Micro Center — Attraction in Radnor Township

Hello everyone! Please read as this is very important because I don't want you to experience what I did! Sorry in advanced as this will be long but I want to provide all the details!

So I ordered a 3,500$ PC with a Intel CPU. After having my PC for about 2-3 weeks it just constantly ran super hot (Intel is known for this). I decided I just want to deal with any future problems I decideded to swap over to AMD. I've learned there was a MC about 1.5 hour away for me and this is a very popular store across the US and I've got really excited! So Monday morning I drove down with my PC. I almost knew what I wanted and waited about 20 mins for help (not a big deal at all). Once I finally got some help the service advisor said "you know what you want cause I don't have time I'm really busy", I said yes I just have 1 or 2 questions and he said "I can't answer them but I can grab your parts"...I said ok I guess and he brought them to the front so I can purchase them. After purchasing them, I walked over to the service desk so they could swap my CPU and motherboard. The lady I spoke to was great and answered my questions to the best of her ability. I was told there is a PCs ahead of your but it will be done tonight as it's only 1 hour of work. I said great but I'm not going to wait around I'll come back in the AM for it. So the next day it's now 11am and I heard nothing. I went online and talk to someone there and they said someone will be calling. Someone did call shortly after and said "there was a problem and we are running tests" with no other details. I said oookkkk. He said the tech working on it comes in a X time and will start it right away, it really shouldn't take that long. I said ok perfect ty. I drove the hour and half day, went shopping at IKEA near by and spent roughly 2 hours in there and then ate lunch. Still no update. Finally we went to the store and asked is my PC finished. The answer I received was the tech before plugged in something wrong and we are running test (this was at 230-3) in afternoon and it should take about 1 hr maybe 2 hrs max. So after waiting about 1 he and 45 mins went back to check in and then received "need to test more if wont be done tonight". So ended up leaving and 2 mins before closing I got a text saying simply "something is wrong with your ram". Now mind you I've used the PC right before I brought it and ram was working absolutely perfect. I did look up and my ram was compatible with AMD. So now I'm nervous. The next day comes about lunch time I called in again and asked can someone please tell me wtf is wrong with my PC...it's now day 3 after supposedly 1 hour of work and your telling me that perfectly working ram is now not working. I received a call and said "yesterday they were running Intel tests and you have amd so we are running the correct test now and should be done today and your ram might not work for your new AMD system"...I said ok is it going to be done today and said not sure have to run all the test. Later on I got a text from the tech saying your ram isn't going to work although it boots up and runs fine it just won't be optimal I recommend for you to put new ram in. I got a link if new ram that they wanted to install and I said no ty please just get my PC ready for pick up and I'll do it my self. Finally shortly after that my PC was ready and I went to pick it up. When I got the counter the new motherboard box was almost slammed on the desk with the old motherboard on top not wrapped up or anything. I look up and say are you kidding me? You couldn't wrap the parts up and where is my other stuff. It appeared they didn't know where some stuff is and after about 10 mins I finally got everything back. There was fingerprinta ALL over the case, a mark on the bottom of the corner but can't pin point that and I was already so mad and fed up I just wanted my PC back. After getting it home, I installed new ram, went into BIOS and changed some things as I am pretty good with PCs. It ran absolutely horrible. There is more that is wrong but I ran out of...

Lo and behold it's as if I had stepped back into a computer store from the early 90's. Everything I could ever want from a computer store was here.... Walls full of motherboards. Check! Rows of video cards and HDD / SSD storage. Check! Premium Monitors and other video accessories. Check! Switches and Networking gear. Check! Single board computers (Raspberry Pi type stuff) CHECK! OMG it was as if I had died and and gone to technology heaven.

Really, and no joking now. I was stunned and it really goes to show how few and far between real computer stores are anymore. The last place I saw on this level was a Fry's store down in the Atlanta area several years ago.

