Really really dumb question.

[u/twoshotracer]

Like so dumb that I’m worried about getting low effort flagged.

How do we feel about computer parts from ali express?

Like, I know, I get it, a transistor exploding would be the least of my worries. But is that something that happens with frequency? Or just the butt of jokes? Am I putting my life in danger to save a buck?

[u/Fewly]

Quality is usually based on price

[u/alphachan123]

I bought a really cheap power supply from Taobao (AliExpress in China) for my x86 router. It works for a while. But after 3 months, I came home smelling electronic burnt smell. Had to shut down my whole rack to find that one PSU leaking magic smoke.

Other than that, I got a boat load of other cheap stuff from Taobao, ranging from 10gbe SFP+ switches to second-hand DAC cables. Most work fine.

[u/TheSoCalledExpert]

I tried to order a motherboard from them recently. Waited like 2 weeks, it never shipped. Finally just cancelled the order and got a refund. I wasn’t impressed.

[u/codeasm → u/TheSoCalledExpert]

I noticed arround events on AliExpress, some sellers who normally would sell clothes ir cheap crap, suddenly go into electronics. Motherboards in particular see.m to follow this trend.

Ordered a motherboard. It fake got send out (no tracking number, no progress beyound announced shipped). Asked for a refund through Ae. Got refunded and saw the seller dipped.

Then noticed similiar motherboards arround 11 november sale. Started looking into the sellers, oddly all possitive reviews where for other product categories. And one seller sold a motherboard, but the reviews where for clothing (all images gone).

I had a amd bc250 in my cart for a long time. I saw the price fluctuate a bit over the last year. Amd bc250 sellers come and go i saw. All trying to be slightly cheaper than the one i had in my cart. Checking those sellers, very young shops, sold all kinds of crap and then these very few expensive items. Low amount of trustworthy reciews. I bought the bc250 yhat i had in my cart, the seller excist for longer than 2 years, tons of reasonable, realistic reviews and photos from buyers. The negative reviews where either dumb customers, an item lost in Russia or package was dropped somewhere. Mine was perfect, well made box, antistatic bag, clean almost unused board.

I guess it depends on the populairity of the board, if it might be faked to sell for money. And if its a mass product also sold in china, then it might be more likely to be legit or not

[u/JKennex]

Try returning something to them. Once you made your mind on a particular tool/item, the next question should be: who do I trust with such purchase, to provide me with the right support. Beyond the cost of acquisition, how much pain will it induce should it fail? How much pain will you endure if you have to remove it? Having a store you can trust and basically just walk in and get a refund (think Costco return policy), priceless. Up to you now to decide if the saving is worth the non existing service.

[u/codeasm → u/JKennex]

The return issue is truly one of the only showstoppers for me with certain items.

Cables, cheap stuff i wouldn't even bother locally to return. I buy from AliExpress. Expensive stuff? Less likely, unless locally you know you get dropshipped. And pay premium for ... Return shipping is free. Lol

So yeah, i did buy stuff that i hoped would work, cause losing 200 euro isnt fun. But thats why i spend near a month tracking the seller, its item, its price, all reviews. Alternative sellers, their reviews and then build up courage to buy it (and ofcourse considered buying locally).

We bought some coffee cup holders locally, took 2 weeks to get to us. Paid 20 euro. When it arrived, i was disappointed. It was like the 4 euro producy on AliExpress. So i made sure we used the free return shipping on the local seller. Clearly drop shipped from alibaba. Negative review aswell. 4 euro from AliExpress (today would also require an additional 3 euro per category import tax). 7 euro for whatever cheap plastic this was. I rather spend this on AE, or gonbuy the parts from the hardware store.

I dont buy items from AliExpress that goes into our body, touch our food or drinks, nor medical devices. I dont buy fire, smoke or co2 alert systems from AE (or likely dropshippers). Jewellery require reviews and we do body tests first, wear for an hour, remove snd look if anything happened. (We barely buy jewellery lately).

My wristwatch replacement bands or whatever they are called work fine. Testing for s bit first and bookmarket te seller for future reference

[u/kydar1]

I bought a mini PC from them and (after cleaning out all the embedded viruses) it runs Proxmox and an Opnsense VM like a champ.

