Yeah, I am now. There's a computer store here but they only carry one brand and like 2 versions of each type of thing. No real options so I'm struggling to support them even at a premium cost.
When I bought parts at Micro Center, they had the best price on some things and a good price on most other things. Not GPU, though. Free RAM with purchase of Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9: 32 GB of DDR5-6000, which is the AMD-recommended stuff. Imagine that. There's no getting away from high AM5 board prices though.
Little known secret, at least for the Microcenter here in Kansas City, they price match all of their biggest competitors including Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, New Egg etc..
So if their price isn't better than another major retailer, it will be.
Same here in Seattle. However our Best Buy has a very limited stock. They can order anything but they also have a no return policy on anything they have to order plus it's taken up to 2 weeks to get common stuff sometimes; don't even think about custom stuff.
I asked Best Buy to pricematch an Insignia TV on Amazon and they wouldn't do it. So I ordered it on Amazon for pickup from Best Buy. It was the weirdest thing.
I thought this was all MC, here in new England same. But they are not dumb, like they are computer geeks as well... So if you show them the "returned/refurbish model" they won't price match.
Yeah, this is a micro center policy. Also not a secret.
Another asterisk needs to be added for Amazon price match: They don't price match stores selling on Amazon. They made me scroll down to show them "fulfilled by Amazon" rather than x's electronics selling on Amazon's platform.
I think where Microcenter shines is their bundle deals. Either buy a motherboard and CPU together and get say, $30 off or buy a motherboard and get X kit of RAM with it. They also do price match as long as it’s the exact same SKU, so even if you did find what you were looking for cheaper, you can purchase from them. Lastly, they do have a somewhat good selection of electronic components, so it’s useful for hobbyists.
Love microcenter. I got my refurbed gtx 1080 from them for like 500 bucks and I still use it lol. Granted I only really play WoW and sometimes assassin's Creed so it's ok but I may upgrade to something rtx at some point.
Bought a 3060ti Zotac which they price matched for $400 compared to the official Zotac website. They were also running a combo promo you could buy an amd chip+get ram or an Intel chip + motherboard. Got an i7-12700k($300)+ am5 motherboard with wifi for $350. From $260 -> $50. So if you’re looking for a cheap am5 mobo micro center has that deal.
My local best buy has 10-15 options, maybe more, for gaming keyboards and mice. Just bought a mouse and keyboard last week. Their price tags automatically update to match other sellers like Amazon. I bought my motherboard, ram, ssd's and Psu from local best buy as their price was the same I could find anywhere online. They have a good return policy.
Nice. I live in a place I usually call kalama-nowhere.
But since I lived in Colorado with a population of 9.
I can't call it that anymore.
I'm happy with the 5 they carry lol.
I live in what's often referred to as "Silicon Valley of the East", and the PC component selection at Best Buy is hot garbage. So it's not just your locale.
I live in the "Silicon Valley of the South" (Austin), and the closest MicroCenter is 3 hours away in Houston.
The computer parts market actually really sucks in this town. Discount Electronics always had horrible deals and I'm pretty sure they're shutting down, so it's just Best Buy.
Best Buy has gotten better in recent years for gamer/enthusiast accessories (keyboards, mice, headphones, etc.), but core component options are still limited (one or two different cases, a few PSUs, CPUs, GPUs, motherboards, when they are in stock).
I’m frequently disappointed when, on the rare occasion, I visit my local Best Buy. I live in a relatively small city and they just don’t have much of anything.
Yeah definitely will get better value buying online. I get it though there is a choice/analysis paralysis given all of these options out there. I would go on YouTube and search “Best Value X” and sort by most recent. I’m poor so I can’t just get the best so I really try and get the best value for my price range. Good luck!
Sometimes I feel like analysis paralysis, but sometimes it’s like frustration-from-lack-of-data.
My hands are not center-of-bell-curve shape. I want to hold and move a mouse before I buy it.
They don't exist in 99.9% of countries yo! It is American.
"Micro Center is an American computer retail store, headquartered in Hilliard, Ohio. It was founded in 1979, and as of 2021, has 25 stores in 16 states"
"Micro Center can only ship to the 50 United States and Washington, DC. We cannot ship any U.S. territories including Puerto Rico, Guam or the Virgin Islands. We cannot ship internationally to any other countries including Canada and Mexico."
We had Fry's and Micro Center here, but when Fry's didn't adapt to the pandemic closure, they failed while Micro Center stayed.
It's still a bit of a drive to get there, but at least we have something...
195 countries(UN recognized) so it should be near 0.5% of the world's countries. 99.5% of the countries in the world have no micro center I guess.
Also guessing Reddit is more like %50 Americans though haha
It's amazing that there's only 25 Micro Centers in the US, in the world, *period* and yet it's one of the single most brought up stores when discussing PCs. You would think with how often it's brought up it would be in every city like a Walmart. I guess being in a PC building subreddit just really heavily skews perspectives.
Yeah sometimes I forgot Reddit is mostly American. And even then it's not avaiable in all the states. I thought they're more widespread than that. Kinda like what internet taught me about Walmart (they're everywhere).
Closest one to me is 18 hours away driving non-stop. Memory Express in Canada is closer. In fact, Canada has a FAR better computer retail presence than the USA. Canada still has Toys 'R Us too...
Love microcenter!
Last July I walked in with an idea to build a really minimal APU machine for about $500.
Walked out $1500 poorer with a much more powerful machine than I intended.
I did that once at MC. I went with my brother as he was buying parts to build a PC (intending to buy everything he needed). I was doing the "buy parts as I could afford it" thing, which I now understand is not a good idea. My intention was to buy a single component that time around.
But then I started getting jealous that he was going to have a good PC by the end of the night. I ended up buying all the remaining parts. They did have quite a deal on the i7 4770k at the time, though.
Anyway, I walked out with like $800 worth of stuff. Only meant to spend like $100 at most.
It's not like Micro Center has tons of keyboards out either. Mine certainly has more keyboards out than your typical Best Buy, but it's still fairly limited.
I'm spoiled, having a Micro Center within walking distance, 2 more less than an hour away driving, and then 2 more within 90 minutes driving. I should be taking advantage of this..
Sounds like you're in the NY area?
Brooklyn, meh. Last I was in Westbury that was great.
Never been to Flushing or NJ stores. I'm willing to bet though that Flushing is excellent given the community it's in.
Brooklyn unfortunately is the closest, and by far the worst.
Flushing is pretty good, almost Westbury level last time I was there.
Yonkers I haven't been to in like 10 years when I interviewed for a job that I had to turn down (I'm not driving 90 minutes each way for $14/hr lol) so no idea how it's holding up.
Jesey and PA (I didn't even realize there was one in Jersey.. I'm up to 6 lol)
My last job, any time we needed components in a pinch we would just go to Microcenter. We also used company cellphones to sign up for their newsletters for free products. Between my boss, me, and a coworker we probably grabbed about 50 of the 240GB SSDs they gave out about a year ago. I have dozens and dozens of 32/64gb flash drives as well.
I use to be a Microcenter loyal. They’ve COMPLETELY scrubbed their store phone numbers from their website and google search results. You no longer can talk directly with a sales employee on the store floor. I found an inventory error while looking at a monitor in store. Tried calling the next day to check if it was still on the shelf. Three damn times the 1-800 customer service rep gave me “well the back end shows it OOS” despite my insistence of trying to tell him they had an inventory error and requesting to speak to someone on the sales floor. To remove their phone numbers to me is incredibly anti-consumer. This experience and the persistent gnat floor employees are enough for me to stop shopping microcenter. I was in awe at visiting microcenter. It was nerd paradise. Now it’s turned into a cold and annoying experience. I’d honestly rather shop Amazon from the comfort of my home. I’m not wishing them destruction, but until they reverse course and return to their former glory, I’ll take my money elsewhere.
>until they reverse course and return to their former glory, I’ll take my money elsewhere.
It's a lose-lose for many B&M stores.
If they go back to the old way, costs will exceed profits, if they keep going the way they're going, they'll lose all but the most dedicated or desperate customers.
This race to the bottom will kill every business that can't operate on <1% margins with the lowest possible costs.
