xanadu-fx.com

This is a short guide to buying PC parts. The first step is to read reviews and narrow down your choices. My favorite site for hardware reviews is tomshardware.com (also known as THG). There are many other sites, such as AMDmb.com, arstechnica.com, socketa.com, anandtech.com and hardwarecentral.com just to name a few. If you’ve gone to the above sites and narrowed down your choices to between 2 or 3 parts, you might want to google for the part names and the word “reviews”. The important thing is to do your research. Do you want to spend all your spare time (or money) fixing your PC and/or reinstalling software and restoring data? Don’t buy parts just because they are cheap.
Once you narrow down your list, you can get a good idea of the price range for them by visiting price comparison web sites such as PriceWatch, Google Product search or PriceScan.
If you live near a Fry’s, you might be able to find your parts there for a reasonable cost. As far as online vendors, I prefer newegg.com, formerly known as Egghead Software. Their prices are usually the lowest, they ship very quickly, and their customer service is top notch. Also, you will find reviews by customers for almost every product, including any negative ones. Once you get your parts, save your receipts.