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The internet isn’t the best place for finding PC components to upgrade your computer — brick-and-mortar stores still reign supreme thanks to bundled deals
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The rising costs of components have led to a crisis in the consumer PC market. Prices on standard kits of DDR5 are through the roof, NVMe SSD prices are higher than ever, and worst of all, GPUs are also affected by the AI-driven onslaught. But when shopping around for reasonable prices, there might be a better solution than Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy if you’re lucky enough to live near (or are willing to drive to) one of Micro Center’s 30 U.S. locations.
In the current climate, choice has been severely limited when it comes to upgrading or building a new PC. You can’t just pick the best components to build a high-powered gaming rig, as many components are out of stock or at eye-watering prices. The same goes for trying to construct a budget PC build, as there just aren’t any cheap components anymore, apart from certain parts like AM4 CPUs, which are tied to limited upgrade paths. Just take a look at the price and availability of Nvidia’s RTX 5090, for example; at the time of writing, the cheapest RTX 5090 gaming GPU available online is $6,549.99, and that’s from a third-party seller on Amazon, not directly from a large first-party retailer or manufacturer. There are even reports that the RTX 5090 has been effectively discontinued in favor of making AI GPUs, which means pricing will only get worse over the coming months.
If you’re anything like me, when I’m even remotely considering spending that kind of money, I’m not willing to risk buying from a suspicious retailer or a seller that can’t refund or replace the product should there be a fault, or if it gets damaged in transit. The original MSRP for the RTX 5090 at launch was just $1999.99. I remember balking at that price; now I wish I’d made the leap, as the next generation of GPUs is likely not coming before 2028, discounting pricing and availability.
So, where does that leave us, in a climate that feels actively hostile to enthusiasts? There is one place that seems to be a small bastion of defiance amongst the doom and gloom of the price-rising apocalypse, and that’s Micro Center. Should you be lucky enough to live near a store, or at least within driving distance, then you have another option open to you for finding PC components at prices that are often much cheaper than both Amazon and Newegg. Unfortunately, apart from a small marketplace storefront on Amazon, Micro Center does not do business online.
Having a quick look at some in-store offerings at one particular store location, I can find several RTX 5090s: the Asus GeForce RTX 5090 ROG Astral and MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim, both priced at $5,029.99, over $1,500 cheaper than the cheapest available RTX 5090 found online at Amazon. That’s a considerable difference, but again, these prices are only available to those willing to make the trek to their local Micro Center store, and that’s a major caveat for the majority of Americans.
It’s not just the RTX 5090 either. I check for the best prices and deals on tech products daily, often finding some of the best value in component bundles from Newegg, where the high prices of RAM and SSD storage can be offset against the savings you typically make from bundling a bunch of deals together. Micro Center often undercuts these bundles with similar offerings at a significantly reduced price, but the issue is the ability to take advantage of the deal. The reason I don’t just highlight Micro Center deals more often is the limited availability to the majority of our readers.
Let’s break down an example of one of Micro Center’s DDR5 component bundles. This gaming-oriented bundle features an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, an MSI B850 Gaming Pro WiFi6E AM5 motherboard, and 32GB of G.Skill Flare X5 Series DDR5-6000 memory. The total for these three components in a bundle is $899.99, with the cheapest price listed on PC Part Picker for the 9800X3D at $449, the MSI B850 Gaming Pr