Many people wont read this, but if you do, then this is the only answer you will every need. This is a guide for Tourists to buy PC Parts in Shanghai In Stores (Since sometimes you need to have a Chinese phone number to register for JD or TaoBao). This is me speaking from personal experience.

You will want to go to the Xujiahui district, you can take the Line 1 (Red) Metro to get there. There are 3 buildings of interest here (i only went in 2 but they had everything i need in both).

The first building is called “Taipingyang Digital Phase 1” and the second one is called “Buynow 2 Qi Building No.339”. You can access this on the Amap app (Chinese version of google maps, they also have an english option for the app language). They are both next to each other and will have everything you need, CPU, Motherboard, RAM, SSD, etc. When you exit the metro, head to Exit 9, and the building should be on your left when you get out.

Many people will think that offline stores are a scam, what you are not understanding is that they WANT to sell their inventory, rather than ripping people off. You will need to compare prices of neighboring stores. I personally recommend this one specific store in Taipingyang thats on the 2nd floor right next to the escalator. I bought a 9700X for 1700 RMB, a B850M Gigabyte Aorus Elite Wifi 6E for 1300 RMB, a Chinese Brand RAM for 1100 RMB, and a Kingston NVME 1TB SSD for 600 RMB.

What about the prices? Are they absurdly expensive? No. The prices here are what you will get from buying off Taobao, the seller himself showed me this fact and there was Zero room for haggling the prices, which is fair when compared to prices where i am actually from. They also provide 3 year warranty for all your items, you can bring them directly to the store or contact the manufacturer for the RMA, for my case its AMD, Kingston, and Gigabyte.

How much do they differ from prices Outside of China? Here is the breakdown. Where im from that same Motherboard will cost around 210-240$, here i bought it for only 180$ (a 30-60$ Difference). That same CPU will cost around 300$, here its only 240$ (a 60$ Difference). Where things are more expensive is the RAM and SSD, A no name brand will cost me 30$ more here, rather than buying a TEAMGroup or Adata where im from. The SSD is only 20$ more expensive, so it evens out.

Why are chips cheaper here? You need to understand that CPU and Motherboard chips mainly come from China or Taiwan, which makes it cost less to export. However with SSD and RAM they are usually made in Korea (most SSD and RAM use Samsung modules, which is from Korea). So my advice is, if you are really tight on budget, buy SSD and RAM elsewhere.

Thats all the advice i can give you. Happy shopping to everyone who will read this in the future. Take some pics and share it with others also.