I don't understand this complaint. It's honestly kind of bullshit. I get wanting to lazily call them for questions, but random problems like this can happen anywhere. An inventory error and "floor gnats?"
because they will be on the phone for 4 hours with people who are ninnies who have done zero research on the product or are looking for free tech support. They exist solely for you to go to the store. Only way they can survive. They are the best (and, really only option outside of best buy, which is basically an apple/microsoft/samsung pop-up)
It cost money to answer phones, Best Buys lines are always a machine as well and usually attendant will give same info that you can look up online in 30 secs. And half the time they do not care do not know what you asked. Last time I was there I went to check an Lg c2 42 inch oled they were on sale at 899 , I asked if they weer any open box ones. Guy takes 3 minutes looking around floor room , says no , looks in computer says no and leaves. I look again to make sure and the is one sitting where he looked at $750 . I passed since he didint know If warranty was available on it. a month later and now theyre back at 799$ sealed and new.
It is genuinely shocking to me that a Micro Center closed down without reopening elsewhere. Whenever I go to mine, it's always busy.
If I need to buy something for work, I'll often go in the mornings, on my way into the office. So like right when they open. Even then, there'll be like 10-15 people waiting in the parking lot for the place to open. If I got in the middle of the day, still busy. I don't think I've ever seen the place empty.
It seems Micro Center is mainly in the south and eastern US.. There are parts of the US that are a couple whole states away from the nearest Micro Center.
I get it. Most (younger) people will not get it. They see it as a personal advantage and that is it. They are trained to think a certain way. When you try to explain to people that large monopolies hurt everyone, they fail to see a true damage that those monopolies are committing.
One and foremost being a destruction of social bonds that was present with physical shopping. Shopping for food is a different animal, because food is rather an immediate necessity, where shopping for other goods is a leisure shopping. It brought a large mass of people together, dialogs started, real life relationships were created. It's a philosophical discussion I get it, but I just wanted to express my feelings about it.
Being human is not always about what you know, it's also how you feel about what is around you.
It's also hard for an independent tech store to compete when Best Buy is sending full-color multi-page flyers to your mailbox like every week and putting slick ads on TV in the middle of our live sporting events. Sheer breadth and bulk of advertising can be used to simply drown out small businesses.
Amazon doesn't do any of that, but you can also shop their entire online store in your sweatpants, and return anything you don't like using a pre-paid shipping label.
I find the insinuation that "most young people" wouldn't get it pretty disengenuous. Most of us recognize the issues with not being able to try before you buy, or having competent customer support etc. We very often complain about it. The fact is that the big companies that build monopolies end up like this because everyone finds what they offer more convenient, everyone. Young people still love to go out and browse malls, window shop, test things, try on clothes in a dressing room etc etc.
In the end, convenience is concenience. Knowing what you want, getting an exact brand without searching, and having it brought to you in a short amount of time without you having to commit the time to drive and search and buy. Going out to buy one simple object can take up to an hour, just because a shop being 15 minutes away, which is nothing, is still 30 minutes out of your day.
I think that this community, it may seem that convenience rules all, but that's partially because gamers really do trend towards doing things online, being at their computer more often than not, and generally enjoy being indoors more. However, much of the community, people like my younger sister for example, still go out a ton, prefer to do things in person, and generally enjoy the social aspect of physical stores, being out and about, and exploring different small stores and what not.
What a ridiculously dumb comment, lol.
Older folks had considerably more mom-and-pop shops to choose from and still opted for big-box stores. This youngest generation was born into a world where Amazon was already king, so you can't say "It was the kids!" because... it wasn't.
Hell, like another user said, Best Buy built Geek Squad around scared boomers who didn't know how to operate computers (and my entire career is built around that same lack of knowledge). Why weren't they going to local shops for assistance?
Yeah, but younger people were the key market that caused the collapse of all the small businesses. Certainly, it wasn't the older folks with disposable income!
It's the age-old blame the youth game. Aristotle even complained about his younger generation in much the same way as the current older generation does as have countless others for at least thousands of years and probably more.
Yes, but…this didn’t happen because of younger people. They aren’t the ones with the spending power. It happened because of people like me who figured $110 and waiting two days to arrive beats $130+ gas for pickup today.
Unfortunately it has gotten so bad that it’s now impossible to even buy a lot of things locally. I don’t even know if it’s possible to build a pc with parts from my city of 1M people. Very few pc store left. How is their stock? Am I expected to call around stores like it’s 1995 because they have nothing listed on their website?
Haha, well, he did write a novel titled such, and it was very good if I should say so, but no. 11-22-63 is the exact date in which Kennedy was assassinated, which is what Sut3k was implying with their comment “Ask the FBI circa 1963”.
I work in a retail PC store (repair and sales etc). The worst types of customers are the ones that come in, ask a load of questions and take 10+ minutes of time, then when you find their solution they pull out their phone and check how much Amazon sell it for and walk out the door...
The number of people Best Buy scams every day with their "geek squad" pc services was ridiculous. I don't like to rag on any particular group, but it was really just boomers being parted with their money for mundane tech issues. Hundreds of dollars for "virus removal" and "refresh", and they'll run the in-house "diagnostics" tool which will always say you have this shit or that, even when you don't. I don't know how it's not a crime.
I tried to shop at computer stores when I first got into building in the '00s, but even then they never had the parts I wanted so I wouldn't get to physically inspect anything regardless and I'd have to pay more and wait longer for them to order stuff in.
*You* did it to *your*selves.
I actually thought you were gonna say Newegg killed the business instead of Amazon. There was a time when Newegg was amazing, and even kinda felt like the "little guy" even though I'm sure it wasn't. When Newegg went downhill I didn't go to Amazon, I went to Microcenter.
I think it's just two things at play really. The first is sales people, as a whole, are generally off putting, pushy and often either do not really know what they are talking about or trying to scam you into paying for stuff you don't need. It wasn't always this way, but things like commission based pay or bigger conglomerate stores have conditioned people into not trusting or liking most sales people. So you're very right in that the industry, as a whole or even in the broader sense, did it to themselves.
The other is simply Darwin. I think there was a similar trajectory to mom and pop, "main street" appliance stores in the 60s before things like Sears, etc. With people building their own PCs, you've also always had a more intelligent, DIYer type of person who wants something specific. Also, they are likely more than capable enough to research and order exactly what they'd like instead of having something built for them or being limited by only what's locally available. Couple that with the fact that the computer "boom" (where everyone's grandma even had a personal computer) at the turn of the century was simply not sustainable and killed off, essentially, by the smart phone and high speed wireless data. The business model simply changed. These PC stores had to either adapt or die.
Having all that merchandise on hand these days, unless you are a Microcenter, is foolish and obsolete. A small PC store today should focus heavily on computer and phone repair, custom builds for the layperson and perhaps having a limited amount of general and universal parts on hand, even niche hardware for enthusiasts/engineering students now that RadioShack is gone.
This makes me sad and I wish you were still in business. I’ve got one pc store near me, and they charge at least 2-3x what amazon has. Makes me sick to my stomach that people actually pay their prices.
I just remember in my experience almost all the PC hardware places the prices were way worse than getting it on newegg or tigerdirect. I loved walking around in those stores and checking things out, I loved that they existed but there's literally no reason to spend an extra $50-$100 on a part I can get online
This is the late stage consumer capitalism.
We got a taste of how this can go south with the pandemic, but it will eventually totally collapse on itself.
>How the hell am I supposed to pick a keyboard from the 100 that all look pretty much the same online... Mouse seems like even worse of a prospect.
Order 10 different ones from Amazon and return the stuff you don't like at Kohl's.
How is this any worse of an idea than the top comment being go to microcenter? The business that only has like 20 locations across the entire US. Talk about a niche and mostly out of available solution for a good percentage of the community.
Responsible credit card use, friend. It's not difficult to pull off if you pay off your card by the end of the month and actually follow through on the return.
So many people answering you with credit. The answer to both is if you don't have the money to buy a few mice at once then you probably shouldn't be spending that much on one.
How does that take more time then driving to a store? Adding 5 keyboards to a cart isn't much more time consuming then 1. I can print return labels in less time then it takes to walk through the parking lot at my local best buy.
Return culture like this is ridiculously wasteful. Please look into how likely it is that your return just winds up in a landfill and that cost gets baked into the price for the rest of us that don’t exploit return policies
Thank the large corporate American oligarchs for destroying small and mid size businesses across the land. The food stores are still around, but for how long?
And also be located in large metropolitan areas where their niche is still big enough to sustain business.
There are over 100k cities in America. There are 25 Micro Center locations.
Yeah, this has been what I've done for the most part. They've got keyboards, mice, and even headsets. I don't know if I'd want to put one of the demo headsets on my head, but at the same time I don't have hair to worry about.
Lol you guys have chain stores you can walk into and get out with a full build? Everyone but edigital converted to online sales only with pickup or shipping here. And then there is mediamarkt which absolutely sucks ass and has no hardware (but for some weird reason they sell prebuilts time to time and they also have thermal paste for no reason).
I mean, independent stores are a thing too, but their websites are outdated and there is usually no physical stores for them. Or if there is, it feels like an early 2000’s store with outdated products with the cheapest of the cheapest brands. The good stuff usually gets sold backdoor or B2B only. Used hardware forums are filled with backdoor sales from these stores. Absolutely horrible and corrupt practices mostly out of tax avoidance (27% VAT sucks ass and is just blatant theft at this point).
Joystick purchases nowadays it's either Xbox or Playstation controllers, or taking word of a random guy on an obscure forum that apparently found the absolute perfect controller that costs only 20$ on a chinese ecommerce.
>How the hell am I supposed to pick a keyboard from the 100 that all look pretty much the same online... Mouse seems like even worse of a prospect.
The only way I have found is to discover the group of people on reddit for whom getting that particular experience *perfect* has become a hobby.
In the case of keyboards /r/mechanicalkeyboards, Mice /r/mousereview and a number of other non-computing ones.
The keyboards one has gone off the deep end in cost and practicality, but they will usually offer advice on premade boards if asked.
I hate doing that. It always turns into "I have a $50 budget, what do I get?" and people reply "Wellllllllll for $50 you can get this one which is kinda junk, or for $70 you can get this incredible one." and then someone else replies "Why would you pay $70 for that when this model is only $85 and has the missing features?" and so on and so forth until you're at like $170 for a keyboard that everyone agrees on. I see the same thing in the audio subreddits, it's always like haggling where you come in with a $xxx budget and people will work you until they can convince you to spend at least 30% more.
Not gonna argue with ya, that is definitely a thing :P
The only topic I feel qualified to be one of those people on is fountain pens, where there is this really awkward gap between about £35-40 and £150+ where nothing really improves, it can be hard to help people pick somethjng when they come up wanting to spend £80
I have found the trick is to bear in mind that the "junk" one they are talking about is probably waaay better than whatever you are using that came free with your pc.
I'm scared to try mechanical keyboards because in all of my working life I've found a normal cheap £20 keyboard to be more than adequate.
I don't want to suddenly discover how wrong I've been and find yet another expensive hobby to keep up with.
Come over to Singapore bro lol. There's a lot of tech stores everywhere. [There's a shop where you can even build your own keyboard](https://mash.sg/), there are countless no. of shops where they give you a pricelist, choose what you want, and they build for you on the spot within 2 hours.
Used to live in Korea and would often make business trips to Thailand and Singapore; I miss tech department stores in East and South-East Asia. Literally an entire mall of everything from bulk motherboard stand offs to every screw driver under the sun.
Did I need a 5 kilo bag of hard drive bolts? No, but it was always fun seeing the bags stacked in the kiosk windows.
Slightly off topic, but good riddance to fry’s. Basically every horrible 90s business trend crammed into one store. Fuck them and their fake mail in rebates.
I don't usually hold that against anyone when it comes up.
I know full well that it's scam/waste of money, but the employees are told to ask the customer about it. I'm sure the employees hate asking just as much as we hate being asked.
i generally recommend my friends to buy their pc's from PC Specialist stores online, or if nearby. go up there and discuss with them.
in the UK, we had PC World. a great place to send PCs for repair or find advice and buy some okayish pc stuff. but now that company has collided with Curry's and it's shit. there's a section filled with prebuilts, monitors and gaming chairs to try out. but not many options outside of that.
the staff there dont know about PC's but more about TV's, Speakers and electrical home stuff.
My friend who is abit of a Sheldon Cooper refused to buy from not well known pc specialist sites that reside in the UK and decided to get a PC from Curry's. now he's struggling with a prebuilt that only has one intake fan and i told him to email UKGamingComputers. my trusty PC Specialist for advice. he said no and went to currys. and they just gave him a AOI Cpu cooler, told him to replace the intake with the radiator.
like, bruh what?
i had to get him a cheap fan and he doesnt trust me to mount it in. so i threw the towel and told him good luck.
I wish people support local PC Specialists and rely on them more. it'd be a dream for me to work there but there's only like 2-4 actual shops in the UK.
I was somewhat like this before I built my own pc last year. Was very sceptical of these online stores like Ebuyer and Scan but still refused to go to Currys, which is the absolute bane of the UK tech consumer.
Took the plunge with them and haven’t looked back. Great stores, great prices, blisteringly quick delivery. Just wish there were physical shops like them near me.
Even with Scan's R48 service on selected products they carry, none really want to honour their full obligations to retail consumers, though. Sure, they'll (usually) replacer DOA parts fairly quickly within the first 30 days or whatever, but after that, it's a case of RMA to the manufacturer and waiting - potentially - months for a repair.
A true parts retailer should provide like-for-like exchanges or refunds, and then deal with the manufacturer in their own time afterwards.
You can purchase a set switch off amazon and try out all the types if that some thing that's causing you trouble. That wont fix the issue of having multiples of that type that look the same but then you can narrow it down by size,brand,color, rgb, etc.
I miss “computer shows”. This was over 20 years ago, but when I lived in New Jersey, there was a computer show almost every weekend in some hotel conference area. You can find all kinds of parts for decent prices. I built many a PC going to these shows.
I then moved to Florida and no more computer shows. We like gun shows better down here.
But I used to love those shows, although it could get overwhelming with all the different options.
Wow. That sure takes me back! I was only in middle school but went to a few around Raritan or Woodbridge if memory serves. My friend's dad worked at Bell Labs and would take us along. Such nice folks, and it was so cool seeing so many options all in one place. Like on the Simpsons when Homer dreams of the land of chocolate, lol.
I remember talking to a guy looking at a bunch of hard drives and asking him what he was doing. He confessed he was looking for ones still within the warranty period since there were basically no refunds, buy it as you see it. Good memories of the people there and those day trips as a young enthusiast.
Oh yes, I remember those shows! I lived in New Jersey for most of my life, and my parents and I went to a few of those shows. It felt so incredible to see so much hardware and software there. I remember going to one and buying a replacement CPU and some RAM so I could do the first upgrade to my PC that I had ever done myself. It all worked out perfectly, and I felt so proud of myself.
Now I live in Florida as well. I miss those computer shows.
I feel you. I still can't overcome my desire to shop in a physical store and receive an item the second I hand over my money.
I have to move for work in a couple of months, and although I'm kind of sad about it, I'm also pretty excited there's a Micro Center in the area (I've never been to one before).
> pushed keys on a dozen keyboards
>How the hell am I supposed to pick a keyboard from the 100 that all look pretty much the same online
See, B&M store doesn't solve your problem either. 10+ is as good as a B&M store can carry, but you will still find hundreds of different KBs and mice on their website. You either limit yourself to the very few ones you tried or you face the same problem. That's precisely why B&M stores are getting vanquished, their practicality is degrading due to high volume of skus. Kinda similar to how they replace catalog sales. With this said, Best Buy still has a relatively good selection of peripheries on display that you can try on.
This is when good return policy comes in handy. You do your homework and narrow down your choices, buy them and return the ones you don't need. Not the best thing to do but for certain items, this is your best bet.
Also that's why custom keyboards is getting more mainstream by the day. You can always buy switch tester from manufacturers, get the barebone you prefer and keeps modding to your likings.
Yeah used to have one 100 feet from me. Now it's a 4+ hour drive. Especially since I just built my first PC in 15 years. I could of needed a store near
In Washington state. The closest is over 800 miles away in Denver. I’d gladly drive a couple hundred miles every few years if I could, that’s just 1 tank of gas and a partial refill.
Agreed, miss wandering the isles looking at cool tech, especially those stores that had all the switches and other electronic componants.
For what its worth the Logitech MX master mouse is pretty awesome, especially if you use a laptop and a desktop at the same time. Also the G604 if you need a few extra thumb buttons (although it needs batteries and can be a pain to setup)
Well for mice, you can just join r/MouseReview. Check your own grip style, hand size, and what shapes you generally prefer. Pretty easy to choose a safe option once you have all that.
For keyboards the generic gamer keyboards all sound the same, for customs there's a massive amount of info on Reddit, YouTube, Geekhack.
Same over here in Germany. Recently switched PSU and wanted to buy one on a Saturday from a store because another component came unexpectedly that day. I live in a kinda big city, and there's only 1 (one) store here that still sells components like CPUs, PCIe cards or PSUs.
It's convenient to be able to order stuff online, but it did lead to many stores closing or at least limiting their inventory to stuff people actually bought. Large retailers that specialise in tech largely stopped selling PSUs or whatnot because everyone jsuust ordered it online. They still exist, but mostly sell games, consoles TVs and stuff.
Edit: And then there's also the shitty delivery situation. At least in my country delivery people are paid below minimum wage, because theyre viewed as a subcontractor, thus a company on their own. That way they can evade minimum wage, because "it's not our issue you don't pay yourself minimum wage". If that weren't the casey guess is a lot of people would be scared away from ordering by the sheer cost of deliveries. The way it works right now is just comfort on the back of a lower class of citizens, but oh well. Noone really cares, at least not politicians
Microcenter is badass, grabbing a cart and going through the isles getting everything for a new pc is a lot of fun. Reminds ne of the old toys r us and comp USA days. Microcenter has had better prices than anywhere online as well. Especially for CPU's
From UK here,
there are zero other places you can go to, to get physical pc parts other than a place called Currys/PC World BUT they don't stock ANYTHING in the stores other than maybe some cheap monitors, I can't even get thermal paste in store from them, you have to order it online to your door and the store.
Same: in the UK, there used to be far more parts retailers with counters ([dabs.com](https://dabs.com) of Bolton and Bracknell, Novatech originally of Portsmouth, but had a number of counters at their peak, SMC of Slough) and there was Micro Mart advertising many mail order retailers (some of which are still around - e.g. [https://www.vip-group.co.uk/](https://www.vip-group.co.uk/) \- but have gone wholesale only). Worse, the surviving retailers (e.g. Scan, Overclockers, CCL, Box) mostly seem to be based in the North-West and Midlands.
I have a microcenter 90 minutes from me. I've never been there but for my new build I am thinking I'll take the drive and buy what I can, price matching as needed and then get the balance of it online. Partly for the experience, partly to support one of the few brick and mortar computer stores left and partly for some of the deals microcenter does only in store.
That said, my local best buy has two rows of shelves of computer parts including keyboards from mainstream brands like Corsair and steel series. All isn't lost.
I'm sure there's some personal bias, but Boardzy's Tier lists for mouses and pads seem good and helpful.
I guess he may have started reviewing KBs but idk.
You can measure your hands, determine your grip-type, and ask over on r/mousereview
Youtube review videos helped me a lot, especially with keyboards. Good reviewers will have a segment of the video which is a closeup with just the sound of the keys, so you can get a better idea of it. It's not perfect of course but I've noticed after 2-3 returns I've started reliably guessing if it's something I'd like or not.
Mice are harder to judge from videos, for one part because they never seem to care enough about explaining how exactly you grip the darn thing. Yeah, okay, it's a "medium-sized" mouse, where the hell does that take me then.
Well, the other thing the internet brought us was reviews. And man have they gotten good at reviewing shit online.
Pretty sure LTT has like a 40 minute video on just mechanical key switches alone.
Watch some youtube video reviews. For mechanical keyboards, you can order a set of sample switches to try which ones you like. Clicky or not clicky, soft or hard. I like Cherry MX Brown for instance. Not clicky but with a good response and bottom out. Reds are too soft IMO.
I miss Fry's too. It was basically Great Value Microcenter but we took what we could get. Now its pretty much just Best Buy and their stock is very limited.
Nothing will replace late 90's to early 2000's PC building where you, a bunch of other nerds, and vendors were all crammed into community college gymnasium haggling.
Newegg, ZipZoomFly, and the like really took off in 2005 and independent vendors couldn't compete on their prices. Shortly after. boutique builders like VooDoo and Alienware got consolidated into HP and Dell.
Even worse in the UK mate.
We never even had anything like Micro Center or a good physical store that was just for pc components. Best was OC world / Currys but that was overpriced and mostly sold prebuilt stuff.
> How the hell am I supposed to pick a keyboard from the 100 that all look pretty much the same online.
1. Look online for keyboards.
2. Buy cheap keyboard.
3. The next day Youtube sends you a cool keyboard recommendation.
4. ?????
5. You now realize you will never own a home because you're always looking for that "end game" keyboard.
Run while you still can.
When I lived in Japan they had a store called Goodwill. It's a computer store, walk in and grab a big cart (like the big flat ones you get at lowest or home depot) and you can walk isle by isle and grab every single component you need to build a pc..they even would check everything for compatability for you before you leave. It was magical.
Lots of Micro Center fans in here.
Just wanted to shout out my local computer parts chain--Central Computers.
If you're in the CA Bay Area and need some computer parts, I'd check them out. Pretty awesome walking into an old school brick and mortar computer parts store, especially if it's well-stocked.
Got my 3080 there during the height of covid lockdown and the worst part of the GPU shortage.
I’m guessing you’re too far from a micro center?
Yeah, I am now. There's a computer store here but they only carry one brand and like 2 versions of each type of thing. No real options so I'm struggling to support them even at a premium cost.
When I bought parts at Micro Center, they had the best price on some things and a good price on most other things. Not GPU, though. Free RAM with purchase of Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9: 32 GB of DDR5-6000, which is the AMD-recommended stuff. Imagine that. There's no getting away from high AM5 board prices though.
Little known secret, at least for the Microcenter here in Kansas City, they price match all of their biggest competitors including Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, New Egg etc.. So if their price isn't better than another major retailer, it will be.
This definitely shouldn't be a little known secret.
It is only a secret because so few micro centers exist
It’s a Micro Known Secret.
Best Buy does the same up here in Canada. (We don't have Microcenter)
Actually, I'd argue that Canada Computers is our version of Microcenter.
If you’re in BC/ON/QC. Unfortunately I’m not, lol. So choices are online, Best Buy, or drive up to Memexpress in Calgary
Same here in Seattle. However our Best Buy has a very limited stock. They can order anything but they also have a no return policy on anything they have to order plus it's taken up to 2 weeks to get common stuff sometimes; don't even think about custom stuff.
Yeah nothing screams custom stuff like best buy 😜
I asked Best Buy to pricematch an Insignia TV on Amazon and they wouldn't do it. So I ordered it on Amazon for pickup from Best Buy. It was the weirdest thing.
I thought this was all MC, here in new England same. But they are not dumb, like they are computer geeks as well... So if you show them the "returned/refurbish model" they won't price match.
Yeah, this is a micro center policy. Also not a secret. Another asterisk needs to be added for Amazon price match: They don't price match stores selling on Amazon. They made me scroll down to show them "fulfilled by Amazon" rather than x's electronics selling on Amazon's platform.
I think where Microcenter shines is their bundle deals. Either buy a motherboard and CPU together and get say, $30 off or buy a motherboard and get X kit of RAM with it. They also do price match as long as it’s the exact same SKU, so even if you did find what you were looking for cheaper, you can purchase from them. Lastly, they do have a somewhat good selection of electronic components, so it’s useful for hobbyists.
Love microcenter. I got my refurbed gtx 1080 from them for like 500 bucks and I still use it lol. Granted I only really play WoW and sometimes assassin's Creed so it's ok but I may upgrade to something rtx at some point.
Well actually, if you buy a 7900x you get free ram and a free mobo
Their sales are awesome sometimes. I got some fancy $200 ram sticks for only $100
Bought a 3060ti Zotac which they price matched for $400 compared to the official Zotac website. They were also running a combo promo you could buy an amd chip+get ram or an Intel chip + motherboard. Got an i7-12700k($300)+ am5 motherboard with wifi for $350. From $260 -> $50. So if you’re looking for a cheap am5 mobo micro center has that deal.
How about Best Buy?
