Sunday, May 04, 2008

A Funny Thing Happened

My primary computer has been down for about a month now. I removed the poor, weak excuse for a power supply that I was using and she's been idle ever since. As such, one of my reasons for going to Kansas City was to buy a proper power supply at Micro Center.

Before hitting the road, I received some birthday money from my parents (thanks, mom & dad) and I had ordered a Visa gift card with my bonus gift from work. I decided that while I was at Micro Center anyway, I would look into some tweaks for my existing system.

I went into MC and straight back to the B.Y.O.P.C. (Build Your Own P.C.) area to look at power supplies. As luck would have it, they had a 430W that is normally $49.99 on sale for $34.99 and it had a $10 rebate making the "price" $24.99. Score one for the home team.

Once that task was complete, I snagged a sales associate. They had a E2180 2GHz Dual Core (not Core 2 Duo) processor for $59.99 (marked $86.99) and I asked him if it would fit my motherboard. I handed him a printout and we agreed that it probably would NOT work since the information I had did not specifically say it would. It only listed P4 and Celeron D and didn't say anything about dual core. Once that was settled, I asked him if he had any cheap motherboards that I might use. I was told that they did, in fact, have some budget motherboards but that they all used DDR2 RAM (rendering my DDR RAM useless) and only had PCI Express and would not support AGP (rendering my video card useless). I quickly came to the decision that I didn't have the budget for all of that.

We then went over to the RAM and he pointed me toward a 1GB stick that would fit my motherboard for $27.99 so I picked it up and threw it into the basket. Every little bit helps. While I was there, I also noticed they had a matched set of Corsair DDR2 1GB sticks (2GB total) for $69.99, marked down to $62.99, with a $35 rebate for a final price of $27.99. Too bad I couldn't afford a video card.

I had taken two of my nephews with me and went to round them up. As I was making my way over to the other side of the store, I stumbled upon the clearance section. Now, the clearance section at this particular store is usually nothing to write home about but I like to look anyway. As I came around a fixture, I noticed a table with a decent selection of motherboards. The first couple I picked up were near or over $100 - outside my budget - but I came across a couple that were in the bargain basement range. I eventually settled on an ECS Elitegroup 945P-A motherboard with dual core support. The clearance tag said it was a return with the reason being "incomplete." There are no cables in the box (not a problem) but it also has a big "Graphics By ATI" sticker on the box but it has no built-in video. The board is normally $52.99, marked down to $26.96. Certainly not a top-of-the-line choice to begin with but decent nonetheless as it has an Intel chipset.

I began to wonder just how much a video card might cost me when I scanned the table and my eyes fell upon a PCI Express GeForce 8400 GS graphics card. It was marked as a return and operational and complete. Normal price $49.99 marked down to $29.96. Hmmm... $60 in the MoBo and Video... $60 for the processor... $30 for the RAM... that's only $150. I can cover that from my birthday and bonus funds. I threw the board and video into the basket, exchanged the DDR RAM for the DDR2 RAM, and had someone get the CPU out of the display case for me.

But that's not all! when I was printing out the rebate forms, I punched in the SKUs for the the MoBo and Video card and discovered they each had a $20 rebate as well.

I did NOT walk in the store with the INTENTION of upgrading my ENTIRE computer... but that's what happened. Here's the final breakdown.

Component................List Price
CPU.............................$ 86.99
Motherboard.............$ 52.99
Video Card.................$ 49.99
RAM...........................$ 69.99
Subtotal.....................$ 259.96
Power.........................$ 49.99
Total Value................$ 309.95


Component..........Marked Price..........Rebate..........Total
CPU...................... $ 59.99 ....................$ - ..............$ 59.99
Motherboard...... $ 26.96 ....................$ 20.00 .........$ 6.96
Video Card.......... $ 29.96 ....................$ 20.00 .........$ 9.96
RAM.................... $ 62.99 ....................$ 35.00 .........$ 27.99
Subtotal.............. $179.90 ...................$ 75.00 ..........$104.90
Power.................. $ 34.99 ....................$ 10.00 ..........$ 24.99
Total.................... $214.89 ...................$ 85.00 ..........$129.89

$310 worth of computer parts for $215 isn't bad but when you subtract $85 worth of rebates for a net total of $130, that's a pretty good Sunday afternoon in my book.

No comments: