Feast & Famine Upgrading

Big.Wayne

Big.Wayne

Big.Wayne

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There are many styles to upgrading your computer and none are particularly right or wrong however I never understood the thinking behind some folks who splurge say £1000 - £2000 every three years or so . . . . I think of this style as Feast & Famine where you gorge yourself on full fat shiny state-of-the-art-kit which then slowly but surely gets outmodded by newer sometimes cheaper kit.

I imagine there are a few geeks knocking about these forums who may well be enjoying their overclocked Socket A Bartons combined with some kinda AGP 9800Pro or perhaps a HD3850, or pehaps a mono core Athlon64 clocked at 2.8GHz with an nVidia 6800GT. . .

One day these users of veteran hardware decide they need an upgrade and start speccing up some sick £1500 super computer and the cycle starts again.

I know people like this personally and it's something I've always struggled to comprehend :confused:

Can somebody from the Feast & Famine Society please share their point of view with me as maybe there is something I have missed? I don't understand why you couldn't refresh your platform say every year using some used parts bought from Members Market for a bargain price! :p

At this stage my best guess as why people do this is they have a wild and exciting life with a lot more interesting things to do than fart about with computer hardware combined with the fact the box they put togther in Summer 2006 still performs well for their needs.

I think I upgrade too much and am basically looking for peoples viewpoints on why they buy state of the art kit and then run it into the ground over the course of 3-4 years before thinking its upgrade time!

Thanks in advance! :)
 
Its a bit differently from my style, but personally I do a complete rebuild every year or 2 years depending on how far stuff has moved on - because it gets to a point where the system is a mess of mis-matched parts, jury rigged components and the OS badly needs reinstalling, etc. and really I need to update to a newer OS too.

So I have a massive rebuild from scratch to get me back to square one with everything nicely organised, with some misplaced belief that I can keep it organised :S
 
I see Rroff, so can you give an example of your last hardware famine and what feast you moved to?

P.S How many PC's do you have? :p
 
I don't do it myself (yet), but I can see the reasoning.

When you buy it, you've got a top of the range beast to enjoy - and it does everything you need it to. And because you went top of the range, it won't be out dated in 6 months, it'll likely be 2 years before it starts showing its age - you're getting more life from your money.

I just spent £500 on a machine, and apart from the monitor (which I didn't include) it will likely be last-gen hardware in 6 months, showing its age by 12 months.

Of course, in 12 months I could stick a new GPU in and it'll likely get me a little longer, but then I've got to look at compatability, I'm wasting a card, I've got to try to keep the rig balanced etc.

Why not do it all at once when you can be 100% sure it will all work, and last you a few years?
 
I on average rebuild every two years or so and spend about £1000 doing it for the reasons rroff mentioned. when i have finished is all clean and lovely, then over time its gets dirty and slow so i rebuild again.

I keep all my periperals through the generations and my old stuff goes to worthy friends and family.
 
I think it's to do with my general outlook on anything I buy, I use it until it breaks or isn't up to the task, then replace it. It's never really been in my mindset to buy the latest and greatest when what I've got is adequate.

I've gone from an 800 MHz laptop which I had for 4 years whilst at uni before I really got into computers, an A64 3700, 1Gb RAM, X800 for 2 years, then a 4200 X2, 2GB RAM 3650 for a year and a half until the mobo broke last month, and now on a 720 X3, 4GB RAM and the 3650.

I think I'm slowly getting into the upgrading bug, and my first big clearance sale on the MM will be coming up soon, but selling stuff so I can replace it with something fractionally better still seems a bit odd.

It would be interesting to work out which burns up the most money, little and often spends or saving up for a big splurge.

PK!
 
I built a single core athlon 3500+ rig about 3 and half years back for £800 which i've spent about £150 adding bits to (RAM, HDD, GFX) and is only now really feeling too slow.

I'm looking to replace it and spend around £600 on a new base unit (q9550, 4gb etc).

So I seem to do the long term cycle but without spunking away £1500 each time
 
+1 Feast

Well sofar anyway, but I can see merit in u/g certain components every so often, but can I ask if you switched, would you not end up spending the same amount anyway? and in the longrun over the years, would you not generally be better "feasting".

The first year, possibly 2 you would be better than "famine", so does it not all average out the same anyhow?

And above, your 600 base unit, could you not sell some components and get an I7 rig rather than the Q9550? the only component more expensive is the MB, processor aint much more(aint it?)
 
The purchase of my TJ07 really opened up my eyes and showed me that whilst you could love something and save towards buying one you can regret the purchase a few days later and wish you had spent your money more wisely, i see my purchase as a waste and since i would not get half the money i paid for it in the MM i have not sold it. The purchase of my e5200 also had a large impact on me showing that you can get amazing things for such a small amount of money compared to more expensive chips, £60 for 4ghz 24/7 stable is a little shocking when you think of previous chips that cost twice as much and could not overclock as high (e7200 vs e5200).
 
My input's not worth that much, as I've only upgraded once and that was e8400 to q9550. Still, I have plans.
I've finished setting up watercooling in my case now, and my psu is under warranty for another 6 years or so. The hope is that my case, cooling and hard drives will now remain in place, and in a few years I'll upgrade the motherboard/cpu/ram/gfx card.

So instead of replacing everything at once every 3 years, I'll aim to replace parts in batches fairly infrequently.
 
DireEmblem said:
And above, your 600 base unit, could you not sell some components and get an I7 rig rather than the Q9550? the only component more expensive is the MB, processor aint much more(aint it?)
Click to expand...

