Best strategy for buying/maintaining a high-end PC [Archive]

saphalline

11-14-2008, 11:00 PM

It seems to me that in today's market one can spend $1400 and get a system hugely better than a $700 system; whereas spending $2800 might only give you a 20-25% advantage over the $1400 system.This has been true for over a decade, though the numbers have changed. ;) This fact is the basis for the term "sweet spot" - there exists a point in buying computer hardware (or any number of other things, I suspect) where you get the most value. Any lower or higher, and you lose that ideal value ratio.

For example, let's say you're shopping for a new SATA 300 HDD w/16MB cache and you just need to find the right capacity. You see these prices:

(These figures are for instructional purposes only. :p)

$50 for 160GB
$60 for 320GB
$80 for 500GB
$110 for 750GB
$200 for 1TB

Which hard drive are you going to buy? If you can use a calculator, you know that the 750GB HDD in this case is clearly the better buy. It represents the "sweet spot" for buying a new HDD. Likewise, sweet spots exist for every other component. For some components, like HDD's, it's easy to find the sweet spot. For other components, such as vid cards, it's very difficult to find the sweet spot.

But even when you find the sweet spot, you also have to wrestle with another rule of system design! The "threshold of acceptability". Going back to the HDD example, the 750GB one is sitting nicely at 14.66 cents per GB, but does that mean you would be willing to buy a 4GB one for 50 cents?? It may be a mere 12.5 cents per GB but it sure can't cut it for sheer capacity! Many times, gamers must exceed the sweet spot in order to get what they want.

For instance, the Radeon HD 4350 offers a tremendous amount of performance for its price, but that's mainly because it's only $40! :rolleyes: If you need a bit more power than that (like, say, if you're a gamer!) you'll have to shop above that price tag. Even if other vid cards don't offer the same price/performance ratio, the threshold of acceptability sways the decision in favor of more expensive options.

The combination of these two is most likely what made you pick those specific price points. $700, $1400, $2800. The exact numbers may not be entirely accurate, but they do show the general trend. At the low end of PC building, spending 50% more money gets you 100% more performance. At the mid-range, spending 100% more money gets you 50% more performance. The best price range for building a new system exists inside that margin. Between "twice the low end" and "half the high-end" is where you want to be to make the best buying decisions. It's often a tight margin, but it's easy to hit the mark here on the forums. Plenty of good system designers around here.

In terms of the general guidelines for maintaining a custom built system, as of right now it would be a good idea to spend between $1000 and $1600 USD building a new system from scratch. Ie, everything from the wall to the chair! PSU, case, mobo, peripherals, monitor, OS license - the whole deal. After you build an entire system from scratch, you have about a year before you need to start thinking about upgrades. And every year, you should expect to spend at least 25% of the initial cost for upgrades. This is based on a 1 + 4-year cycle of replacement - the first year is "free" after your initial cost, the second year costs 25%, the third year costs 25%, the fourth year costs 25%, and the fifth year costs 25%. So if you build a $1600 system and never upgrade it, you can expect to shell out another $1600 after 5 years to replace everything all over again. Or if you build a $1000 system and don't upgrade for 2 years, you're looking at a $500 upgrade bill. It doesn't all have to be spent at once, however, these are just general averages. It's fine to spend 10% one year and 30% the next, and may even be necessary for full core upgrades.

I won't get into specifics here. I'm too tired :p and there are others who can do (almost) as well. :D