Used motherboards from Ebay - are they reliable?

ironic_lettuce

ironic_lettuce

ironic_lettuce

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21 Oct 2018
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Hi everyone,

I recently purchased a GeForce 1050 Ti which doesn't work with my current motherboard, and so I need to get an upgrade. The processor I have is an intel i7-2600, which means I need a mobo with an LGA1155 socket, and because of the size of my tower, I need it to be micro ATX. I've used partpicker to try and narrow down what I could get, but almost every single one I look at to buy new, it's currently unavailable to buy as they are no longer being made. So I've been looking on Ebay but almost all of the ones I've seen are used, although the descriptions say they're in full working order. I've never purchased a part from Ebay before and was wondering about the reliability of buying motherboards this way. Is it a false economy, or are they generally ok? I'm not looking to overclock or anything, just want to be able to play some of the more up to date games that I have like Witcher 3 or Doom, but I'm a bit wary of second hand electronics.

Any advice on this would be very greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
I bought a used ipisb-ch board from eBay last week, came with an i5 2310 still in it, bonus!. All worked fine. I'd say go with seller reputation and remember PayPal will back you as long as you don't use the gift option!
 
Hi and welcome to the forums. :)

Before you go buying a new motherboard do you have the latest bios installed for your current one? Classic symptom of a motherboard/gpu incompatibility is a black screen and is usually fixed by updating the motherboards bios to the latest version.

If that fails, you can still buy a couple of brand new 1155 motherboards they are likely to be basic H61 boards and overpriced. On Ebay you are going to be limited to what is available second hand but don't overpay for one. Socket 1155 is long dead so the boards can be highly sought after and can go for more money than they were when released. I have bought several cpu's/motherboards/gpu's/memory from Ebay and have only had a problem with one of them. That was a brand new motherboard that was DOA and a quick email to the seller got it sent back and refunded quickly. What I would say is pay attention to the listing and read it's description carefully and then check out the sellers feedback. If they have a lot of recent negatives then look elsewhere as it's not worth the chance. Most important is to be careful. There are a lot of sellers on there selling faulty or untested boards so steer well clear of them. When paying only pay through Paypal to the regitered Paypal address. Don't take it outside of Ebay/Paypal if they offer you a discount for doing so. If you do then you will be losing any chance of getting your money back when things go wrong.
 
eBay is like any used market place, i’ve used it for nye on 20 years buying literally hundreds of items with 3 problems, 2 of which were sorted with minimal threats of violence, the third did suggest he would burn my house down because I reported him for selling fake products (5960x which turned out to be a non working 5820k, eBay refunded me). I’ve used OCUK’s members market for about the same period and had 2 issues, again both sorted out. The issue isn’t the marketplace, but the people or companies you deal with (check feedback).

As far as your predicament goes, what board do you currently have? As above do a BIOS upgrade and what PSU are you using?

The 2600K was a decent chip in its day, still quite capable now, but before paying a premium for a new board for it, consider if it’s cheaper to upgrade to something more modern and sell what you have if you do go down this route.
 
Thanks so much for the replies.

I downloaded and installed the bios from the official HP site, but it was dated 2012.
https://support.hp.com/gb-en/driver...-1000-desktop-pc-series/5080764/model/5119083
I don't know if there's a newer one - I just assumed that was the last update before they stopped updating at all. I did notice that very few motherboards I was looking at had 1155 sockets, and lots more had 1151. Is that the socket that most intel motherboards use these days?

From the point this has happened I've been thinking I might save up a bit more and get a new motherboard as well as a new processor. Like you say Avalon the one I have is still not bad, but it's second gen, and I'd like something a bit more up to date, for future proofing as much as anything else.

If that's the case I'll need to do a bit more research!
 
Avalon said:
https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/H370M Pro4/index.asp#CPU

That’s the CPU support list for the board you linked to.
Click to expand...

Thank you, Avalon, I didn't realise this list was there! You've saved me buying another non-compatible component! I'll go through these and price check them, then make sure they won't push my PSU to the point where it can't handle it. Not sure what my PSU is, but I'll open my case later and check. Really appreciate all the help - this is a tricky business!
 
Before you potentially spend a fortune, start by telling us exactly what you have, what you want to do with it and specifically what it isn’t doing that’s holding you back. You mentioned HP and that set off some alarm bells for me, OCUK has an upgrade advice sub-forum, it’s worth using. I’ve seen people spend money in ways i’d personally suggest are not even close to being good value, but with a little thought and an idea of budget and goals, it’s possible to improve most things. Also consider that the absolute cheapest price isn’t always the best value, some companies are better at handling support/RMA’s than others, some are just box movers who don’t care if it’s a TV or a CPU, choose carefully ;)
 
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