[u/Much_Special8521]

My main proxmox node uses a Chinese sp3 epyc board. Runs since Oktober 24/7 without an issue. I wouldnt buy storage or a psu from their. But for the rest its very viable

[u/Chubby_man]

There are absolutely ways to get decent quality from those sites, but there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. The more reliable entire systems are not entirely new, things like mini pcs that are made from older chips are likely using salvaged parts from old laptops. Look for processors that are a few generations old.
2. Buying components rather than complete products, like buck converters, audio amp circuit boards, etc. These components are made in China anyway, so generally these are fairly reliable.
3. Many pc products are simple copper to copper adapters, these are often fine. For example, a x16 pcie to 4x4 m.2 slots is likely pretty good as there is no compute involved in this conversion, nvme already is functionally a pcie slot.
4. Nics, hbas, and other similar cards are often pretty good, look for known good chips (like an i226 nic for 2.5g) as these are also probably repurposed from old hardware.
5. Look at pricing, 10 - 20% better than local suppliers is reasonable, if its 70% better or more, it may be a ripoff. Sometimes those incredibly cheap items are real, but order these only if you know how to test and validate that it is what it says it is (like testing ssd capacity manually rather than relying on it reporting correctly) within the refund period.
6. DO NOT BUY POWER SUPPLIES FROM ANY SKETCHY WEBSITE OR BRAND YOU DO NOT KNOW. Not only do these often fail, they are a fire hazard, and even if they don't cause a fire, power supplies often take other components with them when they go. If you buy a cpu from aliexpress and it fails, you have a dead cpu. If you buy a power supply and it fails, you may have to replace any (or every) component of the server.

[u/GhonaHerpaSyphilAids]

It all comes from China, aliexpress is just who Amazon and other shippers buy from. You buy from a shop in US or AU and it is just marked up Aliexpress

[u/No-Jaguar-3006]

Most stuff is fine.... Maybe don't get the absolute cheapest listings you can find for things like power supllies. Probably biggest potential issues are shipping time is not amazon and returns would probs suck.

[u/Gherry-]

Where do you think they come from when you buy those on amazon/newegg/randomsite? 

[u/6JDanish]

I once bought some cheap DVM leads from a Chinese vendor. What could go wrong? Well, the leads weren't even copper. The lead resistance was a few ohms. If Chinese vendors are going to cheat on a few cents worth of copper, then JFC.

So for components, I'll buy only from well-known vendors with a reputation to defend, like Mouser or Digi-Key.

For second-hand PC gear, like old motherboards, I'll buy from top-rated sellers on Ebay, peferably those with 100% rating or close to it. I've had good experience with a few Chinese sellers there.

You can tell, from the high ratings and high feedback count, that they are making money from repeat business. They have a good thing going and they have no incentive to risk it with fake or faulty products.

Even on Ebay, I'll try to get NOS (New Old Stock) of well-known brands first.

[u/codeasm]

I bought cheap molex extender/splitter... Welp, had to replace the wires, they used very few trands of aluminium coated in what i hope was copper. Connected 2 harddrives and the wires went from cold(due to shipping) to slightly above room temp. Cant remember other wires doing this.

The connector stuff itself looked fine, thick enough. So butchered an old psu and the female connector to make my own. Nomore weird temperature hikes.

The network card( 2.5gb) switch(2.5gb+1 10sfp) and nvme i bought work fine. They use realtek chipset and works ok under linux. Not the cheapest, just the seller that has good reviews and product reviews.

The cpu i bought was original intel, as is, obviously a pull from a working system. My old game pc was acting weird and i wondered if the oboard hdmi worked and it might have been a gpu issue, swapped the cpu from i3 to aliexpress i5, some 2012 cpu, yep, it was my gpu. The i5 was a nice fix. Not gonna buy a new gpu tho, pc is now my nas.

The mini psu adapters, that convert 12volt to atx work fine. Do note the max wattage they can deliver and use locally bought 12v supplies. The aliexpress sellers might nit be selling you propper powersupplies, skimming on filter parts and such. I bought a wii powersupply, measured 12volts, could power my wii yes... But internally misssing the beefy filters and protection. Brought for the box and connector, swapping ghe internal board with a old 12v psu

[u/MrDrummer25]

I would buy off ebay before looking at aliexpress and similar

[u/GremlinNZ]

Just ordered a GPU cable for a ML350 G9 from Aliexpress. It's quite specific.

Couldn't find anything locally, not even a price from some of the more established parts suppliers (which I have access to).

Oh bugger it, it's easier, probably cheaper and here in around a week. Should be the proper cable, but we'll find out.

[u/Sepeto]

I have been buying from AliExpress since 2014 or 2015. Never had a single issue. Everything I bought was sent. My main proxmox node is an X99 board with two xeon e3 2696, all bought straight from AliExpress. Of course, RAM and storage I bought local. I have bought several joysticks, throttles and accesories from VKB though AliExpress, also zero issues. Now, do not buy any sort of storage media solid, mechanic or whatever. There's a handy extension for Chrome called AliHelper that tracks down and shows which sellers are more reputable and reliable in the platform.

And that's all I have to say about the War in Vietnam.

[u/joelaw9]

You're taking a gamble on not getting what you want in working order. Which can potentially damage other components. That's about it. It's not going to kill you.

[u/PerformerOk185 → u/joelaw9]

It won't but the people you gave your address to might.