Where to Buy a New Motherboard?

What stupid caption should I put for that...? If you want to mail order (or Web-order) the motherboard of your dreams, this section is for you. Mail-order is the cheapest way to buy products nowadays and if you don't live in the US, it may still be much cheaper to order it from the US and have it shipped to your front door than to go buy it from a local store. Living in Tokyo, that was obviously true (one good thing about Japan is that there is no custom duty for computer products shipped from overseas to Japan to be paid to the Japanese customs). At the end of this section, I give a list of stores that I have looked at.

Before doing anything, get an idea of the price of that motherboard. Best place to do that is PriceWatch, a server that monitors prices of PC hardware components in the US. This should give you a good idea of the current street price of that motherboard, along with a good list of stores that carry it.

You can also try ComputerESP (they are more regular users oriented). Be careful, though, as some prices are given for when you buy 100 or 1000 units at a time. Note that ComputerESP also surveys and ranks most US computer store by selection, pricing, online ordering…

NetBuyer is more regular consumer oriented and you will only find limited selection of motherboard information there.

Now that you know what you should pay for that motherboard, visit as many online stores as possible to find out how seriously they work. Motherboards are fragile elements and you should know exactly the process and the cost in case you receive a defective motherboard. Specifically,

	Check if they have a 30-day money back guaranteed (so that if you are not 100% satisfied with what you received, you have 30 days to return it and get your money back, no questions asked).
	Check what kind of credit card they take. If they only take Discover, it may mean that they can't afford the level of service required by VISA or AMEX.
	Check if they have a restocking fee (usually between 0% and 15% of the price of the motherboard).
	Check who pays for returning the motherboard in case it is defective.
	Check if they accept non-US credit cards and ship internationally (if you need to have it shipped internationally, of course). If you can't find the information, it's usually under the Ordering or Customer Service pages of their Web site.
	Check if they test what they ship before they ship it. For example, if you buy a motherboard + processor + I don't know what other component, some will test if the whole thing works together before shipping it (if it makes sense). Some do not say so…
	Check shipping charges, especially if it is shipped internationally. Although more expensive than the regular postal service, express delivery service companies (DHL, FedEx, UPS…) are recommended. Shipping charges are a big mystery for me. For example, to ship a motherboard to Tokyo (less than 1Kg) in 5 days, it costs US$169. To ship the motherboard + case + power supply (about 10Kg), it costs… US$169! Three months later, I bought a bench of cards + lots software (~8Kb total) from another store and the shipping charges to Tokyo was US$41.
	Try to call them to confirm what is written on their Web site. Sometimes, you will be so surprised, like "Oh yeah, by the way, today only, we have a special 15% discount on that motherboard you want but didn't update our Web site for it".

I have bought from several stores and my recommendation, based on price, availability, organization and delivery speed is limited and in this order (all my orders were to ship outside the US, so I didn't check stores which can't do that).

USA	Japan
Motherboard SuperStore	TwoTop
MicroSource	T-Zone
MicroXPress	Laox

This page was last updated by JP on 12/03/98.