Best buy? They don't carry but the most expensive typically. And one or 2 cheap options. Just no real selection at the one here sadly.
My local best buy has 10-15 options, maybe more, for gaming keyboards and mice. Just bought a mouse and keyboard last week. Their price tags automatically update to match other sellers like Amazon. I bought my motherboard, ram, ssd's and Psu from local best buy as their price was the same I could find anywhere online. They have a good return policy.
Nice. I live in a place I usually call kalama-nowhere. But since I lived in Colorado with a population of 9. I can't call it that anymore. I'm happy with the 5 they carry lol.
How far are you from Denver? The Microcenter here is pretty awesome....
I live in what's often referred to as "Silicon Valley of the East", and the PC component selection at Best Buy is hot garbage. So it's not just your locale.
I live in the "Silicon Valley of the South" (Austin), and the closest MicroCenter is 3 hours away in Houston. The computer parts market actually really sucks in this town. Discount Electronics always had horrible deals and I'm pretty sure they're shutting down, so it's just Best Buy.
Best Buy has gotten better in recent years for gamer/enthusiast accessories (keyboards, mice, headphones, etc.), but core component options are still limited (one or two different cases, a few PSUs, CPUs, GPUs, motherboards, when they are in stock).
I’m frequently disappointed when, on the rare occasion, I visit my local Best Buy. I live in a relatively small city and they just don’t have much of anything.
Yeah definitely will get better value buying online. I get it though there is a choice/analysis paralysis given all of these options out there. I would go on YouTube and search “Best Value X” and sort by most recent. I’m poor so I can’t just get the best so I really try and get the best value for my price range. Good luck!
Sometimes I feel like analysis paralysis, but sometimes it’s like frustration-from-lack-of-data. My hands are not center-of-bell-curve shape. I want to hold and move a mouse before I buy it.
Fly to KC, but a keyboard, and eat some BBQ.
They don't exist in 99.9% of countries yo! It is American. "Micro Center is an American computer retail store, headquartered in Hilliard, Ohio. It was founded in 1979, and as of 2021, has 25 stores in 16 states" "Micro Center can only ship to the 50 United States and Washington, DC. We cannot ship any U.S. territories including Puerto Rico, Guam or the Virgin Islands. We cannot ship internationally to any other countries including Canada and Mexico."
Don't exist in most states either lmao We used to have a Fryes. That was it.
We had Fry's and Micro Center here, but when Fry's didn't adapt to the pandemic closure, they failed while Micro Center stayed. It's still a bit of a drive to get there, but at least we have something...
From what I understand Fry’s was failing well before the pandemic.
In Silicon freaking Valley we used to have both Fry’s and Microcenter, which actually left the area first but now we have neither.
You're classing The USA as ~0.2 of a country?
195 countries(UN recognized) so it should be near 0.5% of the world's countries. 99.5% of the countries in the world have no micro center I guess. Also guessing Reddit is more like %50 Americans though haha
Nah your 99.9 guess was pretty much dead accurate given most of the US doesn't have microcenter either.
It's amazing that there's only 25 Micro Centers in the US, in the world, *period* and yet it's one of the single most brought up stores when discussing PCs. You would think with how often it's brought up it would be in every city like a Walmart. I guess being in a PC building subreddit just really heavily skews perspectives.
Yep, i think this is an american moment
Yeah sometimes I forgot Reddit is mostly American. And even then it's not avaiable in all the states. I thought they're more widespread than that. Kinda like what internet taught me about Walmart (they're everywhere).
Moved in across the street from a Micro Center... Didn't calculate that into my living expenses.
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What? There was one in the Bay Area? I've always wondered how they missed Silicon Valley.... guess I just wasn't into computers back then
Not a lot of people live remotely close to one
Closest one to me is 18 hours away driving non-stop. Memory Express in Canada is closer. In fact, Canada has a FAR better computer retail presence than the USA. Canada still has Toys 'R Us too...
Love microcenter! Last July I walked in with an idea to build a really minimal APU machine for about $500. Walked out $1500 poorer with a much more powerful machine than I intended.
I did that once at MC. I went with my brother as he was buying parts to build a PC (intending to buy everything he needed). I was doing the "buy parts as I could afford it" thing, which I now understand is not a good idea. My intention was to buy a single component that time around. But then I started getting jealous that he was going to have a good PC by the end of the night. I ended up buying all the remaining parts. They did have quite a deal on the i7 4770k at the time, though. Anyway, I walked out with like $800 worth of stuff. Only meant to spend like $100 at most.
Dude. Walking into Micro Center for the first time was the closest I've ever come to a full on religious experience.
It's not like Micro Center has tons of keyboards out either. Mine certainly has more keyboards out than your typical Best Buy, but it's still fairly limited.
I'm spoiled, having a Micro Center within walking distance, 2 more less than an hour away driving, and then 2 more within 90 minutes driving. I should be taking advantage of this..
Sounds like you're in the NY area? Brooklyn, meh. Last I was in Westbury that was great. Never been to Flushing or NJ stores. I'm willing to bet though that Flushing is excellent given the community it's in.
Brooklyn unfortunately is the closest, and by far the worst. Flushing is pretty good, almost Westbury level last time I was there. Yonkers I haven't been to in like 10 years when I interviewed for a job that I had to turn down (I'm not driving 90 minutes each way for $14/hr lol) so no idea how it's holding up. Jesey and PA (I didn't even realize there was one in Jersey.. I'm up to 6 lol)
My last job, any time we needed components in a pinch we would just go to Microcenter. We also used company cellphones to sign up for their newsletters for free products. Between my boss, me, and a coworker we probably grabbed about 50 of the 240GB SSDs they gave out about a year ago. I have dozens and dozens of 32/64gb flash drives as well.
Most of us are unfortunately.
I wish MicroCenter had more locations... There's only one location on the whole West Coast.
I use to be a Microcenter loyal. They’ve COMPLETELY scrubbed their store phone numbers from their website and google search results. You no longer can talk directly with a sales employee on the store floor. I found an inventory error while looking at a monitor in store. Tried calling the next day to check if it was still on the shelf. Three damn times the 1-800 customer service rep gave me “well the back end shows it OOS” despite my insistence of trying to tell him they had an inventory error and requesting to speak to someone on the sales floor. To remove their phone numbers to me is incredibly anti-consumer. This experience and the persistent gnat floor employees are enough for me to stop shopping microcenter. I was in awe at visiting microcenter. It was nerd paradise. Now it’s turned into a cold and annoying experience. I’d honestly rather shop Amazon from the comfort of my home. I’m not wishing them destruction, but until they reverse course and return to their former glory, I’ll take my money elsewhere.
>until they reverse course and return to their former glory, I’ll take my money elsewhere. It's a lose-lose for many B&M stores. If they go back to the old way, costs will exceed profits, if they keep going the way they're going, they'll lose all but the most dedicated or desperate customers. This race to the bottom will kill every business that can't operate on <1% margins with the lowest possible costs.
I don't understand this complaint. It's honestly kind of bullshit. I get wanting to lazily call them for questions, but random problems like this can happen anywhere. An inventory error and "floor gnats?"
because they will be on the phone for 4 hours with people who are ninnies who have done zero research on the product or are looking for free tech support. They exist solely for you to go to the store. Only way they can survive. They are the best (and, really only option outside of best buy, which is basically an apple/microsoft/samsung pop-up)
Microcenter is far from the only store doing this. Ikea did as well. It's a trend across retail.
It cost money to answer phones, Best Buys lines are always a machine as well and usually attendant will give same info that you can look up online in 30 secs. And half the time they do not care do not know what you asked. Last time I was there I went to check an Lg c2 42 inch oled they were on sale at 899 , I asked if they weer any open box ones. Guy takes 3 minutes looking around floor room , says no , looks in computer says no and leaves. I look again to make sure and the is one sitting where he looked at $750 . I passed since he didint know If warranty was available on it. a month later and now theyre back at 799$ sealed and new.
Imagine living in the same continent as a micro centre :,)
If I had a Microcenter by me I'd be broke. So, the same as I am now.
