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Whether you have decided to buy slower hardware and overclock it, or bite the bullet and pay for speed up front, it's always worthwhile to find good deals and reliable retailers. Although local shops might have decent sales from time to time, on the whole, online shopping will provide the best prices on hardware components.
A site called ResellerRatings (http://www.resellerratings.com), which is owned and maintained by the author of this book, lets you search thousands of online retailers to find the best hardware prices, and then browse customer reviews of retailers to protect you from poor service. Some other price search engines have company ratings as well, but those sites are in the business of providing price searches, not company ratings, and they do not go the extra mile to ensure the integrity and authenticity of the customer reviews of companies to nearly the same degree as ResellerRatings. If you use other price search sites such as iBuyer.net (http://www.ibuyer.net), PriceWatch (http://www.pricewatch.com), PriceGrabber (http://www.pricegrabber.com), or CostUpdate (http://www.costupdate.com) to compare results, be sure to use ResellerRatings.com to evaluate unfamiliar retailers. Once you have made a purchase, help other shoppers by leaving your feedback on the site as well.
BizRate (http://www.bizrate.com) is another site that features ratings and reviews of online retailers. However, BizRate only features 450 or so computer hardware retailers. It is also unclear to this author as to what steps BizRate takes to prevent fraudulent evaluations. Still, the site offers one more resource for your arsenal, especially when coupled with ResellerRatings and various other price search sites.
The AnandTech "Hot Deals" forum, accessible at http://forums.anandtech.com, is another way to find good prices online. As its name implies, this forum is filled with the latest online hardware deals.
Although I do not advocate that you buy from one retailer or another, and that you make full use of price search sites and ResellerRatings before you buy, NewEgg (http://www.newegg.com) has a user reviews feature on its site that you may find useful. It enables customers to submit reviews and ratings for various products, which are helpful when deciding which products to buy. Often, users comment about the overclockability of a motherboard or other product, as well.
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