Weekly Hardware Price Guides - Motherboards & Memory: October 2002 2nd Edition

Last week we decided to give the Price Guides a little bit of an overhaul.  We would like to take the time and address some of the feedback we got in the form of your emails.

First and foremost, the majority of the emails we received asked why we did not use PriceWatch.com for our price listings.  There are several good reasons for this and we are going to try to address them all.  In order to be listed on PriceWatch, a dealer must pay PW, and then update their prices by contacting PW.  Unfortunately, this is a setup for disaster.  Several vendors purposely list prices inaccurately to draw clicks into their websites.  This goes unchallenged by PW.  Most of the companies that do this place the product 7 clicks (and even deeper) off the front page.  Don’t fall for these scams.  If you see a dealer with a deal that is too good to be true, and it’s not on their front page, it most likely is.  Another play on this scam is that dealers will sometimes list a product fairly low, but then charge an unacceptable amount for shipping.  By the time you actually determine the shipping amount, you have probably seen 10 or more pages with more products.  This is an old, dirty marketing technique. 

The second issue with PW goes hand in hand with the previously addressed one.  More often than not, simply substandard service gets delivered with substandard pricing.  Have you ever got a motherboard you were sure was refurbished?  Have you recieved RAM that was a different CL than advertised?  The simple fact is bigger companies do not do this kind of thing.  However, smaller websites sometimes do not have much to lose.  Even scarier though, some operations might not even know the true details about the product they are selling either!  In conclusion, the point we like to make about PW is that it simply pays off in the long run to do our own research based on big name operations.  It’s not to say there are not good deals out on PriceWatch, but many people need to know the truth of the matter is that there are dealers out to scam, and PW provides a very simple way for these dealers to get their foot in the door.

With that being addressed, we would like to let you know how to protect yourself as well.  First of all, get involved! Our reseller ratings can provide tons of information on a particular reseller.  Seeing a dealer with a positive rating of only 40% might change the way you think about a particular website.  There are several ratings on companies that have never shipped products in there!  Also do not forget to check ResellerRatings. Another way to get the best deals while protecting yourself is through our forums.  Check out or For Sale/Trade or our Hot Deals section for more information about resellers!

Back to talk about Price Guides; we added several features to this weeks PG.  First of all, many people asked for links from the listed products to the reviews we have done at AnandTech.  This should definitely help anyone research what they are buying a little bit more, so we did not hesitate to add this to the guides.  Also several people asked for notation of Editors Choice awards on the PG as well.  For motherboards, this was no problem, although we are still searching for a way to denote which RAM is the best deal.  Several visual enhancements will also be added in the coming weeks as well.

Several updates were made to this page on Oct 16, many thanks to tsee from our forums!