Open Box Products

JD71

What is your experience with open box products from Micro Center? I am going to purchase a motherboard as an open box and was wondering if open box was a good option. 

TS_JosephF

Hello @JD71
I have only purchased 1 open box item from Micro Center and that was a monitor about 2 years ago. It was an AOC 23.8" and at the time I was just looking for something to connect to my laptop for school so nothing fancy. That monitor is still working just as well now as it did the day I bought it. 
I guess the only downside is that the only thing it came with was the monitor and a power cord but of course I new that when I bought it. I am still quite satisfied with the purchase as it was only $60. 
Since you are looking to purchase an open-box motherboard, I recommend going through it with a sales consultant in the store so at least you know what comes with it and what may be missing (make sure it still has the I/O shield). Hopefully it has all of the contents and you can save yourself some money 👍 

JD71

This was quite helpful, thank you! I am going to purchase an ASUS z390 board as an open box. I believe I can purchase a warranty as well through micro center if needed as a cya. Thank you again for reassuring me! 

TSKevinG

Glad to be able to help you with with this.  Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns we can assist you with.

Aboshi

It’s 50/50 if you’ll get a working motherboard. I have purchased hundreds of open box motherboards over the years through microcenter, I can tell you point blank Go through the box with a fine tooth comb. Prime example I just picked up a gigabyte Aorus b550 yesterday and even though I went through the box to make sure all components where there, I was foolish enough not to look at the board itself, Not noticing the person who returned it decided to not return it with the cpu bottom plate bracket! Not only that but 2 of the ram slots were not working. After a little more digging into the issue, the person has got thermal paste inside some of the holes I the cpu socket... don’t even know how that’s possible but either way it was done, thus killing my new 5600x in the process because there’s no way anyone is getting conductive grease out of amd’s pins on the cpu, nor out of the socket package.
microcenter does not check returned products what so ever. They don’t even check to make sure everything has been returned with the item and still put a “complete/tested good” sticker on the item leading you to believe it tested good and has all the parts with it. Wrong! If you want to Waste your time and energy buy an open box to save a few dollars, but just know it’s an absolute coin toss! I have got lucky 50% of the time but it doesn’t make up for gas and time wasted. So my take on open box for you “especially seeing it looks like you’re new to the open box game” is stay far away from the “deal” you think you’re getting and just spend the extra cash on something brand new and grab the 2 year warranty with it.

Vegeta535

I agree with checking MB before leaving the store. Two our three x299 board I tried to buy open box had bent pins and missing just about all the accessories. One had thermal grease all over the inside of the socket. One had loose MB standoffs in the anti-statoc bag rolling around in there with the MB. You need to do a better job looking over MB returns Microcenter. I am sure this is costing you lots of money.

CharmCitysKing

JD71 said:

What is your experience with open box products from Micro Center? I am going to purchase a motherboard as an open box and was wondering if open box was a good option. 

Do yourself a favor and save yourself time, energy stress and money and just buy a fresh board. Every open box pc part I've gotten was broke. Shit, I've ed seen returned broken shit and they put it back on the shelf (just a broken ram that was dead)  couldn't believe I dare it on the shelf the next day lol. ALWAYS BUY NEW

SimiusV

So I've bought 6 openbox/refurb HDDs, a PSU, a mobo, and a video card. The HDDs were enterprise drives, but none of them have failed yet. The mobo and PSU were like new and are still in my current machine. The video card appeared to have a compatibility issue with my mobo so I had to return that, and buy a new one.

Still, if your worried, I'd go the new route.

JS_MC

We do offer protection plans for the majority of our items as well. If you're buying refurbished or Open Box, I'd recommend adding a protection plan. I personally have purchased many of our refurbished and Open box items, from laptops to PSUs. I've not had issues with them!

