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Amazon Xeon fraud! :O

In other news, didn't need this at all and this whole thread could have been avoided - newer Asus motherboards have a BIOS Flashback function where you can update the BIOS from a USB without any CPU/RAM/GPU installed, just motherboard, 24pin + 8pin power and USB. GAH! :D
 
my son purchased a motherboard from the rain forest. directly no 3rd party it was advertised as brand new.

When it arived, you could clearly see it had been previously used. opened up the manual to take a look at the features ect there was several notes written in pencil in french. including on the diagnostic page. lifted the cpu cover and yup several bent pins. looked at the rest of the box contents most of it was missing. on the phone to them, they did a refund instantley and picked up the package the following day.
 
MajorMaccas said:
In other news, didn't need this at all and this whole thread could have been avoided - newer Asus motherboards have a BIOS Flashback function where you can update the BIOS from a USB without any CPU/RAM/GPU installed, just motherboard, 24pin + 8pin power and USB. GAH! :D
Click to expand...

In fact, I have just used this very function to bring a "dead" Asus Gene V Z77 motherboard back to life. Would not boot to Bios at all, was on the verge of binning the board as "dead" when I stumbled across this function, tried it and restored the BIOS to the most recent version! Excellent facility!
 
on a slightly different note I ordered a cpu cooler from the same place as you last year,

they sent me out a lunchbox :(

buggers wouldn't even let me keep the lunch box either
 
Rroff said:
I was in a certain shop once and a customer infront of me was returning a suitcase that they'd apparently just brought, got it home and opened up and it was full of junk from the person who'd previously "rented" it to go on holiday.
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:D that's actually quite funny!
 
Rroff said:
I was in a certain shop once and a customer infront of me was returning a suitcase that they'd apparently just brought, got it home and opened up and it was full of junk from the person who'd previously "rented" it to go on holiday.
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When I worked in retail just after uni, someone bought an iPod Classic, then returned it as faulty. The person dealing with the return didn't bother to check the item itself and processed the refund, and it was only when I had a look afterwards that it was clear they'd just put their old, scratched, broken iPod in the box instead.

Same thing happened with a PS3; someone bought a new Slim one and returned their old broken fat 40GB one. It didn't even fit in the box properly yet nobody bothered to check.
 
TheVoice said:
When I worked in retail just after uni, someone bought an iPod Classic, then returned it as faulty. The person dealing with the return didn't bother to check the item itself and processed the refund, and it was only when I had a look afterwards that it was clear they'd just put their old, scratched, broken iPod in the box instead.

Same thing happened with a PS3; someone bought a new Slim one and returned their old broken fat 40GB one. It didn't even fit in the box properly yet nobody bothered to check.
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I blame the companies: minimum wage; minimum work. What does a guy on £7/hour care about a return? He doesn't worry about the bottom line, it won't affect his (meagre) salary, it's upto the companies to either incentivise it, or make it accountable to the person processing the return.
 
t-rex said:
WOAH that is a powerful kettle!
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If you have a 3000W kettle and boil a full load of water the plug warms up noticeably.

Not to the point of material damage but it's certainly warm.

Possibly if you hammered the kettle by chain boiling full loads you might damage something but then you're abusing it.
 
Also, talking of kettles, with the new EU legislation coming in banning kettles over a certain wattage, surely the energy used is the same?

It takes 1 Joule to heat 1ml of water 1*C at 4*C. The metric system doesn't specify time, so for any given volume of water at whatever temperature it is out your tap needs X energy to raise to 100*C, whether you put that energy into the water at 100 Watts or 3000 Watts?

So surely all the EU legislation is doing is slowing down our kettles...
 
MajorMaccas said:
So surely all the EU legislation is doing is slowing down our kettles...
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I thought the same thing when they limited the wattage of vacuum cleaners, it would take you longer to vacuum a room with a less powerful machine. The energy usage would be the same, it would just take longer.
 
MajorMaccas said:
I was planning on using the CPU to flash my BIOS so I can use a V4 xeon, then return it for a refund. Technically, this is entirely within your rights with the Distance selling regs, you have 14 days after taking delivery to open it, try it out, and return it so long as the packaging is in a resellable condition - breaking seals is fine, but tearing the whole box across the front isn't.

I did the same thing when I bought a new keyboard. Since they're a subjective thing, I couldn't decide between a Razer blackwidow chroma, or the Corsair K95 something or other. So I bought both, tried them both out for a couple of days, then returned the Corsair, after giving it a nice thorough dust and putting everything back into the box the way I found it, plastic bags and all. Someone else buying it wouldn't know it was a return. I would have no problem buying a return in this manner.
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You can flash the bios without a CPU being fitted. I flashed an old Z78I-PRO to work with the 4790k. You just need a usb stick with the bios on. Turn computer off, plug it into the USB flash port (specified in the manual) hold bios flash button thing, and let it work it's magic.
 
MajorMaccas said:
Also, talking of kettles, with the new EU legislation coming in banning kettles over a certain wattage, surely the energy used is the same?

It takes 1 Joule to heat 1ml of water 1*C at 4*C. The metric system doesn't specify time, so for any given volume of water at whatever temperature it is out your tap needs X energy to raise to 100*C, whether you put that energy into the water at 100 Watts or 3000 Watts?

So surely all the EU legislation is doing is slowing down our kettles...
Click to expand...

Its cunning since there is less peak load though and renewable energy sources tend not to be very good at dealing with spikey electricity usage patterns.
 
MajorMaccas said:
Also, talking of kettles, with the new EU legislation coming in banning kettles over a certain wattage, surely the energy used is the same?

It takes 1 Joule to heat 1ml of water 1*C at 4*C. The metric system doesn't specify time, so for any given volume of water at whatever temperature it is out your tap needs X energy to raise to 100*C, whether you put that energy into the water at 100 Watts or 3000 Watts?

So surely all the EU legislation is doing is slowing down our kettles...
Click to expand...

I think the idea is that it will encourage us not to overfill the kettle.
 
Things often get less efficient as they get more powerful also, maybe theyre just worried about wasted electricity.
 
t-rex said:
I thought the same thing when they limited the wattage of vacuum cleaners, it would take you longer to vacuum a room with a less powerful machine. The energy usage would be the same, it would just take longer.
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that will explain why my old Kirby is better than the new vacuum's weve bought and that have never lasted..
 
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