Need advice on creating a computer component refurbishment business (Kinda)

[lewisjay1]

So the other day one of my monitors (Samsung SyncMaster 2032BW) broke due to blown capacitors on the backlight converter board, which was easily fixed even with my amateur soldering abilities. I found out that this was a very common thing with many Samsung monitors due to the massive amount of faulty capacitors that were purchased by Samsung for use in their range of SyncMaster monitors, due to the ease of the repair I stumbled upon the idea of buying broken Monitors on eBay and repairing them to sell on for a profit as refurbished. As I looked into it further I decided that if I was to try and create a little profit from refurbishing components I would also like to broaden my abilities by trying to repair things like graphics cards and motherboards to also sell as refurbished in hope of making a little profit, like the other day I saw on eBay a Xfx 7970 DD that had been returned by a costumer as it didn't give any display but the fans span up, the card ended up going for £40 at the end of the bidding which even though it is faulty, if whoever bought it manged to fix it could easily sell it for over £200. I have heard that problems like this are sometimes due to faulty capacitors or with the right knowledge are easy to diagnose and then fix. I have seen multiple AMD 7000 Series cards on eBay going for extremely cheap prices with the same problem as the 7970 had and also I have seen multiple Gtx 600 Series with similar problems. The questions I want to ask really is that, is it worth trying to buy broken GPU's, Motherboard and other componets to then try to repair to sell for profit or is it too complicated/risky? I need money at the moment and thought it might be a good idea to have a go at as it is something I would enjoy doing and learning more about at the same time. Sorry if its a bit long winded before I actually got the point
Any answers will be appreciated.
Thanks in advance, Lewis Jay Birch

 

[gbryan101]

Doing this all depends on your tolerance for risks. Are you willing to buy a broken card, sight unseen, hoping that you can fix it and still sell it for a profit? You are taking the chance on things that might not even be fixable. What happens if, instead of something simple like a capacitor, the chip itself is bad? You may have to eat that cost.
Then there is the matter of actually selling the stuff. Are you going to sell it online? How many people are going to be interested in buying something that isn't even factory refurbished? Be ready to be bombarded with low-ball offers on everything you have.
Honestly, this sounds like something to do on the side, not quite a job but more than a hobby.

Do it if you enjoy it is my suggestion

 

[ss202sl]

I agree with Gbryan111. You can make some cash doing this, but don't quit your day job to do it. If you want to get into repairing things, then try getting certified to do warranty work for Dell, HP, and some others, and get on their call list for your area. Open up your own shop.

 

[getochkn]

As said above, it's a crap shoot. Sometimes it's the caps, but not always. Sometimes it's a bad cap that's not bulged or blown open, now you need a cap tester. They're not cheap for a good one, so add that in. Then it's hours sometimes trying to track down the bad cap, or it's not even a cap, it's another bad component. Because of lead-free solder, many components need to be reflowed or reballed. I run my own business and while I dabble with other electronics now and again, it's too time consuming, the bulk of my business is reflowing 360's and PS3's to fix the red/yellow light of death. A good reflow machine will cost you $1500 and is needed if you are going to get into serious repairs. I've reflow 360s, ps3, laptop motherboards, graphics cards and I reflow some kind of power board for a TV repair company in town, they bring me about 15 boards a week to reflow to fix TV's for a certain problem many of them get.

You got lucky, it was an easy, big cap to fix and your problem is solved. Nowadays companies are using better caps and that's not as much of an issue anymore. It's one of the other 3000 components. I talked with the TV repair guy I do work for, and he said in the first few years, LCD/LED/plasma TV's, it was caps, it was an easy fix, good money, TV's were expensive, people would pay to get them fixed. Now he barely breaks even as companies have improved the caps and he spends hours trying to figure out what the problem was and then it's expensive to replace the whole board and people rather go buy a new TV for $600 than repair a 3 year old one for $400.

We've become a disposable society.

 

[lewisjay1]

Yeah I did kinda mean just doing it on the side to start really as I do have a part time job at the moment and I wouldn't be stopping that for anything like this, thanks for the response though guys.