Money spent on computers

Considering that we are living in a world with a very shaky financial foundation, I decided to take a hard look at my ffinances. In that process, I made an inventory of all that computer related stuff I bought since 2009.

I thought I spent close to $2500. The result surprised me.

Check this out:

http://goo.gl/SyMs3

So how much did you guys spend on your computer on an average?

I bought my current PC around 2006 and since then I have spent around $150 on a new monitor after the one that came with it literately caught on fire one day, $150 on a new graphics card when my old ones overheated because I didn't clean them out, and like $200 on a SSD because only terrible people don't use a SSD these days. Then probably another $200-$300 on various mice/keyboards/headphones that broke over the years.

I bought my current computer around 2008 for $2400 from cyberpowerpc.

Since then I've spent $450 on a 470gtx. $600+ on a new mobo,cpu and ram. And recently $450 on a 670GTX.

So I've totaled around $4000 on the same system over a 4 year life span. And by the end of the year i'll be upgrading the case and monitor as well, adding another $300-400.

Holy...I don't even. I just built my first gaming PC for around $650, but I'm not looking to kill everything on maxed out settings either. I just wanted to be able to play games, and then I will upgrade my GPU later when games all start to be as demanding as Battlefield 3. I haven't had any issues with the games that I want to play so far, but I know my next GPU will run me around $300 to $450 to push the bar, and I will most likely graduate to an 8 core processor.

A thousand euros for the PC build itself two years ago. Since then some peripherals, RAM, a new PSU, another GPU and a bigger monitor, totaling around 700€. Translates to about $2100.

Not in a hurry to upgrade as long as nothing breaks.

Over the past 4 years.

About 3.5-4000 dollars, lol Norway prices.

It's middle-high end computer.

It seems as if I am averaging on the high end here. I wonder if there are any PC enthusiasts who can drop in their opinions as well.

I bought a new MacMini back in February, $600 for that. Got a MacBook Air for $900.

Planning on building a gaming PC next year and I've budgeted $2,000

@kgb0515 said:

Holy...I don't even. I just built my first gaming PC for around $650, but I'm not looking to kill everything on maxed out settings either. I just wanted to be able to play games, and then I will upgrade my GPU later when games all start to be as demanding as Battlefield 3. I haven't had any issues with the games that I want to play so far, but I know my next GPU will run me around $300 to $450 to push the bar, and I will most likely graduate to an 8 core processor.

Yeah, I'm also planning on dropping ~$650 on one fairly soon, circa next week if I'm lucky. Not planning on highest settings, I just want to play games.

Curious - since you built yours in the price range that I plan on building mine in, what is your build like? No need for uber-specifics, but what's your card and processor like?

@Keavy_Rain said:

I bought a new MacMini back in February, $600 for that. Got a MacBook Air for $900.

Planning on building a gaming PC next year and I've budgeted $2,000

I have always been curious about this. I am not an apple hater or anything like. Granted, I don't ever use their products because I am not a fan of the their products work, but what do you like them for? Are you a graphics designer?

Spent around 1500 AUD on mine back in 2010 and since then I've bought a 570 last year for 450, a new 27" monitor for 500, an SSD for 150, probably around 500 worth of external hard drives and all that jazz. Thinking about doing a major upgrade next year sometime since my i5-750's feeling a bit outdated :P. I think most of all though the worst thing has been seeing how much my Steam account is worth... At the moment it's at 2000 so maybe half of that is what I actually spent. Add to that a new PS3 and the 1000's I've spent for $80-100 games here in Australia and gaming is starting to look really depressing as a hobby....

$400 laptop and a $600 custom built PC for gaming, plus the monitor, mouse, etc. Laptop is a few years old now and I still use it. My desktop is only months old and I'm liking it. Plays all my games on high just fine so I have no complaints.

@PatchRowcester: Well, my first computer (as in, ever) was an iMac, so there's that. I now work for Apple and the employee discount combined with me spending most of the 21st century using Mac OS X combined to make me a user of their products.

I don't have an issue with Windows (When I went back to college a few years back to learn computer programming I bought a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista) but I just feel "at home" with OS X.

Since 2009? Geez, probably around $4000 USD.

@PatchRowcester: @Keavy_Rain: OS X and Win7 user here. To me, both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I'll always use my Mac if I just want to quickly get on a browse the web/do general productivity stuff, as it's simply a much cleaner, better, more hassle-free experience, for me personally. I basically only use my PC for games, some photo work, and occasional video work--everything else is Mac, including a lot of heavy audio editing, as I've been a Logic user for years.

Not counting games, probably about 2000 since late 2008, starting when I built my current rig.
 
Do I count stuff I bought to use at my PC desk (where my consoles are located) for gaming in general such as speakers, screens, and controllers? If so, probably closer to 2750 or 3000.

$400 new video card power supply. recently hard drive and sound card $120

Bought mine in 2009 for about $1200.

It's a Toshiba and it still runs really well. I haven't had any problems with it.

I built mine around Christmas this year for $950. I upgraded to a GTX670 about a month ago, for another $430. $1,380 altogether. Runs most everything I throw at it on max (with 4x AA, anyway) at my monitor's crappy native resolution (1680x1050). Before I built this computer, I was rocking a Pentium IV since 2005, so the upgrade was well worth it.

@PatchRowcester said:

It seems as if I am averaging on the high end here. I wonder if there are any PC enthusiasts who can drop in their opinions as well.

How do you live with that monitor? It's the bit you're staring at the whole time, and as far as I can tell it's a Hanns-G that costs around $270 (possibly with secondary/tertiary inferior monitors).

Priorities, man.

