“Refurbished” Hardware
Lately, I found myself in need of some hardware upgrades for a few of my systems that had reached the point of becoming unusable due to their age. To address this, I decided to take a somewhat unconventional approach. I acquired a few Dell prebuilt machines from a surplus auction, a refurbished external SAS RAID card, and a 2011 Mac Mini that had also been refurbished. Given my history of buying hardware from auctions, cleaning, sorting, and reselling them, I have a good understanding of what goes into selling used hardware. However, I was surprised to discover that my relatively disorganized operation had higher standards than some of the large, reputable resellers out there.
The Dell machines were relatively straightforward to revive. I updated their BIOS, transferred RAM from one to the other, and effectively transformed two into one modern PC that now serve as my main server. The previous server was struggling to perform even basic tasks, with its RAM capacity limited to 1GB and its CPU usage capped at 10%. My best guess is that a motherboard power issue was at the root of these problems, as I tried swapping out the RAM, CPU, and power supply to no avail. It had even stopped booting with more than two sticks of RAM, so the upgrade was more than welcome, and it has been running flawlessly since.
On the other hand, the SAS controller card, purchased from a reputable hardware refurbisher, proved to be a major headache. It took me nearly a week to get it up and running because it arrived with customized firmware that rendered it completely unusable. I couldn’t even detect it in Linux; it was as if the card didn’t exist. To resolve this issue, I had to boot into an outdated EFI environment and re-flash the card from there. I expected a refurbished component to be reset to its factory default settings at the very least, or better yet, rigorously tested for functionality. It’s baffling how such a card could pass any quality control process when it was essentially unusable right out of the box, both in Windows and Linux environments.
My experience with the refurbished Mac Mini, which I purchased reluctantly from a well-known Apple refurbisher, was also quite an adventure. I needed it for Pearson Vue tests, but their onVue testing software refused to run on any Windows PC I tried, regardless of the configuration. The error message it provided was the unhelpful “Something has gone wrong,” and their tech support was notoriously unhelpful. After scouring various Reddit threads and countless forum posts, it became clear that running the software on Windows was a hit-or-miss situation. Frustrated, I decided to opt for a Mac Mini that met the software’s requirements, and to my relief, it ran smoothly right from the start.
However, on test day, things took a turn for the worse. During the check-in process for my first CompTIA exam, the Mac Mini suddenly crashed while attempting to load. Fortunately, the proctor allowed me to restart, and it worked without issues thereafter. That is, until the fans went into overdrive, and the system began thermal throttling during the interactive portion of the exam. It turned out that the thermal paste, now a decade old, was about as effective as homeopathic medicine. I had to skip some questions, but I still managed to pass the test with flying colors and in a fraction of the allotted time. I had three more exams scheduled, so I knew an overhaul was in order. Once I replaced the thermal paste, the Mac Mini ran flawlessly, and I haven’t encountered any issues with it since.
For so long I purchased hardware at the lowest price in questionable states of repair. I assumed when I actually paid money for a “Refurbished” piece it would be of a better quality and wouldn’t require me to do extensive work on fixing it. That was rather naive in hindsight but I know for the future. Treat all used hardware like it is from a “Untested as-is” auction.