Experience with B Grade Items

Bought a B grade Corsair mechanical keyboard for a very sizeable discount. The model has LED burn-out issues, so basically a manufacturing defect that lead to an enormously high rate of returns. Selling them as B grade with a very short warranty became the only way for the retailer to get shot of them without having them RMA'd in x months time.

I've had it for about two years now and I'd say 1/3rd of the LEDs have burnt out. Other than that, a very nice premium-feeling (as opposed to looking) mechanical keyboard.
 
B grade is pretty hit and miss in my experience and depends on your expectations as well - I've bought a bit for projects/incidental systems and generally been OK but got some ropey stuff as well.
 
I bought a B grade motherboard from here came with no IO shield. If it had of set that in the description i wouldn't of bought it. I would have thought no I/O shield is enough to warrant a description of what is missing. Rather than the usual * May have missing items etc.

Wouldn't buy B grade again.
 
B Grade motherboards, cheap no problems love them.
B Grade Gigabyte 7870 and 7850 - nightmare, crashes, blue screens
B Grade Geforce GTX 580 great overclocker, came with 3 year warranty
B Grade Monitors, never touch them, stories of dead pixels, damage, no stand !
B Grade Gigabyte 2080ti - space invaders, crashes not recognising card.

B Grade can be a bargain, it can also be a lottery, you do get your money back always.

Word of wisdom : treat it like the old "try before you buy" in other words buy and keep a good one, return for a refund the bad ones and you wont be disappointed.

Tip: ALWAYS post in CS forum which B grade item you are after and ask for a revaluation on the price, 9 times out of 10 they will adjust the price lower.

Vexr said:
Bought a B grade Corsair mechanical keyboard for a very sizeable discount. The model has LED burn-out issues, so basically a manufacturing defect that lead to an enormously high rate of returns.
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Another tip if there is more than 10 items of a b grade remember the above!
 
Bought a b grade chair decent discount on It, tbh I think it was new or unwanted return at most, as I checked it all over on arrival and still to this day can't see why it was returned not even a slight scuff so in my experience I can't fault b grade
 
I bought a B grade gtx970, the one with the metal Nvidia reference cooler. It turned up wrapped in a rugby ball of bubble wrap.

I opened it up and the card looked like it had been run over by a tank. It was scratched to holy hell, had impact marks on the corners of the PCB where it had been dropped several times, probably for the top of a building. IO plate was bent and to top it all off the card was banana shaped. It was so mangled. I tried it in my system anyway and it just made this horrible clicking noise and didn't post.

Sent it back for full refund.
 
I've only bought B-grade once (from here anyway) and that was some speakers about two or three years ago. So far, they've been brilliant (Edifier R1600, IIRC). I think I would be more hesitant with something like a monitor.
 
Bought a motherboard that had damaged pins which was refunded but it worked out better in the end as I purchased another motherboard for £10 more and saved loads over retail and the only thing missing was the original box, manual and the sata cables.

Other item was a Raijintek cooler which cost less to buy then the cost of OCUK to proberly send it and it was pretty much brand new with nothing missing but I think it was returned as this cooler is very bulky and abit annoying to install to secure the cooler to the cooler mount frame.
 
Gigabyte 290X Windforce that arrived with no packaging, caked with dust and scratched up. Returned for a refund.

Sapphire Vega 56 Pulse that had some truly horrific coil whine. No packaging again. Returned for a refund.
 
I generally look now and then, but the prices of the B grade stuff is 99% of the time way to close to retail to even be worth the risk, and thats not even taking into account the warranties. That alone should drop the prices way down from near retail. So its very rare that i buy open box/returns from anywhere these days as the prices don't reflect what your actually getting/risking compared to new/retail price.
 
Lots of things such as monitors, motherboards, GPUs and RAM. Only thing that obviously had a problem was a £19 pair of speakers as they hummed a bit but what do you expect for cheap!

I do draw the line at particularly expensive parts for my main gaming PC as I want the full warranty.
 
varkanoid said:
B Grade motherboards, cheap no problems love them.
B Grade Gigabyte 7870 and 7850 - nightmare, crashes, blue screens
B Grade Geforce GTX 580 great overclocker, came with 3 year warranty
B Grade Monitors, never touch them, stories of dead pixels, damage, no stand !
B Grade Gigabyte 2080ti - space invaders, crashes not recognising card.

B Grade can be a bargain, it can also be a lottery, you do get your money back always.

Word of wisdom : treat it like the old "try before you buy" in other words buy and keep a good one, return for a refund the bad ones and you wont be disappointed.

Tip: ALWAYS post in CS forum which B grade item you are after and ask for a revaluation on the price, 9 times out of 10 they will adjust the price lower.

Another tip if there is more than 10 items of a b grade remember the above!
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That's all sage advice. The other question I'd ask is which places have good returns policies. I'm assuming Overclockers do unless anyone has had any issues? I bought PC parts from a Bradford based PC Building company and they charged me 10% to return parts I believed were faulty. Either the SSD or the Motherboard were at fault because the SSD wasn't being 'read' but they said in their testing neither were so I took the 10% hit without argument as it wasn't a large amount. Is this common?

I was actually looking at B Grade GPUs (possibly a Vega 56) and maybe Ryzen CPUs. Although maybe I should be hanging on for 7nm, especially as my 2 6+2 pins appear to be on the same cable.

The suggestion on the CS Forum is also quite handy, if you don't ask you don't get.
 
ANDREW GREEN said:
That's all sage advice. The other question I'd ask is which places have good returns policies. I'm assuming Overclockers do unless anyone has had any issues? I bought PC parts from a Bradford based PC Building company and they charged me 10% to return parts I believed were faulty. Either the SSD or the Motherboard were at fault because the SSD wasn't being 'read' but they said in their testing neither were so I took the 10% hit without argument as it wasn't a large amount. Is this common?

I was actually looking at B Grade GPUs (possibly a Vega 56) and maybe Ryzen CPUs. Although maybe I should be hanging on for 7nm, especially as my 2 6+2 pins appear to be on the same cable.

The suggestion on the CS Forum is also quite handy, if you don't ask you don't get.
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OCUK have the best returns service. Never been charged for returning items. Not mentioning any competitors but also had good service from the one near Tong Garden Centre (is this the same one you are mentioning ??) if you know which one I mean. Faulty kit returned there for a refund replacement, ie NZXT X62 AIO went faulty after 8 months, returned it in person they tested it and gave me a brand new one.
 
varkanoid said:
OCUK have the best returns service. Never been charged for returning items. Not mentioning any competitors but also had good service from the one near Tong Garden Centre (is this the same one you are mentioning ??) if you know which one I mean. Faulty kit returned there for a refund replacement, ie NZXT X62 AIO went faulty after 8 months, returned it in person they tested it and gave me a brand new one.
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That's the one and I have to say I miss the local cuisine. It was my first PC Build and the MB intimitently couldn't read off the SSD. The problem was solved when I switched the motherboard and SSD. They couldn't find a fault and I suppose they can't sell the items at full price, so I wasn't too bothered.
 
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