Central Computers — Attraction in Santa Clara

I will never buy from central computers again I purchased a gigabyte 9070xt online waited 6 days for it and when I finally received it the card was defective I ran display driver uninstaller on my pc installed it and got the latest drivers from AMD and dealt with constant crashing instability and pc totally locking up I went ahead and did a fresh clean install of windows 10 and had the same issue so I tried a fresh clean install of windows 11 same issue I went as far as trying a clean install of catchy OS which is Linux based and I had the same issue instability crashing and locking up so I tested the card on another desktop and had the same issues so I went ahead and contacted customer service I sent them six videos of the card acting up while trying to play games and run benchmarks I showed the AMD adrenaline control panel so they could see I did not tamper with the card in no way shape or form they would not provide a shipping label so I had to purchase a shipping label to send it back to them when they received it they claimed nothing was wrong with the card that something was wrong with my pc but again mind you I tested it on two different pc's one freshly built with a 14th gen i5 14600k a 1000watt Rosewell psu a gigabyteZ790 AORUS ELITE X 32gb of ddr5 Kingston fury 1 tb Samsung 990 pro and a 2tb Samsung 970 nvme SSD. the other pc it was tested with was a i5 12600k with a evga 850w g3 32gb of tforce delta ddr5 2tb HDD 1tb Samsung 970 nvme SSD. I asked them what driver version they were running and I was told it was the day 1 driver which is over 6 months old they told me that my gpu was unstable with all the other drivers. I told them that this card is a flagship card if this was a major issue I'm sure AMD would have addressed it by now I told them my friend has the same exact card and doesn't have these problems I also brought up the fact I couldn't even run Linux without having issue but yet they did not test Linux with the card and they have done acknowledged that my card is unstable on all the AMD released drivers other than the day 1 drivers they tried charging me a 15% restoking fee for this broken card I told them I want a full refund and I want to be reimbursed the return shipping cost which they refused to pay me back the cost of the return shipping even though I sent them a receipt. this whole experience has been a nightmare I cannot recommend buying from central computers due to the experience I have had with customer service its costed me time and money I cant believe they would try to claim nothings wrong with the card even though it wont run Linux stable nor will it run any recent display drivers I have been doing computer work for over a decade and can't believe they would say the card is fine if the average joe had the same issues they would just give him back a broken card or charge a fee to exchange the card absolutely disgraceful . I went ahead and ordered a 9070xt from Newegg which I received within 24 hours of ordering the card the shipping was cheaper and not only that the card came all the way from California the card works great no driver issues and no crashing and it can run catchy os i had a great experience with Newegg wish I could say the same about central computers but I cannot. Update i see that my review has been responded to but you failed to read the pictures that I uploaded from the conversation i was not refunded for the return shipping my time money and patience...

UPDATE 10/06/2021 They have this system build limitation so they can avoid scalpers HOWEVER they are selling 3080TI's at SCALPER PRICE (USD 1900) - SIGN PETITION FOR MICROCENTER RETURN feel free to contact me to sign. We have collected almost 1,600 customers for the petition. We will be submitting at 2,500 signatures. Almost there everyone!

Stay smart and don't fall for these scams!

Post Central Computers Response below:

Then you need to provide several outlets instead of making one or the other. Though a shipment received is small you should still have sub section that are limited to system builds, limited to waitlist folks, and do your gamification if you'd like all at the same time. Don't do one or the other because it limits the availability to everyone - Everyone's needs are different. But you cannot say below that you do not benefit from limiting your items to system builds from your store. There are many folks like myself that are building a PC from components from everywhere because simply put central computers do not offer competitive prices to microcenter/amazon/newegg/shop4mega and even Best Buy Purchasing experience is never straightfoward at Central Computers for newly released products - Always some wheel of fortune, or required full system builds, or must buy 4 out of 6 computer components to purchase schemes. This is 2020... where are the regular computer stores in NoCal?... Might need to start a Microcenter petition for the Bay area which I'm confused that proper stores like these no longer exists in Sillicon Valley

The biggest problem with Central Computers is that they try to force upon system builds for parts you need. If a newly release part is released they limit them to system builds which defeats the purpose of having PC COMPONENTS store nearby... I wish they keep a bit of code of honor/decency and just sell products to customers who come in the store instead of trying to force unto you up-priced components. The business model feels a bit slimy - always about the money and forcing unto you other parts that are all up-priced from retail price so you can get what you really need. Other than this it's nice to have a convenient store near by but they treat/limit/gamify popular components to get you to spend or waste your money and/or your time in...

My mother brought in a PC for removal of malware, (specifically a rootkit, for you techies out there) which I would have serviced myself if we lived in the same city. All they did was install Microsoft Security Essentials, performed a quick scan and relied solely on that program to resolve the malware issue, which is something ANYONE can do with the help of google. This did absolutely nothing for the computer, and the performance of the computer still suffered as if nothing were fixed. They charged her $150, held her PC for a day, and when she came back to them to ask when they didn't fix the problem she paid them for, they responded with, "You need better hardware."

The PC in question is a dell vostro V13 running a 32bit version of windows 7 with a core 2 duo 1.3ghz and 2G of RAM, which is more than enough to run windows 7. Hell, I've thrown together a single core AMD with 1GB of ram and it runs windows 7 fairly smoothly, in terms of just simple web browsing, youtube, e-mail, etc, which is exactly what the owner was using her computer for.

Bottom Line: They took money for a service they didn't perform, did not offer a refund, and blatantly LIED to the customers face. I will no ever do business with them ever, unless warranty was offered, and even then, I would worry about their lies.

For anyone curious of what the malware/rootkit was, it was Alureon.a which I was able to remedy with 2 small programs. (One was TDDSKiller and the other, combofix) I'm actually writing this review on the computer that Central Computers was unable to fix and was quite unuseable after they returned it. Unuseable until I got to it that is. . . .

It's a shame that my half an hour of work yielded better result than a $150 service/scam from Central Computers, and I'm a business major not computer science or programming etc etc etc etc.

They probably have alot of satisfied customer in sales, (Probably because it mostly involves buying a brand new item at cost, setting a profit margin goal, and let the benefits of the product sell itself, through means of a decent salesperson) But if they want to sevice technology, they should probably educate themselves more instead of...