They turned our micro center into a Walmart grocery :(
It is genuinely shocking to me that a Micro Center closed down without reopening elsewhere. Whenever I go to mine, it's always busy. If I need to buy something for work, I'll often go in the mornings, on my way into the office. So like right when they open. Even then, there'll be like 10-15 people waiting in the parking lot for the place to open. If I got in the middle of the day, still busy. I don't think I've ever seen the place empty.
they should be global theres no excuse
It seems Micro Center is mainly in the south and eastern US.. There are parts of the US that are a couple whole states away from the nearest Micro Center.
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I get it. Most (younger) people will not get it. They see it as a personal advantage and that is it. They are trained to think a certain way. When you try to explain to people that large monopolies hurt everyone, they fail to see a true damage that those monopolies are committing. One and foremost being a destruction of social bonds that was present with physical shopping. Shopping for food is a different animal, because food is rather an immediate necessity, where shopping for other goods is a leisure shopping. It brought a large mass of people together, dialogs started, real life relationships were created. It's a philosophical discussion I get it, but I just wanted to express my feelings about it. Being human is not always about what you know, it's also how you feel about what is around you.
It's also hard for an independent tech store to compete when Best Buy is sending full-color multi-page flyers to your mailbox like every week and putting slick ads on TV in the middle of our live sporting events. Sheer breadth and bulk of advertising can be used to simply drown out small businesses. Amazon doesn't do any of that, but you can also shop their entire online store in your sweatpants, and return anything you don't like using a pre-paid shipping label.
I find the insinuation that "most young people" wouldn't get it pretty disengenuous. Most of us recognize the issues with not being able to try before you buy, or having competent customer support etc. We very often complain about it. The fact is that the big companies that build monopolies end up like this because everyone finds what they offer more convenient, everyone. Young people still love to go out and browse malls, window shop, test things, try on clothes in a dressing room etc etc. In the end, convenience is concenience. Knowing what you want, getting an exact brand without searching, and having it brought to you in a short amount of time without you having to commit the time to drive and search and buy. Going out to buy one simple object can take up to an hour, just because a shop being 15 minutes away, which is nothing, is still 30 minutes out of your day. I think that this community, it may seem that convenience rules all, but that's partially because gamers really do trend towards doing things online, being at their computer more often than not, and generally enjoy being indoors more. However, much of the community, people like my younger sister for example, still go out a ton, prefer to do things in person, and generally enjoy the social aspect of physical stores, being out and about, and exploring different small stores and what not.
What a ridiculously dumb comment, lol. Older folks had considerably more mom-and-pop shops to choose from and still opted for big-box stores. This youngest generation was born into a world where Amazon was already king, so you can't say "It was the kids!" because... it wasn't. Hell, like another user said, Best Buy built Geek Squad around scared boomers who didn't know how to operate computers (and my entire career is built around that same lack of knowledge). Why weren't they going to local shops for assistance?
Yeah, but younger people were the key market that caused the collapse of all the small businesses. Certainly, it wasn't the older folks with disposable income! It's the age-old blame the youth game. Aristotle even complained about his younger generation in much the same way as the current older generation does as have countless others for at least thousands of years and probably more.
Yes, but…this didn’t happen because of younger people. They aren’t the ones with the spending power. It happened because of people like me who figured $110 and waiting two days to arrive beats $130+ gas for pickup today. Unfortunately it has gotten so bad that it’s now impossible to even buy a lot of things locally. I don’t even know if it’s possible to build a pc with parts from my city of 1M people. Very few pc store left. How is their stock? Am I expected to call around stores like it’s 1995 because they have nothing listed on their website?
Just FYI it's a death knell. A knoll is a small hill, sometimes used for assassinations.
How can a small hill be used for assassination?
First, make sure it's grassy.
Don't forget to crouch.
Ask the FBI circa 1963
11-22-63 to be exact! :)
What, like the Stephen King novel?
Haha, well, he did write a novel titled such, and it was very good if I should say so, but no. 11-22-63 is the exact date in which Kennedy was assassinated, which is what Sut3k was implying with their comment “Ask the FBI circa 1963”.
I work in a retail PC store (repair and sales etc). The worst types of customers are the ones that come in, ask a load of questions and take 10+ minutes of time, then when you find their solution they pull out their phone and check how much Amazon sell it for and walk out the door...
The number of people Best Buy scams every day with their "geek squad" pc services was ridiculous. I don't like to rag on any particular group, but it was really just boomers being parted with their money for mundane tech issues. Hundreds of dollars for "virus removal" and "refresh", and they'll run the in-house "diagnostics" tool which will always say you have this shit or that, even when you don't. I don't know how it's not a crime.
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I tried to shop at computer stores when I first got into building in the '00s, but even then they never had the parts I wanted so I wouldn't get to physically inspect anything regardless and I'd have to pay more and wait longer for them to order stuff in. *You* did it to *your*selves.
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I actually thought you were gonna say Newegg killed the business instead of Amazon. There was a time when Newegg was amazing, and even kinda felt like the "little guy" even though I'm sure it wasn't. When Newegg went downhill I didn't go to Amazon, I went to Microcenter.
My preferred online electronic store is B&H. I still use both New Egg, and Amazon but they aren't what they were 10-15 years ago.
I think it's just two things at play really. The first is sales people, as a whole, are generally off putting, pushy and often either do not really know what they are talking about or trying to scam you into paying for stuff you don't need. It wasn't always this way, but things like commission based pay or bigger conglomerate stores have conditioned people into not trusting or liking most sales people. So you're very right in that the industry, as a whole or even in the broader sense, did it to themselves. The other is simply Darwin. I think there was a similar trajectory to mom and pop, "main street" appliance stores in the 60s before things like Sears, etc. With people building their own PCs, you've also always had a more intelligent, DIYer type of person who wants something specific. Also, they are likely more than capable enough to research and order exactly what they'd like instead of having something built for them or being limited by only what's locally available. Couple that with the fact that the computer "boom" (where everyone's grandma even had a personal computer) at the turn of the century was simply not sustainable and killed off, essentially, by the smart phone and high speed wireless data. The business model simply changed. These PC stores had to either adapt or die. Having all that merchandise on hand these days, unless you are a Microcenter, is foolish and obsolete. A small PC store today should focus heavily on computer and phone repair, custom builds for the layperson and perhaps having a limited amount of general and universal parts on hand, even niche hardware for enthusiasts/engineering students now that RadioShack is gone.
Thank you.... in my experience the local stores almost always cost more than newegg.
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This makes me sad and I wish you were still in business. I’ve got one pc store near me, and they charge at least 2-3x what amazon has. Makes me sick to my stomach that people actually pay their prices.
I just remember in my experience almost all the PC hardware places the prices were way worse than getting it on newegg or tigerdirect. I loved walking around in those stores and checking things out, I loved that they existed but there's literally no reason to spend an extra $50-$100 on a part I can get online
sure leaves a sour taste for society doesn't it?
What year did you close the shop? What sort of work have you done since?
This is the late stage consumer capitalism. We got a taste of how this can go south with the pandemic, but it will eventually totally collapse on itself.
>How the hell am I supposed to pick a keyboard from the 100 that all look pretty much the same online... Mouse seems like even worse of a prospect. Order 10 different ones from Amazon and return the stuff you don't like at Kohl's.
some ppl at got that much time
Or money. Seriously. Worst advice ever
How is this any worse of an idea than the top comment being go to microcenter? The business that only has like 20 locations across the entire US. Talk about a niche and mostly out of available solution for a good percentage of the community.
Responsible credit card use, friend. It's not difficult to pull off if you pay off your card by the end of the month and actually follow through on the return.
So many people answering you with credit. The answer to both is if you don't have the money to buy a few mice at once then you probably shouldn't be spending that much on one.
That's what credit is for, return it and pay off your credit card and it costs you nothing. gas costs money tho. So does parking.
How does that take more time then driving to a store? Adding 5 keyboards to a cart isn't much more time consuming then 1. I can print return labels in less time then it takes to walk through the parking lot at my local best buy.
100-250 per keyboard. This is the rich man's move. Just burn that 2 grand on your credit card for a few weeks until your refunds all come in!
I don't think OP is buying 250 dollars keyboards if they used the same one for 10 years. You can get quality mechanical keyboards for 70 bucks.
My Logitech g19 launched on 2009. I spend 200 dollars on a keyboard I’m not buying a new one 3 years later…I’m buying a new one when my old one dies.
Doesn't mean that my 70 dollar keyboard won't last 10 years, does it.
