Any good computer stores in Melbourne?

December 6, 2008 9:12 PM

Does anyone know a good computer store based in Melbourne, Australia?

I'm looking for a place that sells quality hardware with as little overhead as possible. Little to no support but a generous return policy for malfunctioning goods is what I prefer. I'm basically in the market for a new graphics card and want to get the best return for my dollar I can get.

I'm looking for the Melbourne version of u-mart, and I don't run in the circles here that'll let me find that place with world of mouth!

posted by Silentgoldfish to Technology (8 answers total)

Best answer: Lonsdale Street between Queen and Elizabeth is the computer-store strip - most of them are pretty good, and all are competitively priced. I don't know if iStore are still on that strip, but I used to do all of my component shopping there and never had any problems.

A friend swears by Scorptec out in Clayton, if you're out in that part of the suburbs.
posted by The Shiny Thing at 9:51 PM on December 6, 2008

MSY are Melbourne-based, have the shittiest website I've seen since the early 90's, and the Queensland stores at least have no service or support whatsoever - but that's coupled with a generous returns policy (well, more generous than I've ever got from Umart, where faulty-out-of-box stuff I bought an hour before often gets me an initial "that'll be 10~14 days before the distributor approves an exchange"). I've never had a problem returning faulty stuff to MSY, possibly because they resell it to the poor bugger in line behind me...

Dunno if they meet your definition of 'quality', though. I wouldn't call Gigabyte or MSI quality by any stretch, but they also sell ASUS which kinda makes the grade...
posted by Pinback at 11:10 PM on December 6, 2008

You want CPL. http://www.cpl.net.au/

Their return policy is pretty average (they just handball it back to the manufacturer), but their prices are the cheapeast I've seen.
posted by cheaily at 2:16 AM on December 7, 2008

I second MSY (although I have only visited the Sydney stores). Low overheads (almost no overheads), prices cheaper than the Chinese guys near the markets. A GB of notebook RAM was about the same price as on Ebay. If the Melbourne stores are like Sydney, I'd suggest emailing the order ahead of time and using the "express pickup" counter, otherwise if you get stuck behind some noob asking questions about something you could wait a long time. Queues in Ultimo are often 10 people deep.
posted by bystander at 2:49 AM on December 7, 2008

Seconding CPL. Good stuff cheap.
posted by andraste at 3:12 AM on December 7, 2008

seconding scorptec. they cater to people who are at least partially computer literate, so they focus a lot more on good prices and product range
posted by TheOtherGuy at 3:40 AM on December 7, 2008

1 - Know exactly what you want
2 - Buy Thursdays 'Age' for the Green Guide
3 - Find cheapest price from the dozen vendors
4 - Ring to see if they have item in stock; if yes, reserve; if no, goto next vendor;

If price was about the same I would go to CPL
posted by lamby at 8:49 AM on December 8, 2008

Response by poster: I marked Istore cause it was where I wound up finding my card, but thanks for all the suggestions. I called around a bit and wound up quite pleased with the result!
posted by Silentgoldfish at 2:45 PM on December 9, 2008