Update: NCIX went bankrupt in 2017, and DirectCanada went offline in Q1 2018.
Rest, DirectCanada
After some emotion with my first order from DirectCanada, the story was too good to stop so early. The second episode from that sequel is on shipping.
So - of course - free shipping can't be perfect. You don't select the transporter and you get the cheapest - Purolator. And as it's free, you can't really add a few dollars to get Canada Post. You'd have to pay a full normal shipping fee for that, which kind of beats the purpose of ordering from DirectCanada. So DirectCanada ships via Purolator, I'm not home when the shipments arrive, Purolator brings the shipments back to the other end of the town, and we have the setting for this great sequel.
The story begins 3 business days after my order when I receive a mail claiming that "[my] Order has been shipped". As I took care to select only items in stock, that's not what DirectCanada's "Fast delivery" slogan would evoke, but the real story starts in that mail's content. The mail refers to 2 shipments, Shipment #1 (marked as shipped), and Shipment 2, marked as Pending.
The next day, DirectCanada says my order was shipped again... OK, so when DirectCanada says your order was shipped, what they really mean is that part of your order was shipped.
But which part? That's the question; the mail indicates the products you ordered - but not those shipped. Nothing tells you.
In my case, the second mail referred to a pending "Shipment #3". Purolator attempted to deliver shipments 1 and 2 quickly after, while I wondered what would be in shipment 3. Later that week, Purolator started to nag me so I would come collect my shipments (even though I didn't know their contents). Reluctant to spend an hour just to collect some of the shipments and having to go back just after, I waited until Friday evening. At that point, all I knew was that part of my order was shipped and part of it was still missing (the website suggested the CPU might be missing, but that turned out to be me being misled by some kind of bug). I decided to call DirectCanada to be told that there was no Shipment #3. Shipments 1 and 2 were it. Something had been wrong with my order's status (something which persists 2 weeks later), and I had been waiting for a shipment which wouldn't come 
Now, to be fair to DirectCanada, shipments 1 and 2 indeed contained all of my order's products, and these worked perfectly (except for 1 or 2 glitches). And, although I called in the last hour of DirectCanada's business week, my call was answered after 2 minutes.
For these reasons, I'm not going to discourage you from shopping there. DirectCanada is a good choice if you're looking for an amateur reseller.