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Buying a pre-build PC on Costco, a saga

Published by Silveira on 2024-12-09

During Black Friday, I bought a computer from Costco, item 1857562 (iBuyPower i9-14900F+RTX 4070 Super). After about a week, I received a wrong computer from Costco. An iBuyPower i7-4700F+RTX4060 instead (item 1815274). That’s a weaker and cheaper computer (about $500 difference).

I called Costco, they offered me the following options:

  1. Return the computer, receive the money back. This would leave me without the computer and with the money buy the computer I wanted is now out-of-stock and there are no Black Friday deals.
  2. Return it, and the when the 1857562 (iBuyPower i9-14900F+RTX 4070 Super) is back in stock, they would price adjust it to the price I bought. They claimed that it will be back in stock at some point, but besides the time I fear the risk of them not honoring the price adjustment.

I offered them a 3rd option, return the wrong one and, for my troubles, I buy the a 1088917 (MSI Aegis ZS2 Ryzen 9900X+RTX 4070S 12gb) with an extra discount. This is a very similar machine with slightly better specs. They accepted. I had to buy 1088917 and once they ship it I will have to call Costco for the price adjustment. I will also have to handle the hassle of the return.

Overall, a terrible experience and a risk I never thought I would have with Costco. Looking the reviews I saw I was not the first one with exactly the same problem on this Black Friday of 2024.

ItemDescriptionDiscounted priceMSRP
1857562iBUYPOWER SlateMesh 8 Gaming Desktop – 14th Gen Intel Core i9-14900F – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super 12 GB- Windows 11 – 32GB RAM – 2TB SSD$1,300 (Black Friday)$1,700
1815274iBUYPOWER TraceMesh 7 Gaming Desktop – 14th Gen Intel Core i7-14700F – GeForce RTX 4060 8GB – Windows 11 – 32 GB RAM – 2TB SSD – Black$ 1000 (Black Friday)$1,200
1088917MSI Aegis ZS2 Liquid Cooled Gaming Desktop – AMD Ryzen 9 7900X – GeForce RTX 4070 Super, 12GB – Windows 11 2TB SSD$1,500 (Deal going on after Black Friday)
$1,300 (Agreement)		$1,700
Prices rounded up for simplicity

Hopefully I will get a good deal out of all this but I still have to handle the return and price adjustments.

Update 2025-01-28: Although I did get the MSI Aegis ZS2 for the discounted price Costco promised the return of the wrong computer has been a pain and it is still not resolved yet. I told Costco I would return at a UPS location, only to then accidentally stumbled on a UPS person trying to receive the item at my place, then returning it to them. They provided me all receipts and tracking numbers. Then weeks later I realized that Costco never returned my money. I have since called Costco. They acknowledged the situation and apparently is trying to fix it. A tip for anyone in a similar situation: return it at the warehouse and get all receipts. I avoided that path because I saw in the reviews people having the problem of the warehouse not accepting the return because it did not match the item purchased.

Update 2025-02-10: It took a lot of calls to Costco, a lot of broken promises, and having to escalate the issue to a supervisor, I finally got my money back on 2025-02-06. That’s almost two months after I returned the item. What they have told me is that there was a internal error that marked that I returned the item but I did not wanted a refund.

DIYPC Gamestorm-BK, Review

Published by Silveira on 2017-01-12

I had to build an additional PC and saw an opportunity to upgrade my Cooler Master HAF 912 with a DIYPC Gamestorm-BK, which fits a 240mm radiator.

The DIYPC Gamestorm-BK is a mid-tower with plenty of room, enough for a 240mm radiator at the top (or a 280mm radiator at the front or a 120mm in the back).

Building: Besides some information at the page where I bought it, there is not much information online about this case. Its manual is practically useless, just two pages with basically nothing.

It comes with 3 120mm fans with blue LEDS. I’m not enthusiastic for having a case with a lot of LEDs and I’m not into case modding or anything but they lights the interior of the case for the side window without creating a lot of light to the exterior. Also, the side window has a good size, larger than most of the ones I saw for a case in this price range.

