I recently bought 16GB (2x8GB) of 3000 MHz DDR4 RAM second hand for my server so that I could swap out the 32GB (2x16GB) of 3200 MHz DDR4 RAM and put them into my new gaming rig.
Final hardware config: https://pastebin.com/3uFXuPht
Now I just have to figure out whether I want to get another external soundcard for my gaming rig or if I can live with switching the USB cable back and forth between the two PCs or if I can get used to control the volume with software. I really like hardware knobs though…
Anyway…
What - if anything - do you insist on buying new and what do you buy second hand and why? Personally, I could buy any component second hand, provided I’m allowed to run my own test on it first.
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Why tf u need a soundcard for a server?
Great question! (Trying to sound like an AI client.)
I also use my server to stream music from Tidal. Connection: PC -> USB soundcard[1] -> five meter cable[2] -> mixer[3] -> speakers[4].
PC area:
Media consumption area:
Yesterday, I tried to cut out the soundcard by connecting the RCA cable to the rear audio port of the motherboard, but alas, I had accidentally bought an unbalanced RCA to 3.5mm converter, which introduced a lot of noise.
The reason I want my server rig to be my music player is power efficiency. It idles at around 58 watts and streams music at around 70 watts. My freakin’ gaming rig idles at around 100 watts, probably because of the 3080…
With all that said, I’m still considering just stopping listening to music with my server. After all, it’s only a few bucks difference.
I’ll buy almost anything used really. Well besides hard drives.
Power supplies are largely fine as long as they’re not really old. GPUs I don’t like buying big ones used. More just out of PTSD from the mid 2000s solder issues. Smaller (adequately cooled) does seem to have less issues.
Ram almost never fails. CPUs rarely fail. Motherboards are generally solid. I’ll put a used SSD into a machine I don’t care about. Cases basically can’t fail unless you destroy it on purpose. Air coolers don’t go bad. Liquid coolers will eventually need maintenance, but as long as they’re not really old should be fine.
I agree! In addition to hard drives I’d also rather buy motherboards new, since a lot of electronics are directly exposed, and I trust only me and myself in adequate handling of such delicate stuff. XD
A lot of high end boards have basically a shield around the entire top side which is nice for that. But I have had a few boards fail over the years, and all high end ones.
I have only ever used midrange B550 AMD chipsets, so I don’t know what that looks like. But I do wish to someday have one of the X-something AMD boards :D still AM4, mind you.
Power supplies are largely fine as long as they’re not really old.
Oh, I didn’t think about PSUs in my comment. Good thought.
There was a period where a lot of bad capacitors went into PSUs and there was a rash of PSU and motherboard failures sometime around 2000. I remember some failed caps causing devices to die — I think I had a video card, a motherboard, and a PSU go. At the time, I thought that capacitors just must not last very long, didn’t find out about the fact that it was a specific issue with some capacitors until years later. But, yeah, today, that’d be pretty ancient, and I haven’t seen that for some time.
searches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
The capacitor plague was a problem related to a higher-than-expected failure rate of non-solid aluminium electrolytic capacitors between 1999 and 2007, especially those from some Taiwanese manufacturers,[1][2] due to faulty electrolyte composition that caused corrosion accompanied by gas generation; this often resulted in rupturing of the case of the capacitor from the build-up of pressure.
High failure rates occurred in many well-known brands of electronics, and were particularly evident in motherboards, video cards, and power supplies of personal computers.
A 2003 article in The Independent claimed that the cause of the faulty capacitors was due to a mis-copied formula. In 2001, a scientist working in the Rubycon Corporation in Japan stole a mis-copied formula for capacitors’ electrolytes. He then took the faulty formula to the Luminous Town Electric company in China, where he had previously been employed. In the same year, the scientist’s staff left China, stealing again the mis-copied formula and moving to Taiwan, where they created their own company, producing capacitors and propagating even more of this faulty formula of capacitor electrolytes.[3]
I do think that one issue with PSUs is that power demands of high-end CPUs and GPUs have also increased. If the PSU is rated for your system, then no problem, but I’d want to make sure.
Also, PSUs have fans, and while I don’t think I’ve ever had a PSU fan go, thinking back…fans do have moving parts and are IME one of the more-prone-to-see-failures components. I have definitely had CPU fans and case fans die — start making noise and ultimately seize up, as the bearings wear out.
Cases basically can’t fail unless you destroy it on purpose.
True, though I’ve also had cases come with a lot of parts, especially if you have toolless mounting or something. That’s one where I personally have always thrown out my old ATX cases, though it’s not as if they’re nonfunctional or anything. I even have the leftover parts, but they’re in some box somewhere.
But I’ll concede that that’s probably just me. I mean, if someone wanted to, they could probably do fine with an old case.
