How to test a second hand PC

[David (PassMark)]

We were asked recently about how to go about testing a second hand PC, and how to do it quickly. Our customer in this case was a pawn broker who buys second hand computers.

While we don't have any exact statistics, here are our thoughts on what to test, based on experience and common sense.

Here is a lot of things to check, in order of how quick they are to check and how many bad machines you are likely to find. We are assuming all these machines have a O/S installed and are a mix of laptops and desktops.

1. Any physical damage, cracked screens, bad cables, leaking batteries, etc..
2. Does the machine turn on and get to BIOS.
3. Does the machine boot in the O/S in a reasonable time
4. Check desktop display it not corrupted or missing colours or missing pixels. MonitorTest can help with this.
5. Check disk SMART data for any self reported errors. DiskCheckup can help with this.
6. Does mouse & keyboard work. KeyboardTest can help with this.
7. Do the reported hardware specs match the customers claims (Qty of RAM installed, size of HDD, CPU model, etc..). PerformanceTest can help with this.
8. Check idle CPU, GPU & HDD temps are reasonable. BurnInTest can help with this.
9. Check reported battery capacity, check machine starts to charge when mains power is connected. BatteryMon
10. Check CD tray ejects.
11. At this point things start to take longer.
12. Check any unusual hardware, webcams, firewire ports,
13. Connect USB test plugs and test USB ports for errors. USB loop back plugs.
14. Connect speakers and test sound. SoundCheck and BurnInTest
15. Check network port is working. A browser for a short test, BurnInTest for a longer test.
16. Check Wifi is working. WirelessMon
17. Benchmark system and check performance is reasonable, with no thermal throttling. PerformanceTest
18. Load CPU until it reaches steady temperature (e.g. 10min) & check for stability, but this depends a lot on cooling system and hardware in use. BurnInTest
19. Check 3D/DirectX/GPU is working over longer period, without corruption & crashes. BurnInTest
20. Check RAM, the longer the better. BurnInTest and or MemTest86
21. Check spare PCIe slots for throughput and errors. PCIe Test cards.
22. Do a longer charge discharge test on the battery to estimate actual battery capacity. BurnInTest & BatteryMon
23. Surface R/W test on free space on HDD, at least one pass of the surface, then check SMART data again. DiskCheckup
24. Check the optical drive can read the complete surface of a dual layer DVD. BurnInTest
25. If you aren'’t re-imaging the machine, check for malware & apply windows patches.

Nothing is perfect and errors will still slip through, but after checking everything on the above this you should have a high degree of confidence that the machines is working.

But I am sure others will also have suggestions on what to check.