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Before making purchases of computer hardware, it is my habit to pay HardwareZone.com a visit. First, to seek some advice on the forums as to whether my purchase is good value for money and if it is appropriate for the intended use. Second, to make use of the comprehensive price guides available for Singapore. HardwareZone is an invaluable source of information and is a much-needed helping hand for the hardware-illiterate like myself.

HardwareZone is essentially a global online community that discusses anything that has to do with, as the name suggests, hardware. This is not limited only to the realms of computers, but also to gaming consoles like Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo GameCube. There is actually also a lot of useful information on software, especially for Operating Systems. HardwareZone is further split into regional ‘portals’, namely Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Australia. Each of these portals have their own separate site and separate forums in their respectively native languages.

As mentioned earlier, price guides are one of the most useful tools available on this website. There are price guides for Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines and these are available for download, if you register as a member of the forum. This registration is free and open to all. The price guides are extensive, to say the very least, covering a myriad of products from cameras to graphics processing units. The guide is divided into categories of the IT products and further divided by brands and models. For example, for graphics cards, it first lists down the different types (PCI-E or AGP) of graphics cards, as well as the brand (NVIDIA GeForce or AMD ATI Radeon), followed by the model series. Then it is further split into Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) like Asus, Gigabyte and MSI.

Another supremely helpful feature is the HWZ forums. You can basically learn anything and everything fundamental about hardware from these forum discussions. From assembly of ‘rigs’ (the common term for computers) to choosing power supply to overclocking rig performance, the innumerable discussion threads will be a blessing to those less learned in this field of expertise. Most forumers are friendly and extremely helpful, responding to queries and requests from me promptly and patiently.

The ‘marketplace’ on HardwareZone is a place for users to advertise their wares - usually personal items that people want to sell. This is the place for users with a budget to find functional hardware, but at prices lower than retail.

In my opinion, the forums are a big plus point on this website due the mammoth amount of information available, as well as the presence of experts to provide advice on hardware selections. However, what irked me was that the HWZ forums are frequently offline, meaning that I get many ‘database error’ messages when trying to access the forums. This was a persistent problem and it was really annoying. Beware, also, not all forumers have good intentions on the marketplace, and many have been blacklisted for dishonest trades. There is still the iTrader rating points to help a user gauge the integrity of a seller, and hopefully that would be sufficient. Technical flaws aside, HardwareZone.com is indeed a haven for hardware ‘noobs’ all over the world.

The website can be accessed here
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