Excuse the mess. We are just cleaning up around here still, and we have got a lot of stuff to either throw out or decide where it will end up.
This is not an advertising page. All of the links (when there are links) will be my honest choices for useful resources during the build process. However, some of them do actually make their money by selling stuff, so I suppose this is advertising of a sort.
I work as a maritime lawyer in New Orleans and being an attorney has several advantages in that I have the resources to experiment with different retailers. Also my maritime legal experience gives me a perspective of jaded expertise as it were. You see my clients are those who get injured at sea and seek to recover medical and other expenses from employers who would rather not compensate them. That’s what lawyers do in a maritime law firm – it’s the calling of my profession. So my impression of value is slightly more harsh perhaps than a typical consumer, but that’s an advantage imo.
Now then back to my original posting. For one thing, I doubt I could get along without Newegg.
Sure, I do not always buy from them. They do not always have the best prices, and they sure as hell don’t always have all of the obscure little bits that inevitably find their way into my ‘must have’ file. I’ve never purchased every item for a build from them — there’s always at least one or two things that someone else can do better.
However, Newegg has the single best site that I’ve seen on the ‘net when it comes to ‘rough drafts’ and even more finalized designs for a build. A wide variety of choices, great prices (sometimes the best, especially with the combo deals), and an extremely user-friendly shopping cart setup. Forget all the ‘builder’ sites with huge drop-down boxes for each component selection, or the catalog sites which pretty much force you to start from scratch with every new component selection (TigerDirect can bite my shiny metal ass).
And as I’ve said, when it comes to tech reviews and roundups, there’s nothing better than a little Tom’s Hardware. I’m sure many of you have some sort of attachment to CNET or maybe one or two of the sites with “pc” or “comp” or “extreme” or “tech” in the title, but I’d be okay trading them all for Tom’s. No really, it’s THAT good.
Um, where else? Well, I’ve been hanging around FrozenCPU on and off for a while now, and it’s the perfect example of a place that has what Newegg does not. Xoxide and Guru3D are always worth a visit, too.
You will not be disappointed when visiting these places.
We have spent a lot of time researching, analyzing and reviewing not only these places but the entire selection of closest matching competitors to construct the list in the current form. A fact we are very proud of. As, I am sure, you would be if you found yourself in our shoes. It is not simply a matter of looking over a few sites. There is in depth study to find the exact features both positive and negative before we can get a clear view of exactly what we are looking at.