Singing Potatoes
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Monday, 9 June 2003
Unplanned upgrades

While the Lunchbox plans his computer enhancements meticulously, over at the Lee residence our upgrades tend to be spurred by circumstances. Such as the power supply fan in Ginevra's machine dying over the weekend, thus frying her CPU and/or motherboard.

I'd known it was coming; the fan had been making noises of late, and I'd planned to replace it once ArtSci was over. But as Robbie Burns warned, such plans gang aft agley, and the fan punked out on us while we weren't home to hear the overheat alarm. Fortunately, we live right near TCWO, so we can get mail-order prices without having to wait for delivery.

They were out of stock on the motherboard I wanted (the same one I've got in my machine), but they did have another one with roughly equivalent features plus built-in GeForce4 MX video for only $10 more — and they had a bundle deal which included that motherboard, CPU and fan for less than it would have cost me to buy them separately with the other motherboard. I spent the extra $8 to bring her CPU up to 2000MHz — so now her system is equal to mine speed-wise, plus it's got better video than it had.

As a side benefit, it'll be a fairly kick-ass machine for the next Nerdvana. Sometimes, problems can make things work out for the best.

Posted by godfrey (link)
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Comments
For future reference, TCWO has become so popular as to raise their prices to nearly retail prices. I've found, through, as you've noted, meticulous research, that newegg.com has a remarkable inventory, and excellent prices. They have received strong endorsement from dependable sources.
Posted by Lunchbox on 10 Jun 2003 10:24
Hmmm. Comparing the identical hardware (MB, CPU, fan, keyboard, mouse), it ran me $14 more from TCWO than it would have from newegg — but the cheapest shipping from newegg would have cost $11, bringing the total savings to a whopping $3. Plus I wouldn't have been able to have the hardware the same day I ordered it (which is important when you've got a dead computer on your hands)!

I dunno if TCWO's up to "nearly retail prices", though; the Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard is $28 from TCWO, $26 from newegg — but $49.99 at both CompUSA and BestBuy. But perhaps that's a bad example, as they're selling it as OEM equipment rather than retail.

For a more concrete example, the AthlonXP 2000+ was $62 at both TCWO and newegg, but $99.99 at CompUSA (BestBuy only sells Intel; but for comparison purposes, a P4 2.4GHz/512KB/400MHz sells for $167 at TCWO, $165 at newegg, $249.99 from BestBuy and $279.99 from CompUSA).

Posted by Godfrey on 10 Jun 2003 11:42
What I do like about newegg is their inventory. When I did the research on parts at places such as Tom's Hardware,/a>, such as the motherboard, and found the one I wanted, they had it in stock, and at a good price.
For Athlon's, AMD only carries Biostar. Not that it's not a good card, but I found an MSI I wanted.
If I was buying just one or two items, it probably wouldn't be worth the $9 or $10 less the memory, CPU and other parts are at newegg, but for a full PC+, I like the flexibility of the choices, and the savings more than make up for the shipping, at least for me.
Posted by Lunchbox on 10 Jun 2003 12:35
I hate HTML
Posted by Lunchbox on 10 Jun 2003 12:36
Bought a mainboard msi combo computer case from
tcwoonline&Everything worked fine.No problems prices not bad,The site has pretty good selection.Just to let you know.
Posted by Air Force on 4 Jul 2005 09:25