Shopping for PC parts

Well, I finally pulled the trigger on putting together a new computer for myself.  While reading a review of CPUs, I came across a comment that Micro Center sells the Core i7-930 for $200 in-store.  I checked it out, and sure enough, it was a valid deal.  The i7-930 sells for about $290 at just about every other retailer.  I was about to settle on using the speedy but less-stout i5-750 processor ($200).  For the same money, I could get a faster processor capable of hyper-threading that works with a chipset better able to use multiple video cards.  Not that I plan on doing that, but if the cost is the same, why not go with the processor and motherboard that give me more room to grow?

For a few years, I have been updating a spreadsheet I used to come up with a hypothetical build and its price.  This made it easy for me to do comparison shopping.

Last night I spent time finalizing my choices for parts, getting up-to-date pricing, and deciding where to buy each part.

My first stop was Fry’s Electronics.  I planned on picking up two components there – a case and some case fans.  I settled on the Cooler Master Elite 335 case and a four-pack of 120mm Cooler Master fans.  I groped the case that was on display for a few minutes to see if I could find any flaws.  I’m not so sure about the air filter in the front of the case.  Seems like it would be hard to access for cleaning.  Otherwise, it seems like a good case.  I only needed one fan to add to the front of the case for extra cooling, but the fans in this four-pack got good reviews.  They also seemed to have a good balance between noise levels and amount of air moved.  I toyed with getting an Antec 3-speed fan for a couple dollars less, but the slowest speed on the fan was louder than the Cooler Masters and moved less air.

Fry’s is a great place to just browse.  All kinds of computer stuff, gadgets, electrical components, cameras, software.  You name it, they have it.  Fry’s prices tend to be average to high, but they have good sales sometimes.  Unfortunately, it’s hard to just browse.  Fry’s has a ton of salesmen on the floor, and they’re pretty sleazy.  You can’t browse for more than a couple minutes without one circling around you like a vulture.  Perhaps it’s because I am more knowledgeable than most salesmen, but I really don’t like someone asking me if I need help or trying to sell me something.  The Indian fellow in the PC components area wasn’t bad.  He descended on me quickly, but I told him I was just looking.  He responded that they had some good deals on motherboards, then left me alone.  I spent about 15 minutes looking at cases and fans, and the guy came back as I shifted my attention to drive enclosures.  Just looking, don’t need one yet.  That’s what I told him, and he politely left.

One thing I’d like to do with my new computer is play Flight Simulator X.  I picked this cheap Logitech Attack 3 joystick to make controlling the aircraft easier.  Motion seemed smooth; decent amount of resistance.  Oddly, I did no research or comparison shopping about this product.  Kind of a spur-of-the-moment purchase.  Anyway, I walked a short distance over to the optical drive section to see what they had in stock.  This European salesman comes over and tells me Plextor is good (I prefer Sony-Optiarc).  I don’t say a word.  They didn’t have any DVD drives I was interested in.  I couldn’t care less what the salesman was saying.  If you can’t tell already, I dislike salesmen.  Basically ignoring the guy, I start walking to the video cards to check them out.  On the way, the salesman asks if he can write an invoice for the joystick that’s in my cart.  I asked what that would do, since it sounded like it would be of no use to me and just take up my time.  The salesman said it would just give me his name and show that he helped me.  Eff that!  Disgustedly, I said “No!” and walked off.  All this sleazebag wanted was to get a commission.  On a $20 joystick?  Seriously?  The guy didn’t even help me find the joystick.  I found it myself.  He didn’t help me at all; he just got in my way.  So hell no, I’m not going to help him get a commission.

That put a damper on my shopping trip.  I have been wanting to just go to Fry’s and spend hours walking around the store looking at everything.  But having salesman leeches constantly hovering around you is such a turn-off.  I don’t want to have to tell someone every few minutes that I’m just looking.  My ideal store would be one where all the salespeople are kept in a corral or at a sort of bar.  No wandering the floor!  They’d all be in one place so if you needed help, you’d know where to find it.

The next stop was Micro Center in Westmont.  I had never been there before.  I found out about them a couple of years ago, but they’re kind of far away.  Their deeply-discounted Intel Core i7-930 was what lured me to make the long trip to the store.  A co-worker went there a few months ago and complained about the narrowness of the aisles.  He must be a claustrophobic because I thought the aisles were fine.  No different from any other electronics store.  I didn’t spend too much time at Micro Center.  I had killed a lot of time at Fry’s and still had to stop at CompUSA/TigerDirect in Naperville.  All the computer components were tucked into a corner of the store.  I spotted the processors right away and was happy to see the i7-930 still at the low price.  I took a look around to see what else Micro Center sold.  They had everything you could need for a PC build.  I’d say they had more computer stuff than CompUSA.   I checked out RAM, but the pricing failed to impress.  I also picked up a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s hard drive.  Micro Center’s price was OK, and I liked being able to pick up the hard drive locally.  No worries about it bouncing around inside a box, which I would have if I ordered online.  Retailers try to package drives right, but you never know.  I paid a little more than I would have online, plus sales tax, but the peace of mind is worthwhile.  I chose this drive because it offers plenty of disk space, performs well, and has a 5-yr warranty.  I actually will be able to take advantage of its SATA 6.0Gb/s throughput because I chose a motherboard that supports SATA revision 3.0.

