Amazon’s New Part Finder Tool Helps You Upgrade Your PC

Upgrading your desktop PC isn’t nearly as hard as you might think, but one of the harder parts is choosing the right…well, parts. Compatibility conflicts can be intimidating for a $1000 machine. Amazon wants to help with its latest feature.

The new “Part Finder” is broadly similar to third-party tools like PCPartPicker, with the advantage of being integrated directly with Amazon’s nigh-limitless product listings. But unlike those more comprehensive tools, Amazon’s only supporting upgrades at the moment, not complete system builds. You’ll need to click “Make sure this fits” in the item description, then enter the model or serial number of an existing laptop or desktop to check and see if the part is compatible. Once you’ve chosen the brand and model, a bar above the listing will show you the results.

That’s the theory, anyway. At the moment the system isn’t displaying on all PC hardware components, and it’s somewhat iffy even on parts from major brands. For example, after entering my ThinkPad T450s on the Part Finder for a Samsung 850 SSD, the tool says “We’re not sure this item fits your computer.” Which is odd, because that’s a pretty standard 2.5-inch form factor going into a full-sized laptop…and I’ve made and documented that exact upgrade here on How-To Geek.

To be fair to Amazon, this is a brand new feature, and there are bound to be some teething troubles. To be less fair, car enthusiasts have noted similar problems with Amazon’s car parts tool, which works along the same general lines. For the moment you should probably double-check with more extensive online tools to make sure your new parts will work, especially if you’re building your computer from the ground up.

Via PCGamer

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