Totaling the Damage

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 10/29/04

My hands couldn't stay empty for long, because soon after I resisted the AMD project computer, the nVidia graphic card arrived from Keith. I had to do something.

Good fortune arrived in the newspaper the next morning. Fry's runs a four-color insert in the Dallas paper each Friday, and one of the specials listed was a combination Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz chip and motherboard for $189. Credit card in hand, I zoomed to Fry's.

First thing that happened? The salesclerk convinced me to upgrade to a better motherboard. Not to a PCI Express x16 motherboard, which I turned out to need for the video board, because those are many hundreds of dollars. He talked me into an MSI motherboard that supports dual channel memory. The cost jumped from $189 to $239, but since the online price for an Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz chip is $225 by itself, I decided to be a high roller.

Here's what I bought at Fry's that day:

Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU: $!88.85
MSI PT880-LSR motherboard: $51.14
Combo price for the two: $239 (versus the $189 ad that drew me in)

Geil DDR 1GB 3200 dual channel memory: $179.99
Fudin ATX868WBP case: $69.99

I also bought my wife a blender to replace our dead one, so I got points for being a good husband and no questions about the rest of the stuff I bought. Whew.

Total at Fry's without tax was $480, not including video card or any drives (hard disk, CD-ROM, or floppy). Budget kinda blown, but it's all a business expense, right? Same as free, right? (not when you're self-employed, but that's another discussion).

I went to NewEgg, the online site most consistently offering the best prices. That's a dicey statement for online retailers, but my experience and recommendations from others give NewEgg the edge. Fry's online store is Outpost, an online retailer they bought a few years ago.

Feeling masochistic, I checked the prices online to compare the deal I got physically at Fry's. At NewEgg, the Intel CPU alone was $221, so I'm ahead. The exact MSI motherboard wasn't there, but similar models range from $65-$198, so I feel good about that as well.

The case is a different story. NewEgg has it for $45, but that includes $16 shipping. Net gain isn't much, and Outpost shows the case for $65, a few dollars less than in the store. Shipping costs push the advantage to the physical store purchase.

Geil memory (1GB) is $180 at NewEgg, so I'm fine with the store price. However, when I checked the memory price at Outpost, it was down to $139. I checked two weeks later, but still, forty bucks is forty bucks, and I lost that much in this deal. Weird pricing.

I spent more than I wanted to spend (but I already said I'm cheap), but the online versus physical store prices tend to balance out.

Now the fun (I hope) part: building the thing.

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