Hi,
I know a company here in Japan that sells second-hand computers, cleaned, repaired, and with a 3 years warranty. Lots of the usual suspects (HP, Dell, Lenovo), from entry level office desktops to higher end Xeon workstations/servers. Prices vary, obviously.
As you know, these computers often do not use standard off-the-shelf parts, which can be a problem if the motherboard or PSU fails.
What’s your opinion about these computers? Is it worth the pain buying one (for a Linux or BSD based torrenting/seedbox machine, or build a NAS) or should I rather go another route – either build a PC with standard parts or buy a brand new cheap mini PC?
Thanks!
It really depends. For like a desktop, I’d avoid unless it was really cheap as I’d basically nullifies the value of all non standard parts and I’d include things like cpu if the motherboard is nonstandard. So value basically becomes only like drives and such.
For a server though, non standard is the norm and hete vendors even do stuff like vendorlocking instead which then IMO is a way bigger issue, especially since knowing beforehand if it does or not isn’t something anyone actually tells you before testing.