I'd always recommend that you go with the item that you'll be happy with!

nvidiapowrd

Back in the day at the Tustin, CA location. There used to be a rack of Open box video cards. Sometimes with box or just the card itself. I think it was a HD 7770 1GB at the time. That thing artifacted after I installed it. Returned and paid the difference for a new ASUS version of the same card (at the time). No issues since but I've learned to not buy used video cards. Motherboards I have a 95% chance its working fine. I had a B450 with power cycle issues otherwise I stick to name brands and its fine. Same goes for my 27'' Dell IPS 1080P Freesync monitor.

Fuh_Q

Only time I buy open box is when there's no other option for the particular SKU I'm looking for. If it's something complicated like a mobo I'll pay the $50 or whatever it is and have them install the CPU and ram as well (I never buy those seperate, as I upgrade the whole thing at once every 5-10 years) and post test it, as well as test all sata, usb, M2, and other ports. Any of that doesn't work = no deal. More often than not the mobo will have a deal-breaking defect (ie 2 bad ram slots out of 8) as the reason it was returned to begin with and you waste the post-testing fee and your time/travel costs. Open-box monitors the return reason tends to be a dead pixel or 3.

Jonas244

For a god of shake. Do not buy open box if you dont want to waste your time and money. Got into a rush on black friday and got an opened box motherboard. Next thing I know my PC restart constantly. I have to take time test out the case, power supply, rams, gpu, window,... None of that have problem but the motherboard. It ruins the excite of my first time building a PC. Thanks to microcenter. I would order evething on AZ next time tho. Again! Dont waste your time.

EpyonZero

I love searching for Open Box deals at MicroCenter. This year alone I have purchased two Open Box items and it turned out great. One was a HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop that I purchased for $430 and after a few months I sold it for $600. Then I was able to pick up a HP Pavilion Gaming PC Desktop with way better specs for $700. There are great deals to be found in the Open Box section, if you know how to look for them.

inzer890

Just want to add a drop of bitterness into this old thread. I believe that most of the people making the purchases at Microcenter do enjoy the adequate prices. And if there’s an opportunity to get an extra savings on “open box” graphics card we say “I’ll take two”, right? My today’s experience says that it’s wrong. I’m not the most patent person in the world about desktop hardware. I do my best to behave in a reasonable way and that’s why I’m still sitting with my almost 2 year old 3080Ti FTW3 liquid cooled and waiting for a true full scale GA102 to be released one day. But today smth went wrong spontaneously. I’ve noticed the new item in “open box” stock. It’s MSI 4090 Suprim - the flagship, air cooled, not a hybrid one. And since it’s one of the best options on the market to be moved to a full cover block + ~12% discount I pulled myself together and stopped by the local Microcenter store. The guys told me “it doesn’t come with an original box”. I asked if that affect the warranty and they said “No”. Pls check the pictures of what I was a witness to at the checkout.

2K graphics card was shipped back to the store via UPS being wrapped into a single ply wrapping bubbled film. It was bouncing freely inside of this huge cardboard box. Nothing but the card was inside. No 16pin power cable adapter, no manuals, no protective plastic at pcix connector-nothing. I didn’t take a picture of the card’s physical condition, bc I didn’t want it to fall accidentally (it’s 5lbs of weight) but there were scratches at the backplate side, the pcb had an obvious bent at the I/O side. But the worst was that thick aluminum backplate had a bent corner. And it was so bad that the corner of the metal backplate was touching the pcb. That supposed to be a very hard drop. I canceled the purchase even though it might suit my requirements since the stock cooler would rest in a box after the waterblock installation. I don’t want to be a tester guy to figure out how long it’ll survive after it was treated in such an abusive way.

My opinion is if you sell a used item in such a poor condition it should be discounted at least 1/3 of the original price for a brand new item. 10% of savings for such a complex device can easily turn to an awful headache.

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Ian

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/49716#Comment_49716

I do apologize for the issue with this item being available at our store. I'm going to forward this information to store management so they may look into this further to ensure this card is further looked into before any sort of further re-sale may take place.