Many users ask me to tell how can i purchase a used PC or what things to check before buying a used laptop/PC so, in this guide, I will tell you the best practice before buying a used pc so you cannot be scammed you need to test PC thoroughly before purchasing
How to test a used PC before buying it?
Check these things to be on the safe side:
- CPU temperature under full load
- Hard disk/SSD health before purchasing
- Stress test Graphics Card
- Ram under load and also check its speed
- Motherboard If CPU pins or bent/broken
- Buy branded PSU
These are the key points that need to keep in mind before purchasing a Gaming PC now let's Elaborate on the points to make it more clear and easy to understand. you can download the file from the link below it contains all the software that is needed to check pc
CPU temperature
The First thing to check is the Processor/CPU temperature before buying Run any kind of CPU-intensive application or game that can put a load on the CPU and then monitor the Temperature if temps are between 60-70 then the CPU is not used enough and you can safely buy it also checks if the system freezes or crashes if it is then don't purchase such CPU.
Check Hard Disk/SSD Health
If you want to purchase a used hard drive make sure to check its health by using software called hard disk sentinel For a hard drive it must be above 90% to be on the safe side and for an SSD it can be between 80% to 85% for being safe but I personally experienced performance drops on the used storage device
I personally prefer to Purchase a pin-pack storage device such as a hard disk drive because the used drives can fail anytime even in one month or two.
Check Graphics Card
Before buying a Graphics card run a stress test for about 2 mins and monitor temps the temps must be under 80 degrees also check if the system freezes or crashes after that also run heavy games to check memory error or blue screen of death if you did not get any of the listed issues in GPU then feel the confidence to buy it
Check Ram Speed
Check ram by running software or games on it and try to consume almost 90 % to make sure it is not faulty if it is not then check the speed of ram before buying you can find it in task manager under the ram section
As you can see in my case I have a ddr3 1600 MHZ ram which is maximum highest supported by my system
Check Motherboard
The best practice of buying a PC is to also check the motherboard. you can check this by removing the CPU and checking for broken or bent pins if you did not find any then good to go after checking one more thing
Put and test ram in all the slots available if it has 4 slots then put it in 4 slots one by one and also do it with pair of two, three and also by filling all the available ram slots sometimes one or more ram slot is dead which causes the issue in feature
Check the PSU
Always buy branded power supply to keep everything working because if the power supply is somehow faulty it might cause your whole system to dead permanently
These are all the tips to check the hardware before buying but here are a few bonus tips for you
Make sure to check if your system is feature-proof at least for 5 years "buy at least 8th gens system"
Check if your System meets your requirements
Many users buy their system without knowing if the system that they are building is capable of running the software for which they are building the system.
Just search on Youtube to see if your system runs the required software or not check benchmarks on youtube for specific software.