Question Should I buy a faulty motherboard on marketplace?

[Davidino]

I found a msi Z170 motherboard for €5 euros on marketplace. Its faulty. The seller said it wont turn on anymore. Could I maybe salvage it for parts? Itll arrive with the box and stuff that come with it so yeah.
Or maybe try to fix it?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Do you have the proper experience knowledge and tools to fix it? And even if you could would it be worth fixing if it’s not a good performer?

What parts could you possibly hope to salvage and who would you sell them to or what would you use them on? This looks like hoarding and a complete waste of 5euros

 

[Bob O' Goobo]

For 5 Euros it's worth a try if it's just for curiosity. I wouldn't build your main system around it though. Some people amaze me. They have a known bad motherboard and still want to make money off of it. Just give the thing away you cheapskate!

 

[BFG-9000]

Generally the only things worth salvaging for other projects are the heatsinks and through-hole polymer caps, which may be worth €5 to you. I have occasionally had a need for a power mosfet and found a matching one in the junk pile, much quicker than ordering from China.

Of course, may get lucky and find the only issue is a CMOS clr jumper or something! ~85% of the US$5 as-is motherboards I've bought work (or at least with only something minor that doesn't like the NIC) and yet all of my stuff like routers and switches are now filled with polymer caps in place of electrolytics, LoL. €5 = $5 now too.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Like I said if you’re an electronics guru and you know what you’re doing you may as well buy it and put it on your scrapheap for later use but if you’re not a person that’s seasoned and doing such things I wouldn’t bother

 

[Nighthawk117]

No

 

[drea.drechsler]

I found a msi Z170 motherboard for €5 euros on marketplace. Its faulty. The seller said it wont turn on anymore. Could I maybe salvage it for parts? Itll arrive with the box and stuff that come with it so yeah.
Or maybe try to fix it?

It might be an interesting way to spend some time if you're willing to chance it. Many boards are tossed because the PO was clumsy loading in a GPU and scraped up some parts at the back. Usually those are in the audio or network adapter circuits. Just check it closely to remove any hanging bits left there and it works just fine only no sound, or internet as it were. But both of those are easily fixed by adding on a cheap add-in card to take their place.

It's only the price of one or two coffees so that's not much to risk even if it's a dud and unfixable...but then it may also have a fault in the CPU VRM. That can be expensive since a shorted FET can take out any CPU you put in to test out the board. So it's definitely a bigger risk if you can't get an idea of what the fault is before you purchase it.