Author: batteryforpc

Many Black Friday deals have already arrived, and there are plenty of great discounts on everything from gaming monitors to graphics cards to SSDs. However, some of those discounts are for refurbished (or “renewed”) products, which means they aren’t strictly new.

You might have seen a few sales and discounts for refurbished products already, and more are sure to come. To help you sort through everything, we’ll answer a simple question with a somewhat-complicated answer: when should you buy refurbished PC hardware?

What is refurbished?

Before explaining when you should buy refurbished products, it helps to start with a simpler question: what exactly does ‘refurbished’ mean?

The term ‘refurbished’ refers to products that are sold after they were returned to a manufacturer or vendor for various reasons. The buyer may simply have not liked the product (e.g. a graphics card that didn’t fit in their PC), or the device came out of the factory with some components damaged (e.g. gaming PC with a dent in the case), or the product didn’t work at all when the buyer received it (e.g. dead graphics card).

When a company refurbishes a product, it tests the functionality to ensure everything is in working order. That means when you purchase a refurbished graphics card or SSD, it should work like when it was new, though it may have different packaging and/or accessories. Some refurbished products may also have minor cosmetic defects, which are usually specified in the product description.

Because the term ‘refurbished’ can be off-putting to some buyers—usually due to experiences with third-party sellers, which we’ll get to later—you may also see different words being used that mean the same thing. Some common examples in the world of PC hardware include “refurb,” “reconditioned,” “recertified,” or “renewed.” EVGA also uses the term “B-Stock” for its refurbished graphics cards and other devices.

When should I buy refurbished hardware?

The answer to when should you buy refurbished PC hardware is multi-pronged.

First, it’s generally a bad idea to purchase products that are refurbished by a third-party. This usually means a company with little-to-no relation to the original manufacturer is fixing the products—for example, a company not affiliated to Alienware fixing and re-selling Alienware laptops. This can lead to reduced quality, since the refurbishing company might not have access to the same components and testing facilities as the original manufacturer.

The best way to avoid this is to look for “factory refurbished,” “OEM refurbished,” or another similar term in the product listing. That means the company who produced the original product (or at least, a company officially certified by the original maker) is also the one fixing and re-selling it.

Second, there are some types of products that aren’t a good idea to buy refurbished. While components like CPUs and speakers are almost always safe to buy refurbished (they either work or they don’t), other parts have a more limited life or more potential points of failure.

Refurbished graphics cards used to be a terrible idea to buy, since most of them originated from large crypto-currency mining rigs, where they were running at maximum capacity 24/7 for months (or even years). Now that GPU mining hasn’t been an effective way of generating Bitcoin and other similar currencies for around two years at this point, you don’t have to worry as much—especially if the GPU is factory-refurbished.

On the other hand, it’s a good idea to steer clear of refurbished power supplies, since one bad capacitor could destroy other components in your PC, and high-quality PSUs are readily affordable these days. Motherboards are a similar situation, particularly if you get a board that doesn’t include the original packaging. Motherboards include accessories and spare cables that you wouldn’t want to miss out on.

Refurbished monitors can often be found at a steal, but be warned: most of them probably have a dead pixel or two. It’s common for displays to be returned by the original customer for this reason, and it’s usually cheaper for the manufacturer to slash the price and sell it as refurbished than to replace the entire panel.

Hard drives and SSDs are generally fine to buy refurbished. Both types of drives usually have a lifespan that lasts many years in general usage, so unless the original buyer copied data back and forth 24/7 for a month or two until deciding to return it, there won’t be much of a difference between refurb drives and new units. The same goes for memory; often people return memory not because it’s bad but because it didn’t “just work” with their motherboard. Most kits, enabling the XMP is all you need to do to get RAM working properly.

Finally, pay attention to the terms of the sale and the warranty. Depending on the product and seller, you may end up with a full warranty, a 90-day guarantee, or a product that can’t be returned. This even goes for factory refurbished parts in some cases. Read the fine print and make sure you know what you’re getting.

For a lot of PC hardware, even a 30-day warranty should be fine. Either the part works and will continue to do so for some indeterminate amount of time, or it will have problems right from the start. Which brings up a useful corollary.

Always do some testing of any refurbished part as soon as you receive it. Don’t let it sit on a shelf for a week or two, but instead use it immediately and look for any warning signs. For a graphics card, load up your favorite games and start playing, or if you’re looking for a useful stress test, Unigine Heaven 4.0 is good for sussing out rendering or stability issues. Copy lots of files over to a refurb SSD/HDD, look for dead pixels on your monitor, etc.

Corollary number two: Don’t give refurbished hardware to someone as a gift. That’s just asking for trouble. Seriously, don’t be that person.