The final stop was CompUSA/TigerDirect in Naperville.  That felt like a long drive from Westmont.  It was OK, though.  I had the A/C running and was listening to the Blackhawks victory parade on the radio.  I had accumulated four TigerDirect gift cards recently.  Three from last Christmas, and one from the Christmas before (about $14 left on it).  When I got to the store, I saw it had totally changed.  Its ties to the TigerDirect warehouse were no-longer obvious.  One thing I loved about the TigerDirect Naperville store was how you could buy anything there that you saw on TigerDirect.com.  More on that later.

During the past year, TigerDirect bought the remnants of CompUSA, which had gone out of business a few years ago.  Tiger re-branded their retail stores to CompUSA.  This began a schism.  A co-worker bought a camera from TigerDirect.com, but found he couldn’t return it to the CompUSA store, even though it’s the same company.  Knowing this, I asked a floor associate immediately if I could use my TigerDirect.com gift cards to pay at the store.  He said no.  What a bummer.  I had used the older gift card to pay at the TigerDirect store in Hoffman Estates.  All that has changed is the name of the store, so I think it’s stupid that you can’t use TigerDirect cards at CompUSA.  All the money goes to the same place.

The PC components selection at the Naperville CompUSA is way down from what it was when the store was TigerDirect.  Not as many cable choices, fewer cases on display.  More space dedicated to home theater.  I don’t like it.  It just doesn’t feel like my kind of store anymore.  I don’t get the impression that I can build a PC from start to finish with what they have on the floor.  At the old store, you knew you could.  You would see every part you need.  At the new CompUSA store, RAM was nowhere to be found.  No processors either.  At the old store, RAM and CPUs were kept behind a counter, but you could see where to get them.

I had planned on buying my motherboard, power supply, and DVD drive at CompUSA, but the gift card issue changed my plans.  I decided to just buy my motherboard at the store.  A motherboard is another fragile piece, so I chose to buy it at the store instead of having it bounce around in a UPS truck.  Also, TigerDirect/CompUSA had the lowest price on the Asus P6X58D-E.  However, I couldn’t find the board amongst those on the floor.  I asked a floor associate if they had it in stock.  He couldn’t find it on the shelf and checked a computer.  He said it was in stock in the warehouse next door, and I could order it at the desk in the back of the store.  I was pleased to hear that you could still get TigerDirect.com stuff from the warehouse.  The setup has changed, though.  At the TigerDirect store, there were two lines for ordering from the warehouse.  One if you knew your product number, one if you didn’t.  They’d then put your name on a big monitor to let you know the status of your order.  When the status changed to ready, or whatever it said, you’d go to the counter and get your stuff.  Now they just have a gal at a counter with a computer to enter your order.  No big monitor to tell you when your order is ready.  The gal just shouts onto the floor when your stuff is up.  I guess her phone doesn’t connect to the store’s PA system.  I grabbed a pack of a couple of SATA data cables just in case.

None of the stuff I wanted from TigerDirect/CompUSA was available on the floor.  It was disappointing.  I won’t look forward to a trip to CompUSA Naperville as much as I used to look forward to going to TigerDirect Naperville.  I suppose I’ll still go there if they have the lowest price or have something fragile I don’t want shipped.  The gift card hassle and the shallowness of the stock on the floor has turned me off.  I like the Hoffman Estates CompUSA more.  They have about the same merchandise, but the H.E. store is better laid-out.

Here’s what I was able to pick up at the stores.  Crazy that I had to go to so many stores just to get good deals.

And here’s what I got:

So I went home to order up the remaining products.  I still needed a power supply, video card, RAM, SSD drive, and DVD drive.  I knew the power supply was coming from TigerDirect, since they were the cheapest by far.  The video card and RAM would come from NewEgg for the same reasons.

The power supply I chose was the Cooler Master Silent Pro M700.  It is modular, has good reviews, and I think 700W should be enough power for my build.  I was pleased to see that I could combine my four gift cards when checking out.  I was almost able to pay for the whole power supply with these cards.  It sucks that I have to pay $5.87 just to ship the thing up the road from Naperville.  But at least I have finally exhausted those gift cards.  This transaction didn’t go smoothly either.  I checked the order status a few hours later and it said I needed to phone TigerDirect if I wanted to speed my order up.  Since this was my first purchase through the website, they had to confirm stuff about my credit card.  Lame.  I didn’t have to do that for Amazon or other online retailers.  I guess I could’ve skipped calling, but who knows how long my order would have been delayed.  I ended up spending 10 minutes on the phone.  Since my gift cards were exhausted, I decided to buy the other products from NewEgg.

