Experience with B Grade Items

ANDREW GREEN · 4 May 2019 at 16:05

Rare bargain without an issue or subscribing to a nightmare? What's your experience?

ANDREW GREEN · 5 May 2019 at 07:39

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!

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 · 5 May 2019 at 09:24

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.

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.

ANDREW GREEN · 28 Jun 2020 at 08:18

Dazboots said:
Thinking of buying a b grade pc case. just wonder if its worth the £40 discount on new.

You can always send it back if anythings wrong with it.