checking out the US site - though customs can be a pain.
I bought a new 9600 gt but it turned out to be some sort of a mobile version,so you will have to deal with that aswell
I have never bought or sold anything on ebay I just dont trust the site after my friend bought a phone from someone on there and it was found to be locked and worse still not theirs to sell in the first place. Read into that what you will. Perhaps its all changed since then, and it has a more reputable set of vendors now, but first impressions last. But since its hyper-pathetical exercise .. it'll be interesting to find what gems people have found on there.
Exactly. That's how e-bay works. Smart buyers will only bid in the last minute, in hopes of getting the item before anyone has a chance to retaliate. Noobs bidding early usually just drive up the prices. I win items by $1 in the last ten seconds of the auction all the time. It's not malicious, it's just being a smart buyer. It's how ebay works. If you want to buy an item, use Buy It Now or get it from the store. If you want to WIN an auction, you need to be prepared to play the game, and bid in the last minute.
It's a shame they don't implement 'every-bid-adds-1-minute' or similar (where if time left <10 mins, each new bid adds one minute). Would make sellers a lot happier I'd imagine.
I have been looking at hardware on ebay, bought my current CPU and got a fairly good deal a few weeks back. Defo have to agree on people bidding early!! WTH is the point?! absolutley rediculous, drives the price up and costs either themselves or actual winner a bit more - I sometimes suspect it is the seller with a mate or different account. Would like to see this article, could always be done hypothetically... but thats no fun!
