Hi

I've been in Zürich now for 8 months and I'm looking to upgrade my PC. The question I have is where do I get the best combination of price, convenience and service?

Specifically, I'm looking to buy a new high-end graphics card. I've found www.toppreise.ch for price comparisons. www.alternate.de in Germany looked good, and even offered English language for Swiss customers, but the only payment terms offered were COD (Cash on Delivery), which isn't very handy. I have ready one or two horror stories on the forums about customer service (or lack of) with the Swiss online retailers.

In the UK I used a combination of www.overclockers.co.uk, www.dabs.com and www.scan.co.uk. Some of the Swiss websites I've found have looked very unprofessional compared to these, which didn't give me much confidence in them.

I'm assuming prices in Mediamarkt are as uncompetitive as UK high street stores.

So where do other people get their latest computer gizmos from?

hbunny

I usually look and see on toppreise but end up at Digitec.
There are more places taking credit card like pixmania.com and pcp.ch Pixmania sends from France and you're supposed to get a bill for Swiss VAT but ..... last time I did not

digitec.ch best for a brick shop. Excellent online site and you don't even need to visit them. Everything gets delivered nicely and cheaply.

Avoid mega shop. I made the mistake of going to them when I was new in CH.

Some other good ones-

http://www2.computeruniverse.net/default.asp

http://www.pc-cooling.ch

I always buy from Unicom in Thalwil, they have built all my computers for the last 7 years include one with a hgh-end graphics card for gaming.

Dell. Bought 3 off them online and they were delivered in between 3 and 10 days. The advantage is (other than good value and solid machinery) you can specifiy the OS and software in English...

I build my own Dell are not solid machines though. For normal use they are ok I guess :-) I do buy Dell LCDs though. Got two 30" screens warming me up as I type crap online.

What I do is look at the dealer ratings on toppreise and use the ones that have a 5.2 rating and higher, and check that their rating on customer service after sales is also high. There a few that consistently score high and are also fairly cheap. I would usually order from primedirect.ch but I have not had to use any after sale service from anyone yet.b(I get the impression the above retailer is large).

Anyway, check out if they have a location you can visit, for if you really have to. I have built two computers this way using online stores.

Dells are also PIGS to overclock and many elements must be sourced from the OEM (ie. Dell) when replacing (PSU, mobo, etc).

Playing games and want to blow money? Wii comes out tomorrow and PS3, wart & all, is coming soon too

I use digitec for building my own after looking and ignoring toppreise (like Lob).

If I was buying off the shelf, I'd use Dell.

Overclocking:
I just used pc-cooling.ch coz digitec din't have the widget I wanted.
No CC though, just pay in advance.

Yeah Dell PSUs are really BAD!

Btw I have a nice 1KW PC Power and cooling PSU powering my beast dual CPU x dual core machine Yeah baby bring it on!

I built a Dual Core beast for 700 I think. I would never go Dell, not worth the quality of the parts. I also would not ordered outside of Switzerland, too much risk to get slapped and the prices are not worth it, let alone any warranty hassle.

Dell for me too, but building it yourself might be cheaper

Used to build them and have a lot of nice things to say about Asustek, but I would rather spend my time drinking tea (or whatever) these days.

I started building myself not because it comes cheaper but because of the individual high quality parts I can use and have full control over. Most of the shops would not even build the 11k + worth PC I was after for my 3d work. Hell some of the shop did not even know what an AMD Opteron CPU was It's another thing that I enjoy building them as well now

Thanks for the info. I went with www.pcp.ch for an HIS X1950XT graphics card.

hbunny

Steg is also pretty good. http://www.stegcomputer.ch

I have brought loads of stuff from there, good prices, and I have not had problems with warranty returns.

toppreise I have found does not always have the best prices. I usually end up doing a google search for the part number when I know what I am after.

Cheers

I've just ordered some computer stuff from misco.ch. In Canada, I always used TigerDirect, so I was happy to find out that there was a Eurpoean version: misco.co.uk, who are owned by the same company: Systemax Inc. They've now launched a Swiss version, misco.ch. I've always been pleased with the price, range, and service of TigerDirect and misco UK, so I assume the same will be true of misco CH.

The only drawback of misco.ch is that everything is in German; French is not an option. This is not so handy for those of us in the French-speaking part of the country. However, this is also true of other computer parts web-stores I've found in Switzerland, and with a little help from Google translator I was able to set up an account and make an order. The fact that there is a UK and Canadian version of the site with similar offerings meant that I could do all of my browsing on the English-language versions before only going to misco.ch to make the final order.

Update: I bought a large LCD monitor from Misco, paid just 17 CHF for regular shipping, and it arrived less than 48 hours after I placed the order. I couldn't be happier.

for PC upgradings go http://www.apple.com/chde/index.html i got my newlaptop in two days.

that's hardly "PC upgrading" - it's a replacement computer.
And you can buy Apples in quite a few stores now (including of course the Apple Store)

and now in Interdiscount XXL stores....