Used vs New In Box PC Hardware - Price to Performance Showdown
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,826 words · ~9 min read
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so you guys seem to love scrapyard Wars and don't worry we'll revisit that
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concept soon enough but for now we've got a fun way to address some critical
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feedback from our viewers about the choice to use secondhand components for
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our builds now you can see the original series and the machines that Linus and I
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constructed in the links here and here but while the showdown between Linus's
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kind of allrounder q6600 platform and my
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r9290 with a tin can around it was interesting it left out the option that
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many of you pointed out which was new stuff now in our minds we bought used to
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gain an advantage in price per performance over new in box but without
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actually testing it how do we know how much of an advantage we actually gained
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let's find out stay subscribed to lus Tech tips for more Adventures like
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this of course there's h80i GT and h100i
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GTX allinone liquid coolers improve both the appearance and cooling of your PC
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click now to learn more so how do we compare our used machines to something
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new well we could give ourselves a fixed budget to put together a new $300
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machine for comparison but I'm pretty sure a lot of you would cry foul because
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$300 isn't really enough for new parts and if we did this spec ourselves then
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we could potentially rig it so we decided on a $400 US budget which
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allowed lonus and I to combine our machines with the best parts of each and
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challenge The Forum to spec out a rig with brand new pieces to to try and put
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it in its place they had to factor in stuff like shipping and taxes into their
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price but were allowed to shop from anywhere in the US or Canada this gave
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them actually a number of advantages they were able to use a $400 budget
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instead of 380 which ours totaled and that was in US funds instead of Canadian
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which makes it a lot more valuable currently and lastly they were able to
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shop from any Us stores which gave them a generally lower markup than Canadian
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stores just in case then we took to Twitter to pull more people in and had
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people vote on the users submitted builds it was a fairly close battle
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between members Lord gabin and Sauron but in the end Lord gabin won with over
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45 votes lonus and I actually didn't think that Lord gav's build was the
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strongest submission and ended up picking our own editor Choice Community
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build to compete with and we went with st Mapes that leaves us with the lus of
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L Thrift machine 4,000 one corner
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rocking a Core 2 quad q6600 eight gigs of ddr2 RAM a 500 wat
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power supply and an r9290 with a tj4 an
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artic cooling CPU Cooler with a stock cooler strapped to it in the other
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Corner we've got Lord gab Shrine with an A6 6400k four GS of RAM a 400 W power
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supply and a st92 80 and in the third
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Corner we got all these kinds of triangles going on we got Str strr M
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Prometheus featuring an X4 860 6 gigs of
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RAM a 480 wat powerly and another
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r9280 I actually don't have an r9280 so
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we upgraded both the Prometheus and the shrine to an r9280x and just decided to
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make it a little bit more fair we just didn't an overlock it there's three main
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performance determining Parts here we have the CPU the GPU and the RAM all
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these machines have their CPUs overclocked to varying degrees but only
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the GPU of the thrift machine 4000 is actually overclocked
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for CPU the thrift machine 4000 and Prometheus are sitting on quad cores but
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the q6600 is running a little slower at 3.2 GHz compared to the 4 GHz of the X4
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860k also don't forget they run a completely different architectures the
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big outlier here is Lord gabin Shrine with a dual core A6 6400k running a lot
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faster at 4.4 GHz but remember two cores
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instead of four for GPU things are much more similar both being submitted with
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an r9280 and resulting with an r9280x running at the same speed while the
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thrift machine 4000 is sporting an r9290 running at about 1,000 MHz RAM gets
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interesting again though check out this video to see what Linus's talks about
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the differences between DDR3 and ddr4 but will going all the way down to ddr2
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cause our Thrift machine 4000 any issues or will its greater capacity and proper
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dual Channel operation compared to the prometheus's 6 gigs and the shrine's 4
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gigs be worth it in the end time to find out now as we go through
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the results here some of you will undoubtedly point out on the Forum that
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this isn't the whole equation and in conclusion while our Thrift machine 4000
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may be doing quite well in the performance results there are many
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potential issues when buying used hygiene for example lonus had to spend a
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fair amount of time getting his machine to an acceptable level of cleanliness
