Microcenter vs Fry's

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mstersmith1

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 28, 2008
Messages
364
Hope this belongs here. I like to buy from brick and mortar stores. Just makes it easier on me. Now I just discovered that a Microcenter exist fairly close by, about 50 min. Now I have a Fry's less than 15 min's away. I have heard nothing but good news about Microcenter. Is it worth it the trip? Are the deals better at Microcenter? Just looking for a general idea because with i5 I am looking to begin an upgrade. Thanks to [H] community:D
 
Well as far as deals, I don't know Frys has some rock bottom deals in there weekly ads. However Microcenter seems to have a cheaper regular price for a lot of items. I personally prefer Microcenter because of the Water Cooling gear they have there :) and there general selection of things important to me.

As far as pricing goes just look at their websites and you can see the general prices for stuff.

Oh and Microcenters has had great deals on i7's and Phenom2's so hopefully they continue the trend with i5's.
 
Microcenter uses their CPUs as loss leaders, so they almost always have the lowest price on popular CPUs.

I also prefer their quirky style to the big box of Fry's. I think of it more of a computer store for geeks.

Fry's does happen to have more stuff in general and picking up a game or 2 of the game of the week setup in the video games section always adds to my fun going to frys.
 
I like Fry's in general for random neat things. They also seem to have more mice and keyboards than Microcenter. I do, however, like Microcenter better for building your own computer... they just have more deals on stuff like that in my experience. Microcenter usually has pretty good prices too. Really I guess it depends on what you're shopping for at the moment I guess, but for CPU, motherboards, ram, etc. I think I like Microcenter better.
 
Both stores have prices that are pretty competitive compared to online etailers. The Fry's and MC are only about 5 minutes apart from eachother where I live so I get the luxury of going to both in one trip. :) MC has a better selection of parts, they have more variety (especially in the realm of anything cooling or mod related). The only downside is that it's still not that big of a store and they don't carry many of any one particular product so they're often sold out. Fry's on the other hand is up to their neck in the parts they carry but I find they have questionable customer assistance, the store is paid extra to recommend certain products to customers regardless of how good they are, so ignore the guy telling you a zalman is the best i7 heatsink ever made.

It really comes down to sales and picking your parts. I bought my i7 at MC for the 200 deal, and picked up some ram there since it was the same as online and they have the guarenteed rebate. I went to Fry's and picked up my EVGA x58 on sale and called it a day.
 
I live in the sphincter of America, New Mexico. The closest Microcenter is in Dallas and the closest Fry's is in Phoenix. So it's all Newegg for me.
 
As an FYI, I recently learned that Micro Center will match prices with NewEgg if NewEgg has the lower cost. MC often does this with processors, motherboard, and RAM, but I was lucky and was able to get a couple of CPU/NB coolers at NewEgg prices from there. However, YMMV, and you may need to ask your "local" store beforehand. (If you do try to price match, bring a printout of the shopping cart with the items that you're interested in... make sure that the items are in stock at the store and the printout is dated for around the same time that you plan on making the trip.)
 
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