To remove the front and top panel you have to pinch and push several plastic clips for each panel, applying some force. This is where the manual would have been really handy.

After that the build was very easy. There is plenty of space in this case, mostly due to not having ODD bays and a little (non-removable) SSD/HDD cage.

The power supply area has a lot of room making cable management even easier. The short legs are sturdy and stable and give a good clearance to the floor. The PSU was mounted upside down with the fan facing the floor. In case you are asking yourself if there is any problem with that, the answer is no.

The Lepa AquaChanger 240mm radiator fitted perfectly at the top. No problems with space, screws, anything.

It exterior has four USB ports (2x USB 3.0 and 2x USB 2.0) at the top of the case, which is just perfect if you, like me, keep the case in floor.

Price:  I paid US$39 for this case at Newegg. The original price was US$69.97. This was the best case I found around this price.

Conclusion: The DIYPC Gamestorm-BK is one of the best cases for this price. It’s great if you want a great internal space, easy cable management, and room for water coolers’ radiators.  If you want to have a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray unit, don’t buy this case.

Bookmarks for building a PC

Published by Silveira on 2017-01-03

logicalincrements.com Good as a starting point to find what kind of PC you want to build.

reddit.com/r/buildapcsales Aggregates best and latests deals on pc parts. You can also filter it, e.g.: latest SSD deals. This was probably the site that I most used for research, the comments sections were also very useful. Use the META filter for coupons and special deals.

pcpartpicker.com Use it to store your combination of parts and find possible incompatibilities between them. Given a piece, it also shows the prices from multiple stores and even the price history. These prices are sometimes out-of-sync or don’t take coupons in consideration, so sometimes you can get better deals.

camelcamelcamel.com Create e-mail alarms when a product reaches a desired price on Amazon.com. I have been using this site for everything related to Amazon.com with success for years.

iftt.com Create advanced notifications such “if there is a new post on /r/buildapcsales about SSD send me an email”.  For that you can use an IF “New post from search” THEN “Send me an email” recipe with search as “subreddit:buildapcsales SSD”. You can replace SSD for anything you want.

Lepa AquaChanger 240mm and Cooler Master HAF 912

Published by Silveira on 2016-12-22

Can you fit a fit a Lepa AquaChanger 240mm AIO Liquid Cooler in a Cooler Master HAF RC-912? Yes, but the fans will need to be mounted outside.

If you have a HAF 912 pc case and bought a Lepa AquaChanger 240mm AIO (All-in-One) water cooler with a 240mm radiator and they don’t fit, there is a way. You can fit them together but the radiator fans will not fit inside the case. The HAF 912 manual recommends you to put 240mm radiators outside the case, on the top of it and route the tubes in the back. There are two holes there designed for this. Unfortunately, this is not an option for the Lepa AquaChanger 240mm because it’s a AIO (which means you can’t remove any joint) and it’s tubes are too short for any customization.

The easier course of action is to put the 240mm radiator inside, facing the top, with the two fans outside of the case, in the top, pulling air from the radiator. You have to use the same screws to both hold the fans and the radiator, I had to try a few times until get it right. I also had to route the power supply to inside, for one of the fans I removed the top plastic cap of the case to pass the wires through there. I could keep the rear fan (pulling air from the case) in the same place, but using only one of the four screws as the other as misaligned now.


The disadvantage of this setup is that the fans are exposed and someone can accidentally break them by touching or dropping something on them. I added two 120mm grills later to mitigate this. Also, the fans are not in direct contact with the radiators so it’s not the most efficient setup.


In the other hand, I got both the case and the water cooler for a really good price and I didn’t want to replace any of them. I’m getting great CPU temperatures.

Another option would be drill a hole on the top of the case, get fans and radiator outside, and route the tubes using the hole. It could work but it would require a hole big enough to pass the pump through it.

Update: I was building another pc and ended up moving this water cooler to a different case which supports a 240mm radiator nicely (DIYPC Gamestorm-BK).