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It's going to take about 6 months to a year to build this thing, so I'm setting out a long term plan now. I'm assuming a year, depends on how my cash flow goes. But because like most, saving is a real pain in the bum, I'm basically allowing myself one new peice of hardware a month, or two if the cash flow goes well. Obviously parts will change in price, so I'm starting off with the items I deem least likely to dramatically change in 12 months time.

January:

1 jet black ATX PC case for £28.86

1 copy of Windows XP Home Edition SP2B with Windows Vista upgrade coupon to Windows Vista Home Basic Edition, at £61.99

Febuary:

MSI nVidia 570 AM2 Motherboard with audio, duel gigabit lan, and DDR2 RAM support. £61.10

March:

AMD Duel Core 3600+ CPU for £99.49

(This might become a saving month, and the CPU Purchased next month instead of next item.)

April:

Corsair DDR2 1Gig PC2-5300 RAM Stick, £71.08

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Test Motherboard, RAM, CPU with an old graphics card
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Install old hard disk drive, and DVD drive and use as a network
rendering PC, All parts would still be within warrenty so can replace if faulty.
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May:

Samsung Spinpoint T133 400Gb HDD £83.11

(Might have to save this month and get next month instead, delaying by 1 month)

June:

1 Black DVD-RW - Approx £26
1 Black floppy disk drive - Approx £14
1 black memory card reader - Approx £20

July, Augeust, September:

Save at least £75

October:

nVidia 8 series graphics card for £300 or less depending on prices at time. If possible will get a mid range 8600 chipset rather than full 8800. Spare cash can go on the lastest game around to show it off!

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Like most, I find it hard going to save for 12 months when there's something I want, this way I treat it more like a magazine collection selling a remote control car or something, a new peice every month, and something physical sitting in the corner waiting to be completed.

I could just get it all and some sort of finance scheme, but most last a minimum of 24 months for paying back, and make a good £200 profit minimum. This way it's less debt, and a nice project to work on. I can spent time modifying the cheap case to improve cooling, and paint it. I don't like glowing lights and stuff, so I can be creative.

At the end of it all, I get a good spec PC that should last another year, it's AM2 technolog so will remain easily upgradable as even the 754 boards today are upgradeable. And I can continue using this machine, then sell it at the end of all this, or keep it as a network or render server.

I will likely end up spending more on postage in the long run, but at the very worst I'd be spending just a quater of the interest a finance company would make from me.

Why not save the cash for a year, and buy all the parts, rather than buying parts that will be fairly old by the time it's finished? Even if you buy the same parts after the year, they'll at least be cheaper and you will have saved money.

Because I hate saving. Logically what you say is correct, the trick is to compromise with the human part in the equasion. There is a national debt getting larger and larger and larger because people on average hate saving, and often go the route of the bank loan or credit card. In the long run you are spending a heck of alot. Often people say things like "Oh I deserve it" or "I'll make up for it later". I know myself well enough to know that I'm horrible at saving. I'm great at paying the bills, and ensuring that there's enough to cover the next 2 months worth if some great emergancy happens. What I am not good at is saving the excess cash in my account. It's too easy to pop onto ebay, get a book a week, or a video or whatever, and it ends up being frittered rather than saved. This way, my luxuary purchases, become one big purchase over the next few months, with a definate goal in mind and a reason NOT get get X, Y and Z.

Also, the first items I am purchasing is a PC ATX case and 1 Windows XP Home CD-ROM with an upgrade coupon to Windows Vista when it's released. This items don't change that dramtically over time, so it doesn't matter if new cases and CD-ROM's are bought because the ATX configuarion will remain the same for a long time, and the windows software has online udates.

The next is the motherboard, again, motherboards do make alittle but not a massive difference in proformance. I doubt the speed improvement between the 5 series and 6 series of nvidia chipsets will more much more than 2 - 5%. I can live with that.

CPU isn't as vital to gaming today as the graphics card, which is the final item on the list, and given the market I think PC2 RAM is likely to drop in price faster than a CPU of that level. I might be wrong, either way I am not too concerned.

The hard drive sizes are constantly going up and the prices dropping, I'll prob save more on this item by waiting.

The DVD Rom's, floppys and card readers at this price range are not likely to change at all, but I have all these items already, they are just white instead of black, this is just a cosmetic thing.

The nVidia cards are the most likely to shed poundage, either because they bring out mid range versions, or simply the price of manufacture and competition allows the prices to drop. I'll save most on this by leaving it last.

Either way, by the end of the year, I'll have a pretty reasonable machine for a decent price, and won't have experianced any of the impaitence of waiting for the bank balance to raise.

In addition I have a custom made machine that fits my needs. When I compair the quility of machines from DELL, HP and the like, with the overall price, and what I'll be spending, I'm still getting a far better deal because I'm not paying for totally useless technical support, where you spend a pound a minute. I've still got at least a years warrenty on the majority of components, the only diference is it's down to me to dianose the problem and return the item for replacement. All in all, I'll most likely, at the end of the year, end up with the same sort of machine that people buy from larger PC companies, for the same sort of price, which much better technical support

I have to say I agree with Benjamin, even after the reply to him.

simply make a choice to fix:


buying the parts over the course of a year is asking for trouble, or some form of dissatisfaction at the year end. just mho. good luck.

lol, what specifically do you feel will generate disatisfaction? I mean no offence, but all you've really done is given a vauge warning. If it was something more specific, I'd be more included to listen.