Q9550 2.83GHz 12MB
Biostar TP45 HP
4GB Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400
Titan Fenrir Cooler
640GB Western Digital Caviar Black
Coolermaster CM690
Pioneer DVR-216DBK DVD-RW
550W Corsair VX PSU

For ~£580, reusing my current graphics. I doubt I could feasibly change to a Core i7 without spending a significant amount more.
 
Well things have changed for me, when my dad was alive and holding the PC upgrade purse strings we used to feast or famine ourselves well, about £3000 on a tower upgrade and that would last about 2-3 years with the odd upgrade. But while ive been at uni and ive got a couple of decent rigs and a media centre ive been upgrading more steadily, I suspect im spending the same amount as we were before, just over a different timescale, though I dont have the awesome feeling of a totally new build successfully running and faster than more or less anything else on the market (I kind of miss that feeling and when work starts and the money has been coming in I think I will gorge myself again).

Hawker
 
Options to upgrade my last PC had pretty much run out, it was a system i had added to on a yearly basis pretty much, over a 4 year period, so December last year i purchased the system in my sig, my limit was £1000 and i wanted as much performance as poss for my money with the PC being used primarily for gaming online. My theory is i will get 2 possibly 3 years without any upgrades at all, after that period if required i will weigh up options for upgrading or replacing, but right now - i'm as happy as a pig in ****!
 
Pretty much, when the system is slowing me down with what I want, I upgrade. i.e. Originally had 2gb GeIL ram, went to 4gb Reaper-X, My E6600 and the mobo is the only components original on my build of 2.2 years ago.
Ive had 4 hard drives, a 320Gb to get it running, then a 150Gb raptor, then tried raiding 2 raptors and now onto a 300gb Vraptor. I would get SSD next if it became worth ditching the Vraptor.
My PSU is a corsair 620HX - will migrate to my next build, as will my PC-a17 case (Originally had a Antec 900) But thats more of a style thing!

Monitor is the same, though I did go dual screens for a while.
I went from an x1950Pro to an 8800GTS (Expensive buy!) then to a 9800GTX+ cheaply enough.
And now my system is stagnated. It does everything I ask of it. Maybe next year I will upgrade top of the range, DDR3 is affordable, graphics cards are better than what I have, and a Quad will then be a benefit. Im pretty much happy to keep this for the next year. Next time is a biggy expensive 'main system' upgrade.

I buy what I want when I want. I dont have a bluray drive yet, as I really would not use one! As for storage, Ive got a WHS system which has 4.5Tb of storage.
 
I was a famine and feast but definatley famine now. Personally cant see the benefit V cost of having top notch PC, as soon as its delivered it starts to become out of date. I now upgrade incrementally and leave MOBO and processor last.
 
misterPK said:
It would be interesting to work out which burns up the most money, little and often spends or saving up for a big splurge.

PK!
Click to expand...

I'd say little and often costs less, because you're upgrading when the price is right rather than because you're doing the rest.

Personally I think that little and often works best if you have a steady but smaller stream of spare cash - eg £200 spare from a student loan, or £100 a month from the paycheck, whereas splurging works better if you tend to have times of feast an famine in your life in general - eg a freelancer or if you just don't go on holiday one year.

Another way to look at it, if you generally maintain two or three PCs, little and often can make a lot of sense.

If I have 2 rigs and want to upgrade the newer, I can pass a part down to the older - or if something goes on the older, get a new one and keep it in the more up to date rig... a component cascade, if you will.

You could do the same with splurge buys, but then if something goes on the old hardware, you're more inclined to buy a whole new rig than a new top-end part and swap it in - especially if you've just splurged.

I've only got the one PC and I've just had a relative splurge (a decent amount of my income) on it, but from now onwards I don't envisage spending more than £250 at a go (new CPU+motherboard) and usually upgrades of £50-150.
 
I've done this famine and feast thing you describe for 5 years on one pc. You see unfortunately I bought my last pc when I was tiny and so being the fool I was, got it from PCWorld :(

Well worse than that I got a 5 year guarentee so basically I made do for 5 years because I didn't want to break the guarentee by opening it up. Luckily I think that will now be changing and I will probably upgrade more regularly, it seems to make more sense for saving money, plus way more fun!
 
Hey all, many thanks for the replies! :)

I just wanted to clarify on how I thought of Feast & Famine (F&F) Upgraders . . .

These computer users will spend a fairly large whack of cash infrequently and then literally ride it like they stole it for 3-4 years until one day they decide to play a modern game and the whole system creaks and falls into pieces like the car at the end of Blue's Brothers! :p

The famine bit comes as the years roll by and their state-of the-art machine gets outmoded by newer and cheaper hardware but they keep going, two years, three years etc living off the fat from their big hardware meal!

The opposite of this would be a £500 quid machine every year (instead of say £1500 every three years) so the first year your behind the F&F upgrader but by year two you have another better machine and the same for year three, the main difference here is the F&F upgrader now has what was a uBer computer from 2006 and you have three computers from 2006, 2007, 2008

I hope this makes sense! :D

futureproofed.jpg

A little extra because it could be handy in the future!
 
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£500 doesn't give a particularly good PC - it'll play most things at medium, but that's about it.

£1500 once, then £250 a year on upgrades and you can keep a PC pretty much top whack - maybe £500 every third year.

Year 1, £500 on a top of the range CPU, ram and motherboard
Year 2, £250 on a decent GPU
Year 3, £250 renewing the case and hard drives, occasionally the optical drive and fans etc.

If I could that's how I'd do it, anyway :-)
 
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