Help on a graphics card buy on craigslist!

[brianlutt]

I found a couple good deals on Craigslist for some graphics cards. I've never bought anything on craigslist before, so I'm sort of nervous about potentially buying this card. I understand the whole safety thing with buying off of craigslist, I'm mainly concerned about the card itself. The offers are:

- EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 $180.00
- ASUS Radeon R9 290 $200.00

1.) Does anyone have any advice on buying graphics cards on craigslist?
2.) If I have him demo it, what should I be looking for to make sure it's good?
3.) Which deal seems better to you?

 

[Danbuscus25]

well, go for the 290. ask how long its been used, if its been overclocked, if it has any issues at all, and yes, have him demo it. if all seems good, get it

 

[alme55]

i would say go with the r9 290

-make sure he didn't remove the cooler at any point by checking the sticker on the gpu screw, that way you can still rma it if it has a defect in the future.
-make sure the stickers with the serial # and product # are both on it.
-find out if he is the original owner and if he has ever registered the card on the manufactures website before or if he has ever rma'ed it before. if he did, ask for the password and username for the account so you can rma it in the future if you need to
-make the person test it, and not just start it up, at least run a game or a benchmark, the earlier r9 290 cards have problems where they black screen when playing gpu intensive games, so the benchmark will rule that out, it would suck to get a card that cannot play big title games.

If the seller doesn't want to test the card in front of you take that as a red flag and don't buy it.

if you have to get it used because of a budget, maybe look at ebay, they usually sell for around $200 as well with free shipping. at least that way if it doesn't work you will get your money back through paypal.