As my brother and I walked around and took it all in we weren't bothered by staff and found them to be very helpful. I'd say the customer service here was outstanding. I couldn't find what I was looking for so I checked their website on my iPhone, selected the location I was at, which was this store I'm reviewing, and then punching in the item I wanted. What was I looking for? A 1 TB PiDrive for my Raspberry Pi 3. The results showed me they had 2 of the PiDrive Kit in stock, and which aisle to find it it. Pretty darn cool. The item however wasn't on the isle, a similar one was, so I asked a gentleman I found in that department, his name was Darryl, and he informed me that kept that particular item in the back and went into the back and brought it out for me.

The other thing I wanted to point out was the retail markup. There was barely any. The retail prices here matched their online prices and I found everything that I looked at to be very fairly priced. Especially some of the higher end gaming motherboards I looked it.

We jumped in line and out the door we went. Fantastic place. I can't wait to come back on my next trip to the Philly area. Just Outstanding!

----- June 2018 Update -----

I'M BACK!!!

Woot! Just over a year ago I visited Micro Center for the first time and I've been itching to make another pilgrimage. I know it may seem odd that I'm so hyped up for this place, however when you live in a part of the country that no longer has true computer stores you'll have a better understanding of why I feel so happy when I come here.

On this trip I was looking to pick up a some Raspberry Pi's. The newest Model 3 B+ and some couple of Zero W's and also look into some UPS and large external storage drive. Once again I wasn't disappointed at all.

I found all of the Raspberry Pi's and accessories that I needed and was able to get some hands on with several different UPS as well. My nephew was with me as well and we spent a few minutes checking out the HTC VIVE 3D setup too. Very cool indeed.

I swear if I didn't live 5.5 hours away I would probably be in this store every weekend. Maybe that's a good thing. Also last but not least, I want to say for the record that the staff I've encountered has been super friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. Class act all the way. I can't wait to visit again and hopefully it won't be a year...

Updated Review, Dropping from 5 to 3: Our experience has been okay with Micro Center, but unfortunately frustrating. While the staff try to be helpful, the situation we are in is not great. We live close to a Best Buy and should have just gone there rather than driving 80 minutes round trip each time to Micro Center. We ended up having to go 5 times to Micro Center to build a PC, and still don't have a completely working PC today. The first time we went, we bought almost everything to buy a PC (a friend had a few extra parts that we used). After spending 12 hours building the PC and trouble shooting, nothing we did could make it turn on. The second time we went to Micro Center they told us we would need to pay $80 for them to see which parts are not working on the PC - fine. We found out the CPU and the motherboard were both faulty. The third trip we came back to pick up the PC and the replacement pieces. We went home to install and found out that the screws to the motherboard were left at Micro Center by the diagnostics person - the screws were put in the old motherboard bag and they also kept our SSD NVME card. We tried to call, couldn't, and did a chat via the website and were told the manager would call us... the manager never called. Fourth trip to Micro Center to get the screws and SSD. We then got home and found out the motherboard was still faulty, and decided to last minute go to Best Buy to see if that was actually the case. Yes, we had two faulty mother boards and do not recommend Gigabye Z890 Eagle WIFI7 Intel LGA 1851 ATX Motherboard. It was recommended to us by Micro Center, but we found no amazing reviews online and several negative ones saying theirs never worked. We wish we did more background research rather than trusting. Fifth trip to Micro Center in two weeks to return the second faulty mother board. And.... here we are a day later, finding out that the case's front fans don't power on, which technically the $80 diagnostic should have found. Unless you live close to here, or they have an amazing deal on PC parts you want, I would not recommend making a special trip out here. Which is unfortunate because it is so recommended to us, even the IT person at my work loves Micro Center.

Sterling has helped my husband and I select computer parts for building our own PC's, two separate visits over a year apart. He has been incredibly helpful both times, very easy to work with, and made suggestions in our budget which we're grateful for. Sterling was completely honest about everything, including reasons to spend more money or why we could skip and go with something less expensive. The store is well set up with plenty of sales people to help. The prices seem good, at least the same as Amazon or less. I wish they had a Delaware location because skipping sales tax would be awesome, but happy to come here from...