My wallet hurts :'(

[Entsuropi]

Oh dear. I just spend just over a grand on my new PC.  A grand. I've never spend a grand in my life before.

I bet i drop something expensive when i get all the bits.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

Good on ya!

[JP Dogberry]

Not all that much really. In planning my next PC, I'm looking at spending around $4000 Australian.

[EUOL]

Wow, Entropy.  That must be *some* PC.  I assume that spending so much includes a nice monitor?  Or, are you being ridiculous and buying some monstrous gaming PC that will make even gaming nerds drool with envy?

[Entsuropi]

No, i'm still on a 17" CRT. I'll have to buy a flatscreen next month

The new pc is pretty much top spec. Should go like s*** off a shovel.

[EUOL]

Well, think of it this way--at least you get a new computer out of the mix.  A grand isn't really that much.

I wrote out a check for about $9,500 last month, and didn't even end up with a computer.  (Student Loan payment.)

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

uh... let's be clear about values. Entropy, when you say a grand, is that in pounds sterling? Or USD? if it's in British currancy, you're looking at over 2k USD, which still isn't that unusual, but can be hard to pay.

Also, 4k AUD is somewhere around 2k USD. So we're still talking about the same amount.

[Entsuropi]

Nuh uh. I used a currency converter. 4k Aussie is about 1.7k GBP.

And it was in GBP - $1,808.14 in US money. I could have gotten even higher specs - could have gone for a 64bit processor - but i kinda ran out of money

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

wow, AUD has climbed quite a bit in value.
You'll see that I was pretty close about the GBP v USD though.

[EUOL]

Did you not buy the compter in pieces, then?  

[Entsuropi]

I've bought a bunch of new bits. Not the monitor, or the drives or peripherals, but pretty much all the other innards are being changed.

If i had gone for a premade of the same spec, no monitor, it would probably have gone up to 1.7k GBP.

[EUOL]

I'm just asking because 1.8k American sounds awful high.  My roommate bought a computer in pieces that was top-of-the-line for about $600.  I'm sure you could get better, but three times as much?  Are pieces more expensive in the UK, or am I missing something?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

"Top of the line" for $600? define "top of the line"

When I did the same it was with everything being the second best it could be. Not counting extras like the wacom tablet or new software, I spent around $900, and I did a LOT of price shopping. Did your roommate get a monitor as well? My first thought is if you JUST bought a case, a mobo, a cpu, a goodly bunch of RAM, one high capacity hard drive, and a CDRW/DVD drive, nicey nicey vid card and sound card (we'll assume onboard USB and network, since so many mobo's have it) you're looking at, bare minimum for really high end performance at least $700.

[EUOL]

You're talking to the wrong guy.  All I know is what my more-computer-geeky roommates tell me.

It was a dual-processer something-other, and was supposed to be pretty nifty.  No monitor, but lots of other stuff.

[Tage]

Are you talking about Earl's spack.net server? If so, it definitely doesn't count as "top-of-the-line." It certainly makes a great web server, but it's more along the lines of what SE was saying, all the pieces second-best of what's available.

Personally, I love going with the second-best strategy. You still get a really good computer that can run any apps or games on the market, the drivers for everything have had time to work out the bugs, and it all costs about half the price as the top-of-the-line stuff.