r/Prebuilts

TL;DR: Acer refurbished has excellent prices but a failure rate of 50% when pushed through extensive testing. My most recent failure suggests a deliberate attempt to hide lemons. Unless you are comfortable testing PCs, have time to do returns, or running a tight budget, do not buy. Casual buyers go elsewhere while tinkerers can proceed with caution.

Hey folks, its been awhile since i posted something new since computer prices have relatively stabilized and the deals haven't changed much. They still creep up but memory prices are crashing and we are starting to see some more deals.

Background: In the past ive recommended Acer refurbished on ebay since they consistently sell 5070 and 5070 ti prebuilts at fantastic prices ($1240 and $1600 respectively). You can also easily stack cashback codes for some massive savings. In the past I've also warned people to do testing, my own personal experience had shown 3 working PCs and 4 failures suggesting sloppy QC process. My rec at the time was, If you have the time and you want to save, it's still not a bad deal to just buy it and take advantage of their customer service and return policies.

Past issues: In the past I've had people reach out to me to tell me they've experienced issues that deal with their PSU usually shutting out and crashing. This is generally the most common problem with all prebuilds. Personally I have experienced 2 PSU issues, an extremely banged up chasis, 1 VRAM checkering issue, and 1 unstable GPU issue. All of this suggested weak QC process - it is very likely Acer was simply passing as many models as they can through post-up tests. The banged up chassis could have been from poor packaging and shipping. You are likely buying a mix of some refurbishing, some lemons, and some regretful returns.

However despite all that I still cautiously recommended them because the prices were still extremely competitive and Ebays generous return policies always covered this. If your PC worked, it worked. There is little to no risk if you have one that is functioning, anymore than a brand new PC provided you did testing. However this shifted my recommendations from a strong buy to, buy but do some testing.

Evidence of deliberate lemons: However, I've had an experience recently where I now think it's not just an issue of bad quality control, but deliberate fraud. A family member asked me to help them get a PC so i ordered a few on low price because I knew some would be bunk and i can always flip some to friends or facebook market if they were good. The first one I tested I immediately noticed an issue in the BIOS where my ram was reporting 2000 MT/S which is EXTREMELY LOW. On further inspection, I realized that Acer had put the ram on slot 3 and in 4, which is completely unexpected since any computer manufacturer would not deliberately bottleneck your computer in a single channel configuration. The correct configuration is usually two and four or maybe one and three.

I swapped the ram to channel 2, and the motherboard immediately started beeping failing a post up. This combined with the unstable 2000 MT/S immediately suggested a motherboard issue. It was compromised. now obviously you could ask:" hey, maybe they didn't realize it was broken or maybe it was broken in transit." I immediately checked every order i had in the past and the new ones I got and i confirmed every single one was set up on slots 2 and 4 properly.

Conclusion: Acers refurbished store had likely deliberately sold a lemon PC. No manufacturer worth their salt would accidentally not notice unstable ram or a single channel configuration. This was corroborated with all the ones I had given to my family and friends and the new ones i picked up. The way refurbishers work is they may cut corners and my just confirm the PC works and not run any serious benchmarking. To pass this specific PC, Acer had to have deliberately misslotted the Ram, otherwise it would have never posted. Obviously this could be the act of one bad actor but given that I had previously seen 4 failures out of 7, I can no longer in good conscience recommend them if you dont have a tight budget or cant do extensive testing. I am now strongly suspecting that not only is their QC process weak, some of the failures people have experience are likely a result of them just trying to pass as many models as possible. This is disgusting.

Caveat: However if you are an experienced tinkerer, the prices are still good. Here are the tests you should run: link. For the ones that have passed my tests, they run extremely well are bought for extremely below market value. I personally feel comfortable testing and buying, so i would still cautiously do so myself. For the casual buyer - be extremely wary. Good return policy and excellent prices excuses weaker QC, not deliberate fraud. Overall i have personally ordered 10 - but 5 failures, one of which had an issue deliberately hidden is enough for me to tell the casual buyer no.

I have it on back order for $1950 CAD but can cancel. Budget is 2k CAD and can't find anything better in Canada.

Using on a 42" 4K 120hz OLED (what I have PS5 connected to at my desk) or a 49" OLED Ultrawide (what I use day to day for work connected to my mac), play single player games, and FIFA, League of Legends, Battlefield with the rest of the elder millennials I grew up with. Also plan on using it for some AI models for research/work stuff for company I own.

Alienware $6900 after tax. Can would get $1200 back in dell rewards and capital one rewards combined.

Option 2 Skytech after coupons and junk I found would be like $300 more than the dell, but would only get like $400 back in rewards:

Option 3: You recommend me something

This is my first PC purchase since building my 1080ti rig in 2017. I've never not built my rigs since first PC I built myself in 1998. I am just so far out of the loop on keeping up with shit between work and family/kids so NEED YOUR HELP. Pricing stuff out for the insane 5090 build on PCPartPicker is telling me it makes more sense to buy pre built for the first time in my life.

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PC / Skytech King 95 (9800X3D + RTX 5070 Ti)

Monitor / ASUS TUF 27" 1440p 240Hz IPS

Keyboard /Wooting 80HE

Mouse / Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro

Headset / Turtle Beach Atlas Air

Mousepad / Please recommend.

Hello everyone, I would like to ask for your opinion on whether these are good choices; my budget is around $4,000 and the main game I want to play is Fortnite, I also live in a hot climate so I need something that won’t overheat when I use it. Also I am wondering where I could get good prices on prebuilts and peripherals, any recommendations for best price, prebuilts and peripherals would be greatly appreciated. 🤓🫡✨️⌨️🖱🖥

I am trying to get some opinions on a good value pre built. So far I've been directed towards Andromeda, Corsair, and Skytech. The frontrunner right now is the Corsair a7500 since its currently on sale for 2200. The reasoning is the guarantee of parts brand, but Im also not certain how important that is.

I'm looking to do 1440 gaming on games like CyberPunk, Arc Raiders, and Elden Ring.

Budget is $2500 all in.

Thanks in advance!