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and missing accessories again lus had to hunt through boxes for more than a
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couple of missing things while building his PC something that may not be an
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issue for the techies out there but folks who don't have bins of spare parts
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of hardware and whatnot this may be a showstopping issue for you while you
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wait for parts and of course used parts can come bruised or even damaged for
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example again Linus's case came with some scratched parts and missing a foot
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maybe not a huge deal in the end but not great then you have even more issues
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seller may ship you a DOA component or straight up scam you if you aren't
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careful enough and or if you're just unlucky and even then some things come
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with a 2 we warranty as they sometimes do with eBay but who knows if they'll
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even be properly honored in the end and while the promises of a lifetime
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warranty for BFG Tech customers who bought their cards new probably stung at
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least if you buy from a reputable retailer your butt is probably covered
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even if a manufacturer does go out of business it's hard to get that kind of
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protection shopping secondhand and the pain train keeps on coming sort of Parts
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longevity is actually not a clear win either way a lot of people people are
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going to point at the use machines here and say well they'll die sooner they'll
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have some problem with them and they're right to some degree but don't forget
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many of the new machines speed out here on the Forum were using terrible power
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supplies that we would generously describe as super sketchy and while both
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the used machines we're using well-built continuous power an tech power supplies
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so in final conclusion the best strategy may be to buy some things new and some
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things used and it's just going to come down to your risk tolerance we would
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recommend getting your case new so that it's in pristine condition and comes
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with all of its accessories and whatnot and your storage new since losing data
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sucks so freaking much and it's
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comfortable knowing that as long as you didn't drop your hard drive it probably
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hasn't been dropped CPU and RAM can probably be bought used as they're very
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rarely fail and RAM often has no questions asked lifetime warranty but
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other things can Lar rely on how good of a deal you can get things like
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motherboard or video card will depend heavily on their current condition and
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warranty coverage status as well let me know what you guys think is a good
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strategy and speaking of good strategies I will be attending pxs East and
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surprise surprise our friends from Intel will be as well actually that's not much
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of a surprise but anyways they usually have some pretty sweet Community
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giveaways to go along with their presents and PX East is no different
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this year they'll be hosting a #y Intel Build contest with which is focused on
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sharing your favorite Intel based PC build whether it's one you've done
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yourself or one you see on the showl at PAX East you can enter whether you're
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attending the show or not it doesn't really matter just submit a picture of
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your favorite Intel-based build on Vine Twitter or Instagram with the hashy
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Intel build and you're entered a into a chance to win one of three Intel Core i7
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processors you can enter as many times as you want and you can showcase as many
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different systems as you want just make sure that use the hashtag with each
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entry the contest has already started and it closes on March 13th so get your
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entries in now all right guys don't forget to comment on the Forum or I
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guess in the comments down below what kind of build you guys liked more and if
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you guys think buying new or used for different parts is a good idea also a
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shout out to the kind of Build contest thing in the builds new builds and
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planning section of the Forum I it's it's a pinned at the top and they
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constantly have different contests going on for different people specking out different systems running this was
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really fun but they run that all the time and that's a really cool community
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so be sure to check that out also while you're on the Forum if you click the
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support us Link in the top right hand corner it can bring you to a really cool
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page where you can see all of our sponsors and stuff and maybe even change
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your Amazon links so that we get a small Kickback whenever you buy things that
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helps out a ton in the in the description below the video you'll be
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able to see a shirt link where you'll buy things not based on Star Wars and uh
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yeah anyways don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already like the video
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dislike the video depending on if you're a star treky or Star Wars kind of person
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this is a shirt that you can buy from lus Tech tips that Linus just took off
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he's half naked off screen right now anyways guys thanks for watching I'll
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see you next time