Air coolers don’t go bad.
The aluminum/copper/etc heatsink itself will last forever, but for about the past 30 years, most will have had a fan on them. Now, granted, it’s also almost certainly replaceable, and it’s not hard to get new fans, but the fan can die.
Liquid coolers will eventually need maintenance, but as long as they’re not really old should be fine.
Huh. Well, that sounds good. I’ve been curious to see how these do. I’m on the first system I’ve used with an AIO liquid cooler. So far, it’s been remarkably quiet, had a lot of cooling capacity, and not had a huge amount of mass hanging off the motherboard — I’m glad that I got it, even if it cost more — I but I have wondered about pump longevity.
Used liquid coolers might be interesting, as long as one can get the appropriate mounting bits, haven’t been thrown out. I remember that mine came with a bunch of brackets and such for various sockets. Do need to deal with cleaning off old thermal paste, though.
Now I just have to figure out whether I want to get another external soundcard for my gaming rig or if I can live with switching the USB cable back and forth between the two PCs or if I can get used to control the volume with software. I really like hardware knobs though
I don’t know what you’re doing, but if your headphones are using a 1/4 inch jack or 1/8 inch jack and your devices have some form of audio output already, you can just use a plain ol’ analog mixer. That’ll give you knobs and let you hook multiple devices up.
I keep my headphones plugged into one. I rarely actually use the other devices, but sometimes I’ll want to be listening to a radio scanner or a shortwave radio or some other things, and it lets me just pipe whatever into the headphones.
searches Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/LiNKFOR-Channel-Separate-Controls-6-35mm/dp/B0DDKBJFWY
That’s $11 and looks like it’ll do 4 1/4 inch inputs. Looks like they also have RCA and 1/8 inch input versions (though those cost more, and there there might be more-inexpensive mixers).
That’s a great (and obvious) idea! Don’t know why I didn’t think of that… Thanks! :)
What - if anything - do you insist on buying new and what do you buy second hand and why?
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I would get a used PC as a whole, if I needed one for some secondary role. I did that once for a media PC, where I had no need for new hardware and just needed to throw a TV-out card into it. Often available cheap, because someone just wants to unload it.
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I’ve never purchased used DIMMs, but as long as I was okay with the speed, I wouldn’t worry much about it. Aging shouldn’t really be an issue. Maybe you could possibly get damaged stuff somehow, but…shrugs
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I personally would not buy used rotational hard drives. Those all eventually die. If someone wants to badly enough deal with it, they can set up redundant storage and try to get a little more value out of drives that haven’t died yet, just keep swapping drives and hope that they don’t have multiple concurrent failures. In my book, it’s just not worth the trouble. That being said, maybe someone has tighter financial constraints and less data concerns or needs to store a lot more data than me.
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CPUs…I dunno. Wouldn’t be my first choice to deal with secondhand. CPUs haven’t seen lots of single-threaded speed increases for a while, so for many workloads, older CPUs are fine. But you can get bent pins on them, and people might have overclocked them and had various forms of damage. And I don’t really want to deal with whatever thermal paste is left on them or so forth. I would avoid 13th or 14th gen Intel desktop CPUs, the ones that gradually destroyed themselves internally over time. You don’t know if any given CPU might have suffered damage.
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Motherboard. Not my first choice, since they tend to come with various spacers and screws and other things.
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Sound cards. Sure. I’ve used ancient sound cards. Technology hasn’t changed much there. I think that external, USB sound interfaces have kind of taken over here, though (as you illustrate). I do run Linux on stuff, and once support is in the kernel, it tends to just kinda stay there.
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Network interface cards: Sure.
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GPU: Sure, depending upon the workload. GPUs have seen significant performance improvements, so if you want the latest-and-greatest, I don’t think that an old GPU is a great buy. But if you just want video output on a server or something, then sure, anything will work.
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Keyboards: Not unless I was dead set on some vintage thing. These can last a long time, but keyboards are relatively cheap.
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Mice: No. I find that these things wear out. The buttons get a lot of clicks and eventually wear out. I’ve also generally had the little slidey feet detach over time.
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Webcams: Not unless I had some special use for them where I cared very little about image quality. Image quality has improved substantially.
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Monitors: Probably fine to do secondhand. Early OLEDs might have burn-in as a risk. If you specifically want high refresh rates or something, then maybe you want something newer, but for plenty of uses, older monitors are just fine. They’ll probably be dimmer at max brightness than when they were new.
Thanks for the detailed reply! :D
You also made me realize that the matter isn’t as black and white as I thought. It depends of course on what you use the hardware for, if you are doing anything mission critical where data redundancy and integrity is important, and lots of other factors.
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