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#21
All this advice sounds like you guys are buying parts from online stores. What about getting a store to do it for you?
Here in this corner of southeast Asia, getting a shop to do it for you is de rigeur unless you're the really fussy type and want to do everything yourself, e.g. it involves stuff like watercooling. Good luck.
For the rest of us mortals, it's a fairly straightforward process.
- Go to IT mall. It's like a regular shopping mall, except that all the shops in the entire 4-5 storey structure consist entirely of computer hardware and cellphone shops only (there may be a cafe on the top floor but it's usually full of technicians on their break).
- Nearly all the shops selling PCs will have a stack of photocopied paper right out front which you help yourself to, on which is printed this week's prices for everything from CPU and RAM to external peripherals. Spend an hour walking around collecting these price lists. More often than not the prices will fall within 5% of each other regardless of the outlet, so price comparison isn't strictly necessary. Personally I just grab 4-5 lists.
- -OPTIONAL- Do your homework: look up every component, read reviews, find out how much juice you want from a PSU, that kind of stuff.
- Pick a shop you've done business with before, or one with a friendly-looking salesperson. For the most part these guys are just college kids in temp jobs - getting scammed is unlikely. These youngsters generally know wtf they're talking about, and can help you decide if you're not particularly choosy about a specific component ("I want graphics card X, but I don't care what router"). This is no substitute for not doing your homework though, as they can't know everything.
- Once you've chosen all your components, decide whether to get them to install the OS (if you purchased one). If you do this, you'll need to return in 2-3 days. If not, they'll assemble the rig on the spot while you go away for half an hour to eat or something; it should be ready when you return and they'll show you it'll power on with no bad parts before boxing it up for you to bring home.
Easy as pie. Labour charge isn't that much, probably what you spend on a lunch for a family of 4 or something like that. Well worth the hassle of not having to assemble everything yourself. I remember all too vividly the time I spent putting PCs together back in the 90s, swearing when something went wrong and playing the "guess which component is bad" game.
Screw that hassle. Or maybe I'm just getting old But seriously, there's little reason to do everything yourself. Prices are close to what you get from online stores, bar sales. This is the IT malls I'm talking about, not the retail shops selling ready-made PCs like your Walmart or CompUSA or whatever equivalent. Not unexpectedly, those do add hefty retail margins to the price tag; nobody buys from those guys.