Availability of hardware?

I want to bring my computer to Taiwan, but I’m not going to go through the trouble of bringing my monitor or case, just the hard drive, disc drives, and motherboard. I’ll rebuild it once I get there. What is the availability of items like cases, monitors, etc? And how are the prices? I’d appreciate any information anyone can provide.

Just bring the whole box, you can carry it on, i think.

Ahem, availability… in Taiwan…
The local markets are excellent except for perhaps high end parts.

Kenneth

Cheap and plentiful…especially at Guanghua Market…you will never see more computer stuff in your entire life…just don’t try goin’ during afterwork hours or weekends…you’ll get squashed like a bug with all the ppl pushing around…

Actually, it is pretty well known that most of this stuff is made/designed in Taiwan…it is like asking if there are any fast food places in the United States…although I still find it kinda ironic that there seems to be more 7-11’s here than there are in the US/Canada…if you like building computers…you definitely moved to the right place…and the selection of porn at that place! wowsers!

Both cases and monitors are slightly cheaper here. All other prices are about the same.

Although one strange thing: I haven’t seen any AMD 64 chips or boards here at all. I’ve been looking on and off ever since they’ve been released.

Wouldn’t bring the monitor, but do bring your box. That is, unless you’ve got one of those friggin’ huge towers. Though I’m biased (I work for the company), strongly suggest a Shuttle XPC. 'Bout the size of a shoe box with nearly all the bells and whistles of your tower.

As to Athlon 64 chips 'n boards – just about all of that is being sold in the high-margin markets. Needless to say Taiwan isn’t one of those places.

This situation will likely turn around as AMD, NVIDIA and VIA’s next-gen chips start shipping in quantity. But, don’t start holding your breath just yet – two to four months.

If you know a little about computers, you can get almost everything you want. The store people try to be helpful, but often they have only enough English to get what you tell them you want. They can’t really give you advice on what to buy.

It will be convenient for you to bring the hard drives with your data. Also, English software can be difficult to get in the shops here.

There are plenty of cases available at Gwang Hwa computer market. They all seem to go for about NT$1000. There are about 3 stores completely devoted to the cases.

You can buy everything you want for your computer at that market or on Pa Deh road nearby. There are a lot of stores that sell all the individual components that go into a computer. This is, after all, Taiwan. Taiwan is a computer manufacturer.

In fact, why bring your computer parts at all? It will cost only $30-35K for a quite nice system including a flat screen lcd monitor.

[quote=“DuckMuck”]
Actually, it is pretty well known that most of this stuff is made/designed in Taiwan…it is like asking if there are any fast food places in the United States…although I still find it kinda ironic that there seems to be more 7-11’s here than there are in the US/Canada…if you like building computers…you definitely moved to the right place…and the selection of porn at that place! wowsers![/quote]

Actually, 7-11 is now a Japanese Company. It was purchase by Ito-Yokado Co. back in 1991.

According to the 7-11 Japan website, here is the number of stores world-wide with the 7-11 name:

Japan 10,080
USA 5,782

Taiwan
3,470
Korea 1,277
China 644
Canada 491
Australia 308
Norway 75
Sweden 74
Denmark 44
Turkey 21

Taiwan obvious has the highest concentration of 7-11s in term of population and land area.[ul][/ul]

Are y’all sure about stuff being cheaper?? Things looked a little more expensive in Taiwan to me. I’ve seen comments both ways on this.

To compare, I ordered the following on Saturday:

  1. Shuttle XPC model SN41G2B - $242
  2. 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM - $69
  3. AMD 2600+ Athlon XP - $88
  4. Maxtor 120GB 7200rpm - $77

Total for a very nice new medium-end box: $477. Add three bucks for a tube of heatsink paste, maybe. I picked up a second drive as well, but don’t know if I’ll use it in this one (these drives run hot; I’ll probably put a drive-cooling fan in the second bay).

Thanks again for the advice, Roc. :slight_smile:

If you buy off the Internet, or live in New York, L.A., or anywhere that has a Frys, it is most definitely cheaper in the USA, ususally about 7 - 10%. If you are not picky about brand and model numbers, and will buy whatever is on sale, it can be a lot cheaper there. Some of the higher end stuff is impossible to find. In October, I had a couple of distributors trying to track down DDR400 CL2.0 RAM, and they concluded there was none on the island. I similarly had no luck finding any AMD processor faster than a XP2800+, and those were darn rare and expensive. From what I remember of the prices I saw 2 weeks ago, MaPoDoFu, that system here would set you back around US $600, but that is a really rough estimate.

