Buying GPU from China....

I've bought millions of things from China, and never had any issues, from a phone case to sophisticated hobby equipment for my RC helicopters. Generally, price determines things, for example a set of main blades for $10 won't be equally as good as a set that sells for $100.... To the point, I've recall seeing people discouraging buying GPU's from China sellers.... Why?

I unfortunately cannot find anything that isn't in China right now and not wanting $500+ (UK sellers).... Kinda missed out on a few US/Canadian sales for the same price as the Chinese ones.

 

Mainly because they can fail, they are expensive and it would be even more expensive to send it back for a refund. I usually avoid far away places for purchases unless it's the only option.

 

I bought a 680m through a Chinese seller on Ebay last year. It took several attempts to successfully ship the package to me. The seller claimed it was returned to their address twice for not being up to standards for international shipping. After it finally got here (It took about a month), I ran into a lot of problems installing drivers for the card. During every installation attempt, the OS would freeze at a specific point. I even went as far as formatting the drive and reinstalling windows 7, but it would still lock up at the very same spot during the installation.

To make a long story short, I got in touch with the seller and told them about my problem and they did their best to troubleshoot it. The guy running their account even followed the thread I created here on NotebookReview to make sure he was up to date with the problem. After about 2 weeks, he offered me an RMA. Before shipping it out, I decided to try upgrading to Windows 8.1 and the drivers worked without any problems at all. Not sure if where I got it had anything to do with any of the problems I ran into or if maybe there was just something wrong with my copy of Windows 7. But the card has ran flawlessly since then. Just my two cents.

 

[Double post]

 

Buying from China meaning e-shopping on Alibaba/Aliexpress? Both my CPU and GPU were bought on Alibaba.com. The 920XM that I bought was actually from a guy in Hong Kong and the 670MX was from Upgrademonkey. Both are working great.

 

Well took the plunge on a 7970m today... Thanks for the input guys....

Can definitely see the concerns. Keeping an eye on this one for sure. Will keep it posted.

 

Me too from this shop http://www.ebay.com/usr/dalingdada?_trksid=p2047675.l2559

item: http://www.ebay.com/itm/121558994554?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Seems like a decent guy with good feedback. When i get my 7970m will update you. If theres any messing about I will use the hammer of paypal.

 

just the nature of mxm gpu, which itself is a multi component electronics, easily damaged, easily tempered. Card can be re-soldered or revived from dead, and there is no way to tell unless you are an expert.

Unlike a CPU, ram etc.

 

Mine arrived after a rather longer than usual wait. Popped it in and it worked. Just teething issues, this being my first "laptop gpu upgrade" I'm learning to the hoops, definitely nothing like a desktop. But I like the technical challenge.

Major concern has been boot error lights that go away if you wait or power cycle, which only came to be issues after I flashed a different bios. Right now 1.000V is working A-one... Ran awesome yesterday, today wants to run a little warm. May try 0.975 next.

Would suck if I had to send it back.. Jumpings... LOL