What should I do with this iMac?

March 24, 2016 9:14 AM

I have a 27" iMac I bought at the beginning of 2013. It's a top of the line, 3tb hybrid drive, 16gb RAM. It has problems though that can't seem to be fixed.

I do not have Applecare and it is too late to get it.

It very often dies on me as I'm using it. I'll just be plugging away, not doing anything fancy, and it will just... die. No power, nothing. In order to get it going again I have to physically unplug it or switch off the surge protector for a minute. I guess that resets something internally. Only then can I power it on. Then it will die a few minutes later.

When it dies it is DEAD. It's not just the screen. No keyboard lights, no noise, nothing.

I have troubleshot it as much as I can. Heat in the area isn't an issue. It can die after being on for five minutes or five months. It will die when I'm editing video or editing text. No pattern to anything. I have re-installed my entire OS but it appears the issue is hardware related. It will often work for weeks at a time and then not work for five minutes.

I have taken it to the Genius bar and of course they can't recreate the issue or find anything obviously wrong. Googling for the make/model/problem reveals a whole lot of people with the same issue and repeated attempts to repair it don't seem to work for most of them. There is a lot of "I got a new power supply and now it's fine!" with an update a week later that the problem re-occurred.

I don't want to get into the cycle of lugging it to an Apple store, being without it for a week, and paying a lot of money for a repair only to have the problem resurface. I used to do computer repair for a living, I know how it goes with intermittent issues. I need a reliable computer and have been thinking of moving to a laptop anyway.

My question is not how to fix it*. My question is what do I do with an unreliable iMac. Can I sell it on eBay? Is there a market for iMac parts?

I'm not a terrible person, so if I eBay it I will disclose the issue even though I could easily not do that.

But is it worth attempting to sell? Will I get more than a few dollars for this thing? I know computers depreciate a lot right off the bat, but it would be nice if I could get some money for it.

What are some alternate ways of selling it? Does Apple have any kind of trade-in program?

tl;dr: How can I maximize the resale value of an unreliable iMac?

* unless you know of this exact problem on this exact model and you can point to a reliable source of how to definitively fix it.

posted by bondcliff to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Look on eBay for how much similar iMacs are selling for then take it to a near by Apple store and get a price to have it fixed. If the sell price minus the fix price gives you an amount of money that makes you happy - there is your solution.
posted by axismundi at 9:29 AM on March 24, 2016

I have one of these but it's a little older. We actually got the Apple people to say "Yeah it's a heat issue" that basically does something to some sort of connection that unreliably fails. We keep using it and save our work often since it doesn't fail THAT much. Apple does have trade-in programs, 2007 or later, you can get gift cards if you want the lowest hassle version of this. But realistically your not wanting to hassle might not be someone else's concern, so selling it AS-IS (and being very clear about the issues) at a deep discount to someone on CL or local facebook group (to avoid shipping headaches) and then they can roll the dice with it. I think eBay is a little more likely to be a problem because you might have a griefing buyer. Local sales lower that likelihood.
posted by jessamyn at 9:49 AM on March 24, 2016

On eBay, do an advanced search for your model of iMac "as is" and select "Sold Listings" to get an idea of the range of what you might get. Besides the Apple recycling program, Gazelle and other websites will buy used computers, although they don't pay all that much.
posted by puritycontrol at 9:52 AM on March 24, 2016

Mod note: One comment deleted. Friendly reminder, don't use the edit function to change content. It's for typos only. Just make a new comment that says what you want, and flag the old one for us to delete.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:22 AM on March 24, 2016