I'm really bad at saving as well. Having never built a computer I can't really give a helpful opinion on what you intend to buy.

If it was me I'd look at finding a way of making the first few months worth of money now. Maybe throw a few things on eBay, have a stall at a car boot sale (done it myself, made a decent amount of money and got rid of a load of junk) or something else.

I'd just want to at least cut it down by a few months. If I took a year to build a pc I can't imagine the finished product would be in as good condition as something I'd built over a weekend.

Overall though, I know where you're coming from with not being able to save money and if this is the only way you can see of building your own comp than more power to you.

I don't really get this:

because you still have to be patient enough to wait until the end of the year before you have a working machine but if setting yourself a target of buying a piece a month helps you then go for it.

What I meant was, you might buy a part early on, that later, may severely drop in price, or more likely, will be replaced by the newest latest and greatest thing, for about the same money you paid almost a year earlier, for a now inferior version - generally speaking of course.

The idea has sound merit Kenjar, But you might want to factor in the technological scale and price that consumers demand almost religiously.

If you hand over the cash to someone / something you cant touch , you will be in better step with each component on par with price and technological advancement.

A product usually has a 8 week honeymoon phase where nothing can touch its price, from there it aggregates into small drops per cycle as newer products come out.

eg 6 x 4 x 2 yamaha burner $1300AUD 12 years ago , today they cost about $20 with heaps of options.

2 speed DVD burners 3 years ago $500 AUD now about $35.

I also would factor in the shelf life of technology matching parts later on as Cattle has suggested.

perhaps bundle parts together eg: ram mobo and cpu

Being that the motherboard is only around £60, and it's got a decent nVidia chipset in it, plus it supports a new socket type that's only appeared at comsumer level in the last 12 months. I still don't see a problem. True, in 12 months time that same board might be a revision up, and £10 - £15 cheaper, but as long as the board is stable (as my research has informed me it is) then I'm not too bothered about small increases in speed on the motherboard, I only care weather or not it will accept upgrades for the next two years at least, which of cause it will unless AMD go bankrupt. The machine I'm using now is 754 based, and it's still able to go up another 1000+ on the CPU, and will accept a GS or GT 7 series nVidia card. I could just upgrade it, but with Vista on the horizon and a direct X 10 card out already it's finally time for PCI-Express.

It might also proove true that in 9 months time I could have got a duel core CPU for the same price that's 400+ faster, but I'm not that bothered, in my experace, anything less than a 25% increase in cpu power doesn't make a massive difference in day to day operation.

I've also been doing research into the next Windows Vista, and frankly basic home edition will likely suit my needs. I don't encrypt my file system, and that transparent interface is nothing but a resource hog. From what I understand basic home still comes with Direct X 10, the rest is just application based software and I'm sure someone at some point will write filler applications to make up for basic homes short falls. Oh and basic home doesn't support above 8 Gig, but I don't think that will be a problem for a few years yet.

I can't urge you enough to save your money and buy it all at once. For some things, buying a piece at a time is ok, but not computer hardware. Prices and standards change way too quickly.

That's the impression given. But bare this in mind. The price drop isn't linear it's a curve. Expensive new, lastest generation items arrive being pretty expensive. These items drop in price dramatically over a period of months. The mid range items tend to drop in price less quickly. Loosing maybe £1 or £1.50 a month, and entry level items hang around at the same price all the time.

I don't think the price drops are anything like as major as anyone here is making out. But if nothing else this will be a good experiment. I'll post, once a month, the price I paid for each item. I've already listed the items I intend to buy (what I buy may change later on, but I'll list the original item's price as well. We will see then how much money I've basically lost by doing it this way.

learn from experience school hey?
I take that road a lot.
nevermind you will learn.

While I like your idea of buying bit-by-bit, I see where some of the others are coming from too, maybe you could set up a personal savings account (in which you cant touch the money for an amount of time specified) for 6 or 12 months, and put money in that every month. This way, you'll manage to save the money, and will have the benefit of lower prices/increased capacity/performance/whatever.

Is english your first language? This is not intended as an insult, merely a question.



I'm more interested then ever to test this theory to be honest. I'd like to see how much money I will loose. It's a reasonable compromise between saving, and taking out a loan. I don't have the paitence to save, I'd spend the money, I know that from experiance, and with a loan I'd end up paying quite a bit more than what the system is actually worth.

pfft. you are not factoring in the technology / price scale that has existed for some time now.

The answer you vehemently require is not practical, educated people have tried to explain the pitfalls of the issue and your comments are derogatory and offensive in regards to questioning whether i know english or not.

good luck with that, m8. your system will be a pile of half baked junk if you take the road your leading. Sorry buts its the blunt truth. if you take that as an insult i feel sorry for you that you cant accept good sound advice.

I was actually trying to make a connection with you, but i fail to see the point any more, you will learn from the school of life.

I can accept good advice, but can you accept that I don't nessasily agree with the advice you've given?

Also what's this "educated" gabble your spouting? I built, serviced, and purchased parts for B-Spoke PC's. This was over a period of 3 years. I've spent most of my life looking over price lists of one sort or another.