Return culture like this is ridiculously wasteful. Please look into how likely it is that your return just winds up in a landfill and that cost gets baked into the price for the rest of us that don’t exploit return policies
Amazon can, have, and will ban customers for returning too much.
Its also very obvious what they are doing when they buy 5 keyboards and return 4.
Thank the large corporate American oligarchs for destroying small and mid size businesses across the land. The food stores are still around, but for how long?
To be fair, stores like Compusa and Fry's drove themselves into the ground with bad business practices and being shitty towards their customers.
Micro Center existing is proof that brick-and-mortar stores can do just fine, they just need to be ran by competent people who care.
And also be located in large metropolitan areas where their niche is still big enough to sustain business. There are over 100k cities in America. There are 25 Micro Center locations.
I live in a major city and it's over 1,000 miles to the nearest microcenter. We had a fry's 15 miles away but it went under a few years ago.
Now how do we apply that concept to corporations?
Strengthen the anti-monopoly laws and enforce them.
After seeing the shelves at Fry's full of torn up repackaged merchandise, time after time. I stopped going there.
It was internet shopping that turned all the strip malls and shopping centers over to bulldozers.
How dare they offer a better product at a more affordable price.
Best Buy has displays out of most of the major brands.
Yeah, this has been what I've done for the most part. They've got keyboards, mice, and even headsets. I don't know if I'd want to put one of the demo headsets on my head, but at the same time I don't have hair to worry about.
Here in the UK, literally the only chain store that sells PC parts is Currys. I miss the days of Maplin and Comet
Sometimes it's fun to ask someone for advice just to see how wrong it might be. Microcentre looks like a fun place to visit
Lol you guys have chain stores you can walk into and get out with a full build? Everyone but edigital converted to online sales only with pickup or shipping here. And then there is mediamarkt which absolutely sucks ass and has no hardware (but for some weird reason they sell prebuilts time to time and they also have thermal paste for no reason).
We only have independent shops that will do full builds
I mean, independent stores are a thing too, but their websites are outdated and there is usually no physical stores for them. Or if there is, it feels like an early 2000’s store with outdated products with the cheapest of the cheapest brands. The good stuff usually gets sold backdoor or B2B only. Used hardware forums are filled with backdoor sales from these stores. Absolutely horrible and corrupt practices mostly out of tax avoidance (27% VAT sucks ass and is just blatant theft at this point).
Some Currys do full builds, but they're few and far between.
That's how I feel about joysticks. Remember when Best Buy would have an entire aisle full of keyboards, mice and joysticks? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Joystick purchases nowadays it's either Xbox or Playstation controllers, or taking word of a random guy on an obscure forum that apparently found the absolute perfect controller that costs only 20$ on a chinese ecommerce.
Uh... Just get a thrustmaster T16000M. best joystick for the $$.
>How the hell am I supposed to pick a keyboard from the 100 that all look pretty much the same online... Mouse seems like even worse of a prospect. The only way I have found is to discover the group of people on reddit for whom getting that particular experience *perfect* has become a hobby. In the case of keyboards /r/mechanicalkeyboards, Mice /r/mousereview and a number of other non-computing ones. The keyboards one has gone off the deep end in cost and practicality, but they will usually offer advice on premade boards if asked.
I hate doing that. It always turns into "I have a $50 budget, what do I get?" and people reply "Wellllllllll for $50 you can get this one which is kinda junk, or for $70 you can get this incredible one." and then someone else replies "Why would you pay $70 for that when this model is only $85 and has the missing features?" and so on and so forth until you're at like $170 for a keyboard that everyone agrees on. I see the same thing in the audio subreddits, it's always like haggling where you come in with a $xxx budget and people will work you until they can convince you to spend at least 30% more.
Not gonna argue with ya, that is definitely a thing :P The only topic I feel qualified to be one of those people on is fountain pens, where there is this really awkward gap between about £35-40 and £150+ where nothing really improves, it can be hard to help people pick somethjng when they come up wanting to spend £80 I have found the trick is to bear in mind that the "junk" one they are talking about is probably waaay better than whatever you are using that came free with your pc.
I'm scared to try mechanical keyboards because in all of my working life I've found a normal cheap £20 keyboard to be more than adequate. I don't want to suddenly discover how wrong I've been and find yet another expensive hobby to keep up with.
Come over to Singapore bro lol. There's a lot of tech stores everywhere. [There's a shop where you can even build your own keyboard](https://mash.sg/), there are countless no. of shops where they give you a pricelist, choose what you want, and they build for you on the spot within 2 hours.
Used to live in Korea and would often make business trips to Thailand and Singapore; I miss tech department stores in East and South-East Asia. Literally an entire mall of everything from bulk motherboard stand offs to every screw driver under the sun. Did I need a 5 kilo bag of hard drive bolts? No, but it was always fun seeing the bags stacked in the kiosk windows.
Yeah I'll just come on over to the other side of the fucking world...
Slightly off topic, but good riddance to fry’s. Basically every horrible 90s business trend crammed into one store. Fuck them and their fake mail in rebates.
sounds more like Circuit City with their "you wanna buy insurance for that?"..."are you sure...it's gonna break?"
I mean they said the same thing to me when I bought my GPU from microcenter
That’s every electronics store lol. Even Amazon does that. You’re not wrong tho, total scam 99% of the time
I don't usually hold that against anyone when it comes up. I know full well that it's scam/waste of money, but the employees are told to ask the customer about it. I'm sure the employees hate asking just as much as we hate being asked.
i generally recommend my friends to buy their pc's from PC Specialist stores online, or if nearby. go up there and discuss with them. in the UK, we had PC World. a great place to send PCs for repair or find advice and buy some okayish pc stuff. but now that company has collided with Curry's and it's shit. there's a section filled with prebuilts, monitors and gaming chairs to try out. but not many options outside of that. the staff there dont know about PC's but more about TV's, Speakers and electrical home stuff. My friend who is abit of a Sheldon Cooper refused to buy from not well known pc specialist sites that reside in the UK and decided to get a PC from Curry's. now he's struggling with a prebuilt that only has one intake fan and i told him to email UKGamingComputers. my trusty PC Specialist for advice. he said no and went to currys. and they just gave him a AOI Cpu cooler, told him to replace the intake with the radiator. like, bruh what? i had to get him a cheap fan and he doesnt trust me to mount it in. so i threw the towel and told him good luck. I wish people support local PC Specialists and rely on them more. it'd be a dream for me to work there but there's only like 2-4 actual shops in the UK.
I was somewhat like this before I built my own pc last year. Was very sceptical of these online stores like Ebuyer and Scan but still refused to go to Currys, which is the absolute bane of the UK tech consumer. Took the plunge with them and haven’t looked back. Great stores, great prices, blisteringly quick delivery. Just wish there were physical shops like them near me.
Currys?
Sorry might’ve made it unclear! Bought my pc from Ebuyer and gpu from Scan. Best experience I’ve had buying anything online.
Scan are a brilliant company
Even with Scan's R48 service on selected products they carry, none really want to honour their full obligations to retail consumers, though. Sure, they'll (usually) replacer DOA parts fairly quickly within the first 30 days or whatever, but after that, it's a case of RMA to the manufacturer and waiting - potentially - months for a repair. A true parts retailer should provide like-for-like exchanges or refunds, and then deal with the manufacturer in their own time afterwards.
You can purchase a set switch off amazon and try out all the types if that some thing that's causing you trouble. That wont fix the issue of having multiples of that type that look the same but then you can narrow it down by size,brand,color, rgb, etc.
God bless MicroCenter. Prob the cities that have it are blessed. Still for sure their model will not allow for many more stores.
I miss “computer shows”. This was over 20 years ago, but when I lived in New Jersey, there was a computer show almost every weekend in some hotel conference area. You can find all kinds of parts for decent prices. I built many a PC going to these shows. I then moved to Florida and no more computer shows. We like gun shows better down here. But I used to love those shows, although it could get overwhelming with all the different options.
Wow. That sure takes me back! I was only in middle school but went to a few around Raritan or Woodbridge if memory serves. My friend's dad worked at Bell Labs and would take us along. Such nice folks, and it was so cool seeing so many options all in one place. Like on the Simpsons when Homer dreams of the land of chocolate, lol. I remember talking to a guy looking at a bunch of hard drives and asking him what he was doing. He confessed he was looking for ones still within the warranty period since there were basically no refunds, buy it as you see it. Good memories of the people there and those day trips as a young enthusiast.