Conclusion

If you’re skipping to the end because you don’t have time to read several paragraphs, here’s the short version: don’t buy hardware that isn’t factory-refurbished (fixed by the original maker). Also, some types of hardware (like motherboards and PSUs) are generally more of a gamble buying refurbished than buying new, while other types (like CPUs and speakers) are usually perfectly fine to buy as refurbs.

You can always choose to take a risk, and you might even got a product that works like new, but you need to determine how much your time and energy are worth. If you’re only saving $10-$20 compared to a brand new product, while potentially dealing with shipping and return hassles that could stretch into weeks? Even for the technically savvy, that doesn’t seem like a great bargain.

Samsung Galaxy S11 rumours have been heating up but a new piece of information suggests some predictions, like the addition of a Galaxy S11 Lite, have been a bit off.

While it doesn’t look like we were right about getting a Galaxy S11 Lite, we might be getting a new S10 product out of it. According to a new inclusion on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) database, a Galaxy S10 Lite is on the way with the model number SM-G770F, as spotted by SamMobile.

Ishan Agarwal, a known leaker, has said the Lite will come with a Snapdragon 855 processor and an impressive camera boasting a 48MP main camera, 5MP depth lens and a 12MP wide angle lens on the rear. It’s selfie camera will reportedly be 32MP.

Given the S10 series already has a pretty full lineup with the S10, S10+, S10e and S10 5G, we assumed the Lite leaks would replace the S11e when the new series is eventually released. This new information seems to suggest a S11 version of it isn’t on the immediate horizon.

We’ve reached to Samsung to confirm the Lite model is solely for the Galaxy S10 series, and not the S11.

Two months after being announced, the Intel SSD 665p is set to be released today. The 665p is the successor to the 660p, the most (only?) successful consumer SSD based on four bit per cell (QLC) NAND flash memory. The 665p makes minimal changes to the design of the 660p; the most important of which is switching from Intel’s 64-layer 3D QLC NAND to their newer 96-layer 3D QLC NAND.

Intel claims to have the first 96L QLC in production, though Western Digital has already announced they are shipping products using their own 96L QLC (albeit not in internal SSDs yet). It appears that production of Intel’s 96L has not ramped up much yet, because today we are only getting the 1TB SKU of the 665p—the 2TB model won’t be arriving until Q1 of 2020. The 512GB model won’t be happening at all. The 512GB 660p was much more susceptible to the performance downsides of QLC NAND than the larger models, and given the pricing of 512GB-class TLC-based drives, it’s reasonable for QLC product lines to start with a minimum of 1TB.

The 665p continues to use the Silicon Motion SM2263 NVMe SSD controller, with a small DRAM cache and a massive variable-size SLC cache:

The switch to 96L QLC has enabled minor performance improvements. The basic performance specs have been boosted by up to 13.6%, which isn’t enough to noticeably impact real-world use cases. This is still an entry-level NVMe SSD that could get by just fine with a mere PCIe 3.0 x2 connection even though it supports an x4 link. As usual, these specs are for burst performance where the SLC cache is in use; post-SLC write speeds are still slower than what any vendor wants to put on a spec sheet. When Intel announced the 665p in September, they showed CrystalDiskMark results for the 660p vs the 665p that cast the 665p in a much better light, but their numbers for the 660p were suspiciously low.

Much more important than the performance changes is the write endurance boost the 665p brings compared to the 660p. Both capacities of the 665p have 50% higher rated write endurance than the 660p, bringing them up to about 0.16 drive writes per day (DWPD) from the 660p’s 0.11 DWPD. This is still a lot lower than the 0.3 DWPD that is typical for low-end consumer SSDs that use TLC NAND, but the increase does show that Intel’s feeling more confident in their second generation of QLC.

Looking to the future, Intel’s next step after 96 layers will be to 144 layers. That generation of 3D NAND will be QLC-only at first and will arrive in the second half of 2020. So Intel may end up doing a second refresh of this SSD about a year from now before this product segment is ready to move to PCIe 4.0.

Newegg is currently selling the 1TB 660p for $82.99 as part of their Black Friday sales, making it one of the cheapest SSDs on a per-GB basis, in any form factor, interface or capacity. We’re not expecting the 665p to debut at such a low price, but after the holiday sales are over the 665p will probably overtake the 660p as the most affordable NVMe SSD.

Intel is not sampling the 1TB 665p for review at this time, but we’ve asked for a review sample of the 2TB model when it becomes available.

With more than 1.5 billion active users, WhatsApp is the most popular mobile messenger app in the world.

If you’re an avid user then you’ll most likely have the basics of the app covered, but there are several features that you could be missing out on.

Speaking exclusively to Mirror Online, WhatsApp has revealed its top ten tips for making the most of the messaging service.

From bookmarking messages to reading them in stealth mode, these commonly unknown tips and tricks are sure to make you a WhatsApp wizz.

