Damn hardware is cheap now

mrk · 16 Jul 2006 at 21:28

I've been speccing a gaming upgrade for a while now, my current system is previous socket gen but still plays games fine but at time sI do cry for something a little beefier in the cpu/memory dept especially since i use Photoshop a lot and author movies.

I was quite surprised by the prices of components really, very cheap compared to just a few months ago for lower spec kit!

Code:

£65		Asus M2V
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Socket_AM2_Asus.html

£100		AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-165-AM)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Socket_AM2_Athlon64.html

£130		GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC) (MY-034-GL)  
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Geil_DDR2_Memory.html

£187		BFG GeForce 7900 GT OC 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-018-BG)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/7900_Series.html

£57		Lian-Li PC-7 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower Case (No PSU) (CA-054-LL)  
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/LianLi_Cases.html

£539

Energize · 16 Jul 2006 at 21:30

Memory has really come down in the past 2 years. I remember when it used to be £60 for 512MB.

mrk · 16 Jul 2006 at 21:33

Agreed, I paid a lot for my corsair 1gb ddr400 sticks ages ago :/

bitslice · 16 Jul 2006 at 21:37

I paid £200 for 4Mb once

.

TheVoice · 16 Jul 2006 at 21:43

Energize said:
Memory has really come down in the past 2 years. I remember when it used to be £60 for 512MB.

Is that all? I paid that much for 128MB of SDRAM, way back in 2001.

semi-pro waster · 16 Jul 2006 at 21:43

I'd say it has and it hasn't. It has when you consider that a 3.8ghz PC was near top of the line about a year back and that 2gb Ram is/was a bit of a luxury for most people at that time. It hasn't when you think that to get a top end CPU costs as much as it always has done or maybe even more and the same for graphics cards plus you can now get PhysX cards(useless though they may be at the moment).

A decent level of performance and an overall very capable PC is within the grasp of more people than ever but to stay at the cutting edge costs relatively speaking the same as ever. I think you will find the same on most consumer hardware to an extent - mobile phones for instance, now even the most basic models tend to come with colour screens, MMS and even cameras(I know you get a lot more than that but I'm still talking pretty basic phones) which were expensive options a few years ago but are now commonplace.

While we are on the subject of expensive(ish) hardware I remember buying a 2x CDR drive with a mate for £150 as we couldn't afford it individually.