You have to love Micro Center

So I went by my local Micro Center to look at cases for a desktop build. I've been planning on using a i5-3570K and taking advantage of MC's "$50 off a Z77 motherboard with a 3570K purchase" deal. They're selling the 3570K for $189.99. Would have liked the Intel DZ77BH but it was $175 which was more than I need, so was 'planning on the $119 AsRock Z77 Pro4.

While looking at cases, another customer asked a MC clerk whether he could get the $50 off a Z77 motherboard if he bought an i7-2700K instead of the i5-3570K. The clerk says "yeah, I can do that." So when he got done with that customer, I asked him "can I get the $50 off an Intel H77 motherboard instead of a Z77 if I buy the 3570K." He asked which motherboard I wanted and I said the Intel DH77KC which was on sale for $109.99. So he says "yeah, I can give that to you for $59.99." As you might expect, I said "I'll take it." So I got an i5-3570K and a new H77 Intel motherboard for a grand total of $266 including tax. Newegg and Amazon want $250 just for the cpu and $120 for the motherboard, for a total of $370. That's a heck of a difference.

I don't plan to overclock or use dual graphics cards so the H77 is great for me.

I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't have a local Micro Center. But I did not know you could "negotiate" the terms of their advertised deals like that.

Still need to get a case and order some SDRAM from Newegg, and I'll be all set.

Agreed. No ITX mobos, no "S" or "T" cpus, and one ITX case (the little Antec, not sure if it's the 65w or 150w version that they carry.) Not much help for my ITX HTPC build, but I suspect I will take advantage of their $109.99 i3-2125 price for that build.

They have started carrying a few lower wattage name brand PSUs I've noticed. They used to mostly all be 750-1250w models. The 400w ones were all names you've never heard of. Now my local one stocks the Antec 380 and a couple other ones.

Their market is people wanting to add to their standard home desktops, and people building gaming machines. No htpcs need apply. You'd think with their TV department they could cross promote. I.e., display a couple of HTPCs in with the TVs. Just not enough volume of sales I assume.


I don't know, when the difference gets to be $110. . . .

Well, it will have the i5-3570K cpu and Intel DH77KC motherboard.

I have a few parts that have been sitting around for a while waiting for this build including a Plextor M3 128gb SSD and a PC Power & Cooling Silencer MK III 400w PSU. My data is on a 500gb Samsung hard drive that will simply move to the new machine, and I've got a 1tb Hitachi hard drive that's still in its box (don't even recall buying it; I almost always buy bare drives) and has been sitting on my shelf for at least a year. It will go in as a backup drive for automatic incremental backups of the SSD and data drive. I always just put a backup drive internally in my desktops these days, what with the low price of storage, and it's a lot handier than using externals. Also have a new copy of W7 Pro that I'll finally use.

I think I'm going to get a Corsair Carbide 300R case. Should have gotten it today, but then I saw a Fractal Designs case that I liked and wanted to read about. But I want the USB 3.0 front panel outlets, and the Fractal I was looking at are 2.0, so I'll stick with the Corsair. (I really like the Carbide 400R, but it is just enough bigger in both height and depth to make it a problem for me, so I'll go with the 300R.

Think I'm going to order 2x4gb of GeIL Enhance Corsa DDR3 1600 ram unless I find something on a good sale in the next few days. Still debating whether to get a Hyper 212 Evo or stick with the stock cooler. The case has a lot of fan mounts, and I'm not overclocking, so I suspect I'll go with the stock cooler. Need to order a couple of 140mm fans for the top and side of the case. Will probably keep the front 140mm fan and replace the rear 120mm with a Scythe Gentle Typhoon.

So that's my current plan, subject to change until built.