By the way, the standard price for almost any used 17" CRT monitor seems to be NTD 2000, and it is not hard to find good ones as so many people are switching to LCDs.

As far as bringing the case, it depends on how much room you can save by stripping it down. As stated above, decent quality cases are readily available for NTD 800 - 1300, although you may want to spend 300 more for a better power supply, especially if you will be stressing the system a lot.

I talked it over with a friend of mine tonight, just off the plane from Taipei, and she also said prices are higher in Taiwan. She’s got a huge list of stuff to bring back for friends. :slight_smile:

[quote=“MaPoDoFu”]Are y’all sure about stuff being cheaper?? Things looked a little more expensive in Taiwan to me. I’ve seen comments both ways on this.

To compare, I ordered the following on Saturday:

  1. Shuttle XPC model SN41G2B - $242
  2. 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM - $69
  3. AMD 2600+ Athlon XP - $88
  4. Maxtor 120GB 7200rpm - $77

Total for a very nice new medium-end box: $477. Add three bucks for a tube of heatsink paste, maybe. I picked up a second drive as well, but don’t know if I’ll use it in this one (these drives run hot; I’ll probably put a drive-cooling fan in the second bay).

Thanks again for the advice, Roc. :slight_smile:[/quote]

i’d be curious to know where you got this stuff. can u be more exact thatn guanghua shichang.

I’d agree with Walter, you’ll get slightly better deals for most things in the US if you shop on the Internet or big retailers like Fry’s. The savings is usually not enough to offset the hassle of transporting things back and forth though. There’s some things that Taiwan is really much cheaper at than the US though, such as cables, cases, removable hard drives, usb drive kits, and that sort of thing. Cables are the biggest bargain, enough that I often stock up when going back to the US. For most things though, buy it where you are going to use it. I buy most of the parts for my US based servers in the US, and for my computers here I buy at Guanghua. Some things are harder to find here though, especially if you want high-end stuff or a particular manufacturer. For instance I bought my sound card in the US because it is hard to find M-Audio gear here. It’s also hard to find the very high capacity hard drives here also; they top out at 160gb here at most shops while you can easily get 300gb in the US. With these few exceptions, I’d still advise buying where you will use it. For the original poster, I would suggest bringing over the hard drives and building a new system here.

True, true, true about lots things not being available here. There are an endless number of widgets made and/or source here that can’t be found on the Silicon Isle.

Dump the heavy baggage and bring those critical parts and leave the rest unless, of course, you do go for a Shuttle. You’ll find rebates for a number of models at us.shuttle.com/.

Er, sorry, Doug. Newegg.com and Fry’s in Seattle.

It’s just one example of the many computer vendors in Taiwan, but Tomnet have an online site with prices in NT dollars: tomnet (traditional taiwanese)

The best full computer (without monitor) deal I saw was this, coming in at just under NT$10,000, and payment plans are available:
(A)

[quote=“twocs”]It’s just one example of the many computer vendors in Taiwan, but Tomnet have an online site with prices in NT dollars: tomnet (traditional Taiwanese)

The best full computer (without monitor) deal I saw was this, coming in at just under NT$10,000, and payment plans are available:
(A)

Only on Pricewatch, you’ll end up with some REALLY sketchy components at those prices. Considering that a Celeron 1.7 cpu is at least $50, I’m not sure how they plan to put together the rest of the computer with $71 and make a profit.

Here’s my opinion after years of hauling computers back and forth:

-If you’re thinking about upgrading, bring your hard disk and other hard-to-find components (sound cards, high-end vga cards)

-If you want to bring your current setup, bring everything except case+ps, monitor, cd/dvd-rom and floppy drives. Cases and cd/dvd-roms start at $500 NT. And you don’t want to haul a CRT along for a ride.

I agree 99.99% with what you’re saying, but wanted to mention that I put in an apples-to-apples comparison either way – the cheapo system from Pricewatch is probably dodgy, but the Asus system is all name-brand components; what little I’ve heard about the Asus Terminator is all good.