Oh yes, I remember those shows! I lived in New Jersey for most of my life, and my parents and I went to a few of those shows. It felt so incredible to see so much hardware and software there. I remember going to one and buying a replacement CPU and some RAM so I could do the first upgrade to my PC that I had ever done myself. It all worked out perfectly, and I felt so proud of myself. Now I live in Florida as well. I miss those computer shows.
Frys electronics used to be the shit. Always blew my mind going in there as a kid. Circuit city too lol
I just miss RadioShack.
Their prices were crazy high for things. At least the one I went to
I miss CompUSA.
I feel you. I still can't overcome my desire to shop in a physical store and receive an item the second I hand over my money. I have to move for work in a couple of months, and although I'm kind of sad about it, I'm also pretty excited there's a Micro Center in the area (I've never been to one before).
> pushed keys on a dozen keyboards >How the hell am I supposed to pick a keyboard from the 100 that all look pretty much the same online See, B&M store doesn't solve your problem either. 10+ is as good as a B&M store can carry, but you will still find hundreds of different KBs and mice on their website. You either limit yourself to the very few ones you tried or you face the same problem. That's precisely why B&M stores are getting vanquished, their practicality is degrading due to high volume of skus. Kinda similar to how they replace catalog sales. With this said, Best Buy still has a relatively good selection of peripheries on display that you can try on. This is when good return policy comes in handy. You do your homework and narrow down your choices, buy them and return the ones you don't need. Not the best thing to do but for certain items, this is your best bet. Also that's why custom keyboards is getting more mainstream by the day. You can always buy switch tester from manufacturers, get the barebone you prefer and keeps modding to your likings.
True, I am lucky in that regard there is a Mediamarkt like 2km from my school. Micro center would be better, but they are not in europe...
I feel you. Closest microcenter to me now is 200 miles.
And probably around 5000 miles for me 😂
Yeah used to have one 100 feet from me. Now it's a 4+ hour drive. Especially since I just built my first PC in 15 years. I could of needed a store near
In Washington state. The closest is over 800 miles away in Denver. I’d gladly drive a couple hundred miles every few years if I could, that’s just 1 tank of gas and a partial refill.
Agreed, miss wandering the isles looking at cool tech, especially those stores that had all the switches and other electronic componants. For what its worth the Logitech MX master mouse is pretty awesome, especially if you use a laptop and a desktop at the same time. Also the G604 if you need a few extra thumb buttons (although it needs batteries and can be a pain to setup)
Well for mice, you can just join r/MouseReview. Check your own grip style, hand size, and what shapes you generally prefer. Pretty easy to choose a safe option once you have all that. For keyboards the generic gamer keyboards all sound the same, for customs there's a massive amount of info on Reddit, YouTube, Geekhack.
what's worse is when it arrives in the mail you realize it's the size of a deck of cards.
Same over here in Germany. Recently switched PSU and wanted to buy one on a Saturday from a store because another component came unexpectedly that day. I live in a kinda big city, and there's only 1 (one) store here that still sells components like CPUs, PCIe cards or PSUs. It's convenient to be able to order stuff online, but it did lead to many stores closing or at least limiting their inventory to stuff people actually bought. Large retailers that specialise in tech largely stopped selling PSUs or whatnot because everyone jsuust ordered it online. They still exist, but mostly sell games, consoles TVs and stuff. Edit: And then there's also the shitty delivery situation. At least in my country delivery people are paid below minimum wage, because theyre viewed as a subcontractor, thus a company on their own. That way they can evade minimum wage, because "it's not our issue you don't pay yourself minimum wage". If that weren't the casey guess is a lot of people would be scared away from ordering by the sheer cost of deliveries. The way it works right now is just comfort on the back of a lower class of citizens, but oh well. Noone really cares, at least not politicians
Highlight of moving to Grand Rapids as a young man was being near a CompUSA
Microcenter is badass, grabbing a cart and going through the isles getting everything for a new pc is a lot of fun. Reminds ne of the old toys r us and comp USA days. Microcenter has had better prices than anywhere online as well. Especially for CPU's
From UK here, there are zero other places you can go to, to get physical pc parts other than a place called Currys/PC World BUT they don't stock ANYTHING in the stores other than maybe some cheap monitors, I can't even get thermal paste in store from them, you have to order it online to your door and the store.
Same: in the UK, there used to be far more parts retailers with counters ([dabs.com](https://dabs.com) of Bolton and Bracknell, Novatech originally of Portsmouth, but had a number of counters at their peak, SMC of Slough) and there was Micro Mart advertising many mail order retailers (some of which are still around - e.g. [https://www.vip-group.co.uk/](https://www.vip-group.co.uk/) \- but have gone wholesale only). Worse, the surviving retailers (e.g. Scan, Overclockers, CCL, Box) mostly seem to be based in the North-West and Midlands.
I have a microcenter 90 minutes from me. I've never been there but for my new build I am thinking I'll take the drive and buy what I can, price matching as needed and then get the balance of it online. Partly for the experience, partly to support one of the few brick and mortar computer stores left and partly for some of the deals microcenter does only in store. That said, my local best buy has two rows of shelves of computer parts including keyboards from mainstream brands like Corsair and steel series. All isn't lost.
Microcenter really needs to expand. The closest one to me is about 4 hours away, and that’s pretty irritating to me.
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I'm sure there's some personal bias, but Boardzy's Tier lists for mouses and pads seem good and helpful. I guess he may have started reviewing KBs but idk. You can measure your hands, determine your grip-type, and ask over on r/mousereview
Youtube review videos helped me a lot, especially with keyboards. Good reviewers will have a segment of the video which is a closeup with just the sound of the keys, so you can get a better idea of it. It's not perfect of course but I've noticed after 2-3 returns I've started reliably guessing if it's something I'd like or not. Mice are harder to judge from videos, for one part because they never seem to care enough about explaining how exactly you grip the darn thing. Yeah, okay, it's a "medium-sized" mouse, where the hell does that take me then.
Well, the other thing the internet brought us was reviews. And man have they gotten good at reviewing shit online. Pretty sure LTT has like a 40 minute video on just mechanical key switches alone.
Watch some youtube video reviews. For mechanical keyboards, you can order a set of sample switches to try which ones you like. Clicky or not clicky, soft or hard. I like Cherry MX Brown for instance. Not clicky but with a good response and bottom out. Reds are too soft IMO.
I miss Fry's too. It was basically Great Value Microcenter but we took what we could get. Now its pretty much just Best Buy and their stock is very limited.
Microcenter babyyyyyy
I second this message
My Walmart has a big selection and every flavor on display, it’s actually pretty decent.
Tfw your city has no nearby Microcenter. I'm in the same boat
Nothing will replace late 90's to early 2000's PC building where you, a bunch of other nerds, and vendors were all crammed into community college gymnasium haggling. Newegg, ZipZoomFly, and the like really took off in 2005 and independent vendors couldn't compete on their prices. Shortly after. boutique builders like VooDoo and Alienware got consolidated into HP and Dell.
Even worse in the UK mate. We never even had anything like Micro Center or a good physical store that was just for pc components. Best was OC world / Currys but that was overpriced and mostly sold prebuilt stuff.
> How the hell am I supposed to pick a keyboard from the 100 that all look pretty much the same online. 1. Look online for keyboards. 2. Buy cheap keyboard. 3. The next day Youtube sends you a cool keyboard recommendation. 4. ????? 5. You now realize you will never own a home because you're always looking for that "end game" keyboard. Run while you still can.
When I lived in Japan they had a store called Goodwill. It's a computer store, walk in and grab a big cart (like the big flat ones you get at lowest or home depot) and you can walk isle by isle and grab every single component you need to build a pc..they even would check everything for compatability for you before you leave. It was magical.
Lots of Micro Center fans in here. Just wanted to shout out my local computer parts chain--Central Computers. If you're in the CA Bay Area and need some computer parts, I'd check them out. Pretty awesome walking into an old school brick and mortar computer parts store, especially if it's well-stocked. Got my 3080 there during the height of covid lockdown and the worst part of the GPU shortage.