Sep. 7th, 2009

[identity profile] hisamishness.livejournal.com
Rant from the other side of the aisle for a change... AKA one of THEM is hiding behind a bench!

Circa 2am this morning - massive home office rework is in progress. I've shuffled parts and am at the step to assemble one of the boxes. I've got the board, 91% alcohol, Arctic Silver and a new E5300 proc on the table, ready to go. I open the box, pull out the bits, and prepare to assemble. Then I look at the chip - there's crud on the edges of the heat spreader. Odd, thinks I. Intel chips are practically clean-room clean when they're new. Curious, I look at the included heatsink. Crud on the edges too, and no thermal pad. Uuuuhhhh Oooohhhh....

Then I look at the box a little closer. What I first thought was an inventory control or order management sticker now takes on a new meaning. "Components Quality Assurance Program." It's not part of a stock management system. It's an indicator this is a pre-used and "tested" part.

Now, I've been shopping in both local Frys for a while. I've seen their Open Box price adjustment stickers. This isn't one of them, and I'm getting more and more pissed that they've sold me a used chip that is guaranteed to fail, but gave it to me and charged me as if it was an unmolested virgin. I could have gone ahead, cleaned the parts up, and used them with the thermal compound I have on hand, and I thought of doing just that. Then I thought to my self... Half Trained Monkey #115076 is either dumb enough to not know or apathetic enough to not care that the strips of thermal compound on Intel heatsinks are both single use only and required for the chip to run at an acceptably  low temperature. By extension, this means that this person might not know (or care) enough to use the heatsink when "testing" the chip. Screw this. It only takes a few seconds to damage a chip, and I'm not going to complete a build with a possibly half-burnt chip.

Now I've gotta drag my 13mpg ass on the 30 min each way trip to Frys - AGAIN - just because HTM #115076 has a job they're not qualified for!

... soon to be x-posted to my LJ

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