On my end, I'm waiting for Black Friday to do a mobo switch so I can go all SSD without getting kneecapped performance from my well-worn SATA II ports. That'll put me over 2 grand this year no problem, though that total includes a pair of terrifyingly expensive headphones as well as several semi-exotic peripherals (Hydra, Das Model S, etc).

Buy ATI\AMD and just buy a cheap motherboard, PSU and RAM. I spent about 500USD and got a 5850, Phenom IIx4 965, 4 gigs of ram and a no name PSU. I can run BF3 sweet as.

I paid $1600 for an iMac in 2006 that still runs perfectly fast to this day and I've never had any problems with. So I consider that money well spent.

And I just spent around $1200 building a PC. So altogether around $3000 in the span of 6 years.

dont know exactly how much i spend on average on. but i spend roughly translated 3351$ on my last pc and thats about a year ago. and now im having to buy a new grafix card since the one i have is starting to do some artifacting and freezing during some games (especially GW2 on max but not sleeping dogs on max)

so im actually going to ask for some advise here aswell

was thinking of buying the geforce gtx 690 since they no longer make the radeon HD 6990 and everything is a step down. either that or just 2 radeon hd 7970 in crossfire or something like that.

the one i got is xfx Radeon 5970 black edition (the 4gb one) and i know i could just throw on a gfx cooler to maybe help some of the artifacting but it should have worked without it since its theres plenty of spade for it to let off heat and there is decent circulation

there also 2 80mm fans on the side of the case that pulls air out from the gfx and psu.

Planning on spending about $1200 when I finally get around to building my first rig.

@Keavy_Rain: That's interesting. You work for Apple...how is that going?

@PillClinton: I have always been a Windows user, so I can't really judge Apple at all, but I always get the feeling they charge too much for the products, and give very limited options to the user. I never found any need switch to anything. Windows 7 is really such an awesome OS.

Windows 8....that's a completely different story...

@Grillbar: I am using a 680, and I really do feel that 690 is an overkill. Unless of course, you are wanting to game on a surround setup with three 30 inch displays!

For my entire PC setup (computer and peripherals) that I build last year it was close to $5200..... Then if you take into account the new desk I had to buy to fit all the stuff that's another $500. So I have spent a lot on my computer setup.

I put one together last month for a little under $1400. Would have been closer to $1000 if I didn't splurge on the graphics card (EVGA GTX 670ftw), case and i7 2600k instead of i5 2500k processor. (I know the processor upgrade didn't offer me any real benefit for gaming purposes at this moment but I decided to go for it anyway since I will use my computer for other purposes that might benefit more from hyperthreading.)

Runs BF3 on Ultra with no problem. Having exclusively been a console gamer pretty much my whole life, I was blown away. Figuratively and literally. I suck at FPS games so, needless to say, I got my ass handed to me when I went online.

@jasondaplock: What's wrong with the monitor? I am very pleased with it. Also the reason I purchased it was because it has 1920x1200. I also wanted a setup like this:

Spent about 1300 all together for my system about 2 years ago. Just spent about 12

120 to double the ram and add a small add for system and 1-2 primo games at a time. (skyrim and SR3 atm)

After years of saying i'd never piss money away building another computer I got into this "steam" thing and had to. I spend around $800 building the tower and I'm using an extra 37" LCD tv for the monitor.

Somewhere around $5,500.

@Hamst3r said:

Somewhere around $5,500.

Man, I thought I went overboard! Over how many months/years was this?

@PatchRowcester said:

@Hamst3r said:

Somewhere around $5,500.

Man, I thought I went overboard! Over how many months/years was this?

I have no idea, but I can tell you that the monitors alone were $3000 of that, so the computer and it's other peripherals were more in line with what you spent on your computer. I'm just crazy about big sexy screens.

@PatchRowcester said:

What the hell am I looking at?

Its my gaming desktop. Check this link, it should make it more clear:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-qB9KQ77Lmik/TkcJSTyERLI/AAAAAAAAAaw/H9SRmvgdyNs/s640/12.%2520IMG_0067.JPG

@Hamst3r: What kind of monitors do you have? Could you post a picture of your setup?

@PatchRowcester said:

@Hamst3r: What kind of monitors do you have? Could you post a picture of your setup?

Dell WFP3008's.

@PatchRowcester: It's the happiest I've ever been at a job and it's the first job where I feel like management genuinely appreciates my work.

I'm kind of sad/glad that I saw this thread; I've been thinking about buying a gaming PC. While I'm not a graphics whore, I would still end up spending a grip of cash on upgrades just to keep up.

@Hamst3r: Those are pretty fantastic! I wish I had one of those!

FYI, PC gaming really isn't all that expensive if you are smart about what you are buying and if you keep your expectations in check. I could have still been using my old quad core processor and everything would have been just fine.

What is the next best alternative to a gaming PC? A console? Well, a $700 gaming PC will almost always be better than a console with the right components. Of course, its not possible to make everything out with that kind of a config, but if the alternative is a console, its going to be better than that anyway.

That's how I am going to look at it from now before upgrading.

I bought my iMac in 2008 for 2000€. It has served me well and has ran all the games I have wanted to play in Bootcamp. Not with high setting obviously, but I don't really care that much. It's all thanks to console ports of course, I couldn't have imagined I would be playing recent releases with this computer in 2012 (e.g. Max Payne 3, Spec Ops: The Line, Sleeping Dogs).

@Zaccheus said:

I bought my iMac in 2008 for 2000€. It has served me well and has ran all the games I have wanted to play in Bootcamp. Not with high setting obviously, but I don't really care that much. It's all thanks to console ports of course, I couldn't have imagined I would be playing recent releases with this computer in 2012 (e.g. Max Payne 3, Spec Ops: The Line, Sleeping Dogs).

Ouch man that is very expensive!