It’s been awhile since I looked into building a PC, so I’m not sure what some of the better stores may be, or which may have swapped hands/changed approaches and aren’t as reliable as they once were.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions/advice!
Try using pcpartpicker.com. You can do your build on the site and it will list the best deals for the components you choose. As a bonus it will check to see if there are some glaring incompatibilities at the same time.
I love this site so much. As someone who’s not got much of a tech backgroung, it’s been massively helpful in building and upgrading my PCs.
As a bonus it will check to see if there are some glaring incompatibilities at the same time.
I’d heard of the site but for some reason I’d forgotten this part. I’ll definitely use it for that at a minimum (and maybe for sourcing parts as well depending!), as I have a habit of missing some tiny detail that happens to relate to compatibility.
Watching this thread. I’ve been LOST ever since Fry’s fell apart. :(
Microcenter is great, especially for nerds. Sucks if one isn’t close, but they ship.
They don’t ship anything that matters. Key parts like CPU’s, GPU’s, mobos, hard nope.
Yup. 30 something processors in the website, 3 available in store. I love that microcenter has replaced Fry’s (smaller stores that i don’t get an anxiety attack going to) but the shipping is crap and you have to wait for parts to come back in stock.
In their defense, I believe a lot of their shipping rules changed during the crypto/covid/AI shortages of the past few years to prevent scalpers from vacuuming up their supply. They limited a lot of the big ticket items to in-store only specifically so you couldn’t order them from Timbuktu and resell them.
Which, props to them, respect. But holy crap does it make them useless as a retailer unless you’re one of the lucky fucks who lives within a 2 hour drive of one.
I really wish that there wasn’t just the one in Tustin for the entire state of California. The Bay Area would seem like a no-brainer for a Micro Center but no such luck.
that sucks. there is one 20 min from me, the the second is roughly 45 min. east coast baby!
I don’t think there’s one in my entire state
My best buys were always at fry’s.
And if you wanted delicious fries, your best buy was not at Best Buy but rather Five Guys Burgers and Fries.
The last computer I built (not for me) was a mix of Amazon, Memory Express and Canada Computers (got the list from PC PartPicker).
Amazon had the memory and CPU I wanted; MemEx had the mobo, PSU and case; and CC had the monitor. I tried to get everything from MemEx though, but they just didn’t have everything I needed.
May be worth mentioning that NewEgg is now hellah anti-consumer. I would avoid them at all costs.
Pre-2014 or so I was 85% Newegg or more.
Post, I’ve been 85%+ Amazon. I buy from B&H when I can, but honestly Amazon tends to dominate the PC partlicker list.
To clarify - I removed Newegg from the vendor list. Won’t even look at them.
I haven’t been able to leave them entirely, but I try to avoid B&H as much as I can. They were sued by the federal government twice over civil rights violations, particularly for their treatment of Hispanic employees. It wasn’t just stuff like not promoting employees and paying them less, but Jim Crow-era stuff like not allowing them to use certain bathrooms, as recently as the past decade. Once I could’ve written off as some bad manager, but the Feds sued them again a decade later and it was basically all the same stuff, so to me that’s a cultural problem.
I also worked at a manufacturer where they were by far our biggest reseller, larger than everyone else combined including our own direct sales. They were a giant pain to work with; every interaction felt like they were flipping us a giant middle finger. Our accounting team especially hated dealing with them; we got some new people in who figured out they were always trying to claim discounts and refunds they weren’t entitled to. If our people pushed back and could show they weren’t allowed they would cave, but it took a lot of their time every month. I try now to buy from their smaller rivals like Adorama or AbelCine even if it might cost a little more; most of them were so much nicer to work with.
Oh jeez! Good to know.
Amazon is no saint either, obviously; it’s getting hard to buy from anyone if you learn too much about them!
That’s for sure!
I’m trying to hold off as a new microcenter will open this year in town
Charlotte gang
Newegg, Amazon, BestBuy. Every so often one or the other will come out with a great price on a component. I keep my ear to the ground on Slickdeals and /r/buildapcsales and cherry pick anything that sounds good.