I knew for certain I wanted Intel’s 80GB X25-M SSD.  My plan is to use it for my operating system and programs.  I should get fast boots and quick program launching.  The 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive I bought at Micro Center will be my data drive.  I went with 6GB of Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600 memory.  It seemed to offer the best combination of price and performance.  People seem to like G.Skill memory, but I barely know anything about that company.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a drop in price on the Sony Optiarc AD-7260S-0B DVD burner since I last checked on it.  NewEgg replaced TigerDirect for having the lowest price on this drive.  One part I agonized about was the video card.  I was torn between the Sapphire 100283L HD 5770 1GB card and the Powercolor PCS+ AX5770 1GBD5-PPG 1GB card.  Both were rated as having good performance and running quietly.  The Sapphire uses AMD/ATI’s reference design and cooloer, while Powercolor used their own PCB and a different cooler that let them overclock the card at the factory.  Both cards had the same proportion of good reviews, but in the end I chose the Sapphire.  I noticed in several reviews that a Powercolor rep would tell people their power supply must not be providing clean power to the card, to explain why their cards weren’t working right.  That sounded like a lame excuse, and made me wonder if the electronics of the Powercolor card were too sensitive.  I went with Sapphire since they used the reference design and there didn’t seem to be as many one-star reviews for problems.

I royally screwed up my order with NewEgg.  All the items I had ordered offered free shipping.  However, when I had them all in my cart, it said UPS 3-day shipping was $5.99 due to size or weight limits.  Maybe having all the items together made the box too heavy for free shipping.  I figured I’d just make four separate orders and get free shipping on each one.  I submitted orders for the video card and the SSD.  Then I got to the RAM.  That’s when I saw the RAM’s free shipping was with Egg Saver shipping, which supposedly takes 4-7 business days (about 10 real days) and uses DHL Global Mail and the postal service.  I decided I’d rather just pay $5.99 to get UPS 3-day service on everything.  I was able to cancel the first two orders and used NewEgg customer service live chat to make sure the orders got canceled and explain what happened.  If you ever have a problem with a NewEgg order, use their live chat.  The reps there have proven helpful to me.

I should mention that I bought the operating system a few weeks ago.  NewEgg had a one-day sale on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Since I bought all the parts at different stores, I have separate bills.  I don’t know what the total cost of my computer will be.  I have a rough idea.  Maybe $1,300.  Let’s see.

Fry’s

• CoolerMaster Elite 335 case – $39.99
• CoolerMaster 120mm fan 4-pack – $14.99
• Logitech Attack 3 joystick – $19.99
• Tax – $6.00
• Total:  $80.97

Micro Center

• WD Black 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s hard drive – $109.99
• Intel Core i7-930 – $199.99
• Tax – $24.02
• Total: $334.00

CompUSA

• Asus P6X58D-E motherboard – $239.99
• Ultra 500mm SATA cable 2-pack – $9.99
• Tax – $18.12
• Total:  $268.10

TigerDirect.com

• CoolerMaster Silent Pro M700 power supply – $79.99
• Tax – $6.22
• Shipping – $5.87
• Gift Cards – ($72.60)
• Total:  $19.48

NewEgg.com

• Intel X25-M 80GB SSD – $224.99
• Corsair XMS3 6GB DDR3 1600 RAM – $174.99
• Sapphire 100283L Radeon HD5770 1GB video card – $159.99
• Sony Optiarc AD-7260S-0B – $20.99
• Shipping – $5.99
• Total:  $586.95

• Windows 7 Professional 64-bit – $119.99

I’ll exclude the value of the gift cards to calculate the real cost of this computer.  The grand total is:  $1,482.09.

Wow.  That is way more than I had planned on spending.  No wonder the credit card company called me to verify the charges!  I guess my actual out-of-pocket cost is $1,409.49 when you consider the gift cards.  Also, there are mail-in rebates on several of the products I bought.  They are:

• CoolerMaster case – $10
• Corsair RAM – $20
• Sapphire video card – $10

So if I complete the rebates, my final cost will be $1,359.49.

This computer is expensive, no doubt.  Still, it is not the most expensive computer I have ever had.  We bought a 386DX 40MHz system in 1992 for $1,600, which comes out to $2,505.49 in today’s dollars.  The AMD K6-2 450MHz system we paid $1,200 for in 1999 converts to $1,582.47 in 2010 dollars.  The Pentium 4 2.4GHz system I bought for $1,000 in 2004 equates to $1,163.05 in 2010 dollars.

Update 6/13/2010: I neglected to mention that I used FatWallet to get 2% off my purchase at NewEgg and 3% off my purchase at TigerDirect.  That rebate money will become available to me in a couple of months, bringing the total cost of the build down by a few dollars.

My goal was to build a computer that will last me six years, just like the one I am using right now.  Here’s to hoping the build goes smoothly.