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Australian buying options

mad jew

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Any Aussies here know of good places to buy new Mac parts? I'm mainly interested RAM and hard drives. Everyone on these forums talks about Critical etc but are there Australian alternatives? Apple charge such high prices for these things!

Also, are third party parts like RAM and hard drives all compatible with OSX?
 
When I bought my PB Rev D under the Educational price the Apple RAM was the cheapest I could find!!! But if ur not a student I guess that doesnt help you.

www.macmall.com.au sells RAM. I dont know of many others. When it comes to Apple stuff Australia really sux
 
Thanks Aussies. Yeah, I'm a student but the prices still seem a bit hefty.

Ahh well, you get what you pay for...
 
mad jew said:
Any Aussies here know of good places to buy new Mac parts? I'm mainly interested RAM and hard drives. Everyone on these forums talks about Critical etc but are there Australian alternatives? Apple charge such high prices for these things!

Also, are third party parts like RAM and hard drives all compatible with OSX?
Click to expand...

Do you mean 'Crucial' instead of 'Critical' 🙂

www.crucial.com

Their RAM is top-notch, and they guarantee it will work in your particular system if you follow through their online selector and choose according to your machine. It can be a little pricey though, and you have to pay for delivery from the US. I bought 2 x 512MB sticks for my PowerMac G5 after having a bad experience with some locally bought Apacer stuff (kept causing the G5 to lock up and crash).

The 512MB SO-DIMM I have in my 12" PowerBook was supplied by AppleCentre Chatswood, and they charged about fair market rate for the upgrade when they installed it. It was certainly a lot cheaper than what Apple was charging to do it in the factory. I don't think you could go wrong buying RAM from an Apple authorized dealer, since they will have (hopefully) had experience in doing upgrades themselves for customers and will know which brands of RAM work well and which ones don't.

Otherwise, I would suggest buying some good quality RAM from your regular PC parts supplier. RAM Brands like Kingston often get good write-ups for compatibility in Mac systems. Try and steer clear of the absolute bottom of the barrel cheapie stuff, or stuff from low-end RAM manufacturers.

As for hard drives, any brand will work provided it has the correct interface, ie: Ultra ATA for older systems and notebooks, and Serial ATA for PowerMac G5s and iMac G5s.

If you're at all concerned about what hardware will work well in a particular type of Mac, try www.xlr8yourmac.com. They have a searchable database of reader reports regarding compatibility with a wide range of peripherals. It's an excellent resource.

Hope this helps.
 
oingoboingo said:
Do you mean 'Crucial' instead of 'Critical' 🙂
Click to expand...

:::Slaps head::: Yeah, that's the one! Thanks everyone, you've all been really helpful. I had a bit of a look around and just ended going to my local NextByte (Apple reseller). They were really helpful, reasonably priced, and there's a certainty that it will all work properly.
 
I can only suggest you shop around because there are bargains to be had on occasion with everyone.

I wish someone would pull together a complete list of Australian resellers and parts people...
 
aswitcher said:
I can only suggest you shop around because there are bargains to be had on occasion with everyone.

I wish someone would pull together a complete list of Australian resellers and parts people...
Click to expand...

Me too. Here's one to add to the list http://www.epowermac.com.au/ Apple store was cheaper when I bought my PB 2 weeks ago (educational price).
 
This is awesome. Crucial.com was a whopping AU$300 cheaper than Macmall.com.au for a 1gig stick of RAM for my iBook. Yes, I did convert the prices to AU$ and I also factored in the US$20 cost of posting it out here!

On the whole though, the Apple stores seem like the cheapest (and safest) places to buy parts.
 
mad jew said:
This is awesome. Crucial.com was a whopping AU$300 cheaper than Macmall.com.au for a 1gig stick of RAM for my iBook. Yes, I did convert the prices to AU$ and I also factored in the US$20 cost of posting it out here!

On the whole though, the Apple stores seem like the cheapest (and safest) places to buy parts.
Click to expand...

Will they ship to it here (OZ)?
 
mad jew said:
This is awesome. Crucial.com was a whopping AU$300 cheaper than Macmall.com.au for a 1gig stick of RAM for my iBook. Yes, I did convert the prices to AU$ and I also factored in the US$20 cost of posting it out here!

On the whole though, the Apple stores seem like the cheapest (and safest) places to buy parts.
Click to expand...


So whats a Gig of ram for your PB actually costing in AUD all up?
 
Lz0 said:
Will they ship to it here (OZ)?
Click to expand...

I bought 2 512mb Ballistix PC4000 for my PC from Crucial and they shipped it to Melbourne for US$20 by DHL/Fedex (can't remember which). Unfortunately I got pinged by customs and got charged an extra Aud$100 (my purchase was worth AUD$400). Thats the first time I have ever got pinged by customs and I buy stuff from overseas quite often (usually shipping by USPS with tracking). Its just as well the Ballistix are fantastic overclockers or I would have been seriously annoyed.
 
aswitcher said:
So whats a Gig of ram for your PB actually costing in AUD all up?
Click to expand...

Actually, the savings are even more! According to Macmall.com.au I can install it myself for AU$968 whereas Crucial.com will send it to my door for just under AU$500. That's quite a saving! 😱
 
Bigheadache said:
I bought 2 512mb Ballistix PC4000 for my PC from Crucial and they shipped it to Melbourne for US$20 by DHL/Fedex (can't remember which). Unfortunately I got pinged by customs and got charged an extra Aud$100 (my purchase was worth AUD$400). Thats the first time I have ever got pinged by customs and I buy stuff from overseas quite often (usually shipping by USPS with tracking). Its just as well the Ballistix are fantastic overclockers or I would have been seriously annoyed.
Click to expand...

I'm a bit new to bringing things in from overseas. Why did customs charge you $100? What does it mean to get pinged?
 
mad jew said:
I'm a bit new to bringing things in from overseas. Why did customs charge you $100? What does it mean to get pinged?
Click to expand...

They will charge you duty tax and GST if the item is estimated over a certain value I believe.
 
mad jew said:
Actually, the savings are even more! According to Macmall.com.au I can install it myself for AU$968 whereas Crucial.com will send it to my door for just under AU$500. That's quite a saving! 😱
Click to expand...

Wow...obviously they are all making a killing with those mark ups for such tiny pieces of hardware...and they buy wholesale as well!
 
try computer world
i get ram and hard drives from them.
i did import ram(and other things) from the usa (OWC ). customs charge $50 to open the package to add gst. know what model ram you need and check out cworld prices.
 
Wassup

I used to live in Swaziland a tiny country next to South Africa. We could also not get any parts for the computer. But at some stage i got desperate so i bought a hard drive and cd-writer from OWC . They were very good, my package was here in under a week..and the shipping didn't cost too much. I would recommend this.
I was wondering if in Aussie the prices for macs are also ridiculously high as they are in SA???

Peace
DjVoTeZ
 
mad jew said:
I can't find 1 gig laptop RAM there though. It's surprisingly uncommon stuff. Otherwise, they seem to be pretty decently priced.
Click to expand...

yep, they're prices are always pretty good. But always check with them re: supply before you buy. I've had that issue with them more than once.
 
aswitcher said:
Wow...obviously they are all making a killing with those mark ups for such tiny pieces of hardware...and they buy wholesale as well!
Click to expand...

No kidding. I bought some 168 pin 128MB EDO DIMMs for an old PowerMac 7600/120 from Other World Computing in the US. The DIMMs were US$16 each, and it cost about $40 to get them shipped out to Australia via UPS (ordered them on Sunday, they arrived at my doorstep on Friday). An advertisement in the back pages of Macworld Australia magazine from a Mac memory supplier had comparable 168 pin 128MB EDO DIMMs listed for AU $150 each. There are some massive margins being made, presumably at the expense of people who don't know their technology very well, or those who can't be bothered to shop around.
 
mad jew said:
I'm a bit new to bringing things in from overseas. Why did customs charge you $100? What does it mean to get pinged?
Click to expand...

It was GST and customs duty, plus a fee of some sort. I guess I was unlucky as I have never had issues with customs before.
 
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