1. Record hands-free voice notes

Voice notes are a great way of easily telling your friends an in-depth story by saving minutes of typing. It’s also handy if you’re walking and can’t be looking down at your phone.

While many users know to hold down the voice-note icon and speak, you can actually create a message hands-free.

WhatsApp said: “Did you know that if you hold down the microphone icon and swipe up, it locks the voice note function to ‘record’, leaving you able to record your message hands-free?

“Once you have finished recording your message, just press send!”

2. Bookmark your main messages

If you’re looking for something in your chat history, you can use the search function, but it’s still sometimes tricky to find what you’re after.

Thankfully, there’s actually a way to bookmark key messages to make sure you can easily find them in the future.

For example, if your friend has sent you their new address, this way, you can quickly go back and view it when you need it.

WhatsApp said: “Make use of the ‘star’ message function where you can bookmark key messages that you can easily view again in one central location. Just press down on the message that you want to bookmark and then tap the ‘star’ icon.

“For iPhone users, you can find all your starred messages by going to Settings & Starred Messages or click the name of your chat and tap ‘Starred messages’. For Android users, tap ‘More options’, and tap ‘Starred messages’.”

3. Tailor your status to every occasion

We may be familiar with updating our friends with statuses on Facebook, but they can be used in the same way for Whatsapp for telling all your contacts something at once.

WhatsApp explained: “You can set your ‘About’ status to a pre-existing option, or you can create your own for whatever activity you may be up to.

“To do so, go to Settings; [Tap your name]; About; Status, and select a pre-existing option, or, to personalise it, click Edit, select any of the pre-existing options, and share with the world what you’re currently up to.”

4. Set your phone aside but still be online

Sneaking your smartphone out to check your WhatsApp messages at work can be tricky, but if you really need to stay in touch, there is a way to check your messages without even touching your phone.

WhatsApp said: “Download the WhatsApp Web desktop app, which mirrors your phone’s conversations on your computer. This means you can send the normal WhatsApp messages, photos and GIFs from your computer, but now in double quick time.”

5. Elevate your conversations with Stickers

While many people use emoji in their messages, Stickers can offer a fun alternative to jazz up your conversations.

WhatsApp said: “When you open a conversation, next to the field you input text into, there is a little square icon with a folded side page. When you click that, it comes up with your stickers – but you can add more! Find out how to download more stickers in WhatsApp’s FAQs.”

6. Read your messages in super-stealth mode

Sometimes you’ll want to see what your friend has messaged without them knowing. You can hide ‘Read Receipts’ but then you also won’t be able to see theirs.

However there’s a sneaky alternative that lets you read a full message and avoid blue ticks.

WhatsApp explained: “If you see a message come in on your iPhone’s lock screen, press down slightly on the message on the screen and it pulls up the full text, but you won’t appear to the other person that you’ve read the message. Stealthy!”

7. Pin your most important friends or groups

If you’re a Whatsapp user, you’re bound to have a number of different chats going at one time so it’s hard to find your favourite groups when scrolling down your list of conversations. It can even be easy to mistakenly send a message to the wrong group.

But there’s actually a way to pin their conversation to the top of your inbox.

WhatsApp said: “On the iPhone, swipe to the right on the chat you want to pin to the top and then tap ‘Pin’. On Android, tap and hold on the chat and then tap the pin icon.”

8. Regain control of your groups

A group chat name and icon photo is very important.

Sometimes members of the group change them, and if you don’t agree with it, you can’t really do anything about it without kicking up a fuss.

But if you’re an admin, there’s a way to change the group settings so only you can allow these changes.

WhatsApp said: “You can change the group settings so that only admins are allowed to change group info. To do so, click on your group name and go to Group Settings; Edit group info.”

9. Find out who you talk to the most

If you’ve ever wondered who your favourite person on WhatsApp is, you’ll be happy to hear that it’s fairly straightforward to find out.

WhatsApp said: “You can find out who you send the most messages to and how much storage each person you speak to takes up by going to: Settings; Data and Storage Usage; Storage Usage; Select Contact.”

10. Manage who adds you to groups

While group chats are a useful way to communicate with your friends and family, there’s nothing more annoying than being added to a chatty group with no relevance to you.

WhatsApp recently rolled out the ability to manage who adds you to groups.

It added: “To ensure that you only join groups that you want to be in, you can manage your group permission settings.

“Once enabled, the friend who wants to add you to a group will be required to first send you an invitation link in the app. If you accept it, you will then be added to the group. If not, the link will expire in three days.”

To enable it, go to Settings; Account; Privacy; Groups and select one of three options: ‘Everyone,’ ‘My Contacts,’ or ‘My Contacts Except’.

‘My Contacts’ means only users you have in your address book can add you to groups and ‘My Contacts Except’ provides additional control for who among your contacts can add you to a group.