Can I have some of those negative downvotes?
spoiler
This took me a minute to see what was wrong here, but that’s really strange, isn’t it?
Bizarre.
I built a computer last year. Parts were sourced from Newegg, microcenter, and Amazon.
I did this exact same combo. PCpartspicker helped find best deal for each component between the three.
Microcenter is my 1st priority, I’ve heard of Fry’s on the west Coast.
After that, Newegg
Newegg has really gone downhill since 2016.
I can still get great shipping times if I get stuff that’s “shipped by Newegg” but the selection is incredibly limited.
Yeah that’s fair and they aren’t my first choice but I trust them to be reliable. If they have what I need then I know I can buy the product and receive it.
Yeah, they used to be the only place I shopped for parts, until the change in ownership tanked the quality of their listings and customer service.
Fry’s is dead. They do not exist anymore in any real capacity. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2021/2/24/22298616/frys-electronics-going-out-of-business
What pissed me off the most about that: they just closed the stores without any “going out of world sale”
That being said, when i last visited Fry’s, about 6 months before they shut down, there was nothing worth buying. They were putting gamer chairs™ everywhere, because they had an overstock. Printer paper, ink cartridges, canned air dusters and gamer chairs on every isle.
The company had moved to a model where the vendors owned the stock, for the most part. That’s why they had no going out of business sale and it’s also why they never had a damned thing in stock, since very few vendors seemed to be interested in doing business (with Fry’s) that way.
This is just speculation, but the last 5-10 years of Fry’s lifespan felt kinda like some kind of money laundering scheme. There’s no way in hell they were making any money on retail sales, so something else was keeping the zombie alive.
That makes sense, i definitely got a “mattress store under new management” vibe, so you’re probably on to something…
I cheat and drive to Microcenter. It’s about an hour south and worth it.
They sell online and I’d try that if I lived too far away to drive.
B&H in New York has some pretty good inventory, usually. I’ve bought a lot of stuff from them through the years.
Depends on my laziness. I just bought parts for my new rig on Newegg. I was going to do microcenter, but they didn’t have everything I wanted.
Memory express and Canada computers
I usually buy used refurbished components from reputable stores. Likely eBay too. Being in the tech industry I realized how mind bogglingly cheap even slightly “old” hardware is. If you want an entry level/mid tier you can buy a used office PC with an i7 8700k or something (make sure that specific model has GPU power overhead) and buy a refurbished gtx 1080 ti. Make sure to add an SSD if it doesn’t have one already. In fact skip the HDD and buy a high capacity SSD, they are cheap nowadays.
Just got a 2t Samsung ssd for well under 100 bucks. Good stuff.
I die a little inside whenever I see someone clueless buy a 1000$ computer with an HDD, and expect it to be way faster. And I die a little more inside when my work’s laptop, selling for 120$, with SSD and upgraded ram remain unsold for months.
Hell shoot me a link and I’ll buy it and pay for shipping. I need a laptop anyways for when I go to my fiancees house.
Since Fry’s closed only Amazon and Newegg remain as primary part sources, both of which are shitty companies. Closest Microcenter is ~500 miles away.
Microcenter, Newegg, Scamazon. In that order.
Mostly Amazon, myself.
If one wants an occasional old gizmo that’s no longer made, eBay can be helpful.
Specifically for cables – which aren’t that pricy relative to other items people buy, and are often marked up a lot by retailers – I’ve gone to Monoprice for quite some years. Useful if getting a bunch of cables.
I got an old gaming laptop on eBay for like $300 that I take with me on work trips. The person just upgraded or something and wanted to get rid of it.
I know people sometimes have bad experiences on ebay, but I feel like if you message the seller and feel out the situation in advance, you can avoid a lot of the problems. I always try to buy from individuals vs. from someone whose entire business is selling on ebay, and I’ve never been burned.
