this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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I mean, you can’t really overspend on a pc. If you treat ur parts right, that overspending will simply turn to a very long lasting investment into a machine that won’t be obsolete for over a decade to come.
I worked in pc sales way back, I used the exact same line that you just used to get people to spend more. "You can't really overspend on a pc, it's a long term investment." Honestly it's bullshit, you definitely overspend and you will if you're not careful.
You can overspend by buying the wrong parts. The classic move is getting the wrong motherboard for your use case (most people don't overclock). Another similar move is getting a flagship processor while not actually needing the extra processing power (most people are better off putting that money in their gpu).
Then there's RGB, designer cases, fancy keyboards and all sorts of other stuff.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Wait you were serious?
Edit: people are downvoting probably because they... bought into this idea. Price per performance is a thing. These days the higher the price the more expensive the performace gets, because it prices in the premium associated with the extra budget of morons that fill a void in their life buy owning the latest whatever.
Yes price:performance is a thing, but some people are also bad with their money.
Me personally, I only ever come into enough money to build a PC once every 7-10 years, so I will build the best possible machine that money can buy, so that it lasts me as long as possible while I'm surviving on ramen.
Two years ago I built a rig 7700X and a 4090; I plan on hanging onto this machine for well into the 2030s. It's definitely a lot easier to this with an AMD system—that's for sure—given that they have a reputation of supporting CPU sockets for a long time.
There tends to be a correlation between quality, longevity, and price. It's not a perfect fit but it's definitely a thing that exists.
I built a brand new cutting edge PC for a family member in 2011. They wanted to change careers and get into IT and figured they needed the bestest fastest PC they could afford. Anyway, it worked great until they decided it was time for a new one in 2019. I got to keep the 2011 PC in exchange for some assistance with selecting components for the new build. I put in a shiny new SDD, ebayed 16GB of old RAM that was the fastest thing the motherboard could handle, and I'm still using it as my primary server / workstation / web browser / cloud backup automation controller / etc. It cost more upfront but the amount of time that 2 different people have not spent with fucking around building new PCs has more than offset that in my opinion.
So this PC is on its 3rd round of HDDs and 2nd round of RAM but that was only to boost performance, not because of a hardware failure. I haven't lost a power supply, motherboard cap, fan motor, or USB port on it yet. That's pretty remarkable for a 14 year old machine that's been running 24/7. The 2019 build hasn't had a hiccup in almost 6 years now either.
And how much do you value your time?
Here's the history of my PC:
So, in 14 years, I've done 5 upgrades, each of which took something like 30 min. Total spent, $2700, so <$200/year. That's less than many pre-builts, which are often replaced after 5 years. Idk about you, but this is a really good tradeoff for time vs money.
So I went back and found some receipts, and it turns out that we're pretty much on the same page. This thing was actually about $900 of hardware, which was basically a higher end mid tier build. I remember looking for high quality components but I wasn't grabbing high performance ones. I've probably spent $300 on drives and RAM so cost per year is under $100.
As far as how much I value my time - one does not spend a mere 30 minutes swapping a mainboard out of the everything-box that runs all your shit, so I value hardware stability quite a bit. I moved most of the time-consuming compatibility hacks into docker containers the last time around so hopefully it's a lot easier next time. I have to deal with this stuff all day long at work so my appetite for PC projects at home is very low. If I can throw some more cash at it to stave off the need to swap out a drive or even the whole PC for a couple more years I'll gladly do it.
PC gaming is a really cheap hobby as far as hobbies go. A good experience is only a few thousand dollar a decade
so many other hobbies have costs that sneak up on you too. You know what you're getting into when you build a computer. When I first started getting into photography I learned lenses can be significantly more expensive than the actual body.