I was curious how much money you guys usually put into upgrading your setup, on average, a year. This would mean any hardware, gadget, furniture (chair, desk), even stuff light lighting and posters. Anything that contributes to your computer and desktop experience that is physical, so no software or games/music/movies, etc. even if it was on a disc.
Last year I bought a monitor, new case (old one broke), Optical drive, mouse, and mousepad. It was all only 425.
This year is quite a bit, a new desk which only cost 85 dollars, but then a g-sync monitor costing $630. Considering new keyboard now too.
So how much do you guys usually spend? I like to think I don't spend too much on it, but I probably do.
I basically end up with $1000 builds or less and don't upgrade. I just keep the pcs til they die and none have. So with that said so far I think it averages out to me spending $100 or less per year.
Seeing as I just got my first well paying job exactly 1 year ago, I'd say it would be difficult to total the amount of money I've blown on tech this past year.
If I had to guess, I've maybe blown close to 4 thousand dollars or more on tech this last year. (Full gaming pc, desk chair, 3 monitors, microphone, multiple headphones, new laptop, new tablet, new phone, etc... I'm actually taking inventory just so I know what I have laying around.)
Jesus Christ, I could have bought a new car... Needless to say, I've got to start doing better budgeting and planning this next year.
04/2011 : 1100 EUR (completely new PC apart from the GFX card) 06/2013 : 180 EUR (motherboard) 08/2013 : 470 EUR (gfx card) 10/2014 : 600 EUR (2nd card + bigger PSU) 01/2015 : 400 EUR (new case + fans) 06/2015 : 2500 EUR (NAS) 02/2016 : 2000 EUR (major upgrade to main PC + case and misc parts to turn the old CPU and MoBo into a working secondary PC) 09/2016 : 550 EUR (gfx card)
Overall that puts me at 7500+ EUR in the past 5 years on towers alone. The monitors and speakers that I bought in 2012 add another 900-ish EUR, I spent 700 EUR on external drives for backups and I replaced my mouse and keyboard recently too. So let's call it 9500 EUR in PC hardware. over 5 years. That puts me at 1900 EUR (little more than $2.1K) annually.
I'm not counting the LAcie 2Big NAS or the WD EX4 as I'll be selling those pretty soon (waiting for the tekxit dust to settle) and expect to make at least half of my money back on them.
I may upgrade the 1070 to a 1270 or 1370 when the time comes, but in terms of CPU power and storage I should be set for a while. So the enxt few years should see me spend a lot less money. That being said, I really need a new desk and chair. That'll be another 1200 EUR in the foreseeable future.
$5. Replacing the aging and slow Pentium E5800 with an aging but not so slow Xeon E5405. Adapter included in price. Overwatch crushes my PC but idgaf, PC :D
1690,42€ spent in the last two years for a whole new system + PSU pure sine wave 750W + one WD Red + external HDD dock USB 3.0 + Logitech C920 + Sennheiser HD598. I also upgraded to an SSD in my laptop last year, does it count? If it does that would be another 135€ in the pot.
P.S. also another thing I forgot that I don't know if counts: I've spent about 60€ to get a good micro SD card, wi-fi dongle and case for my Raspberry Pi last year too.
Probably a couple to three grand if you include everything else I've bought for my bedroom. Monitor, Nano, spaceco arms, 3D printer, a Z9PE-D8 WS board with a couple of Eight-core E5s, two RAID cards, three fibrechannel NICs, a SAN and a Dell R610.
I really, really, REALLY need to start saving up and selling some of my stuff.
The massive steelcase desk was a nice freebie, though.
I always buy desktops at the 1k to 1.2k euros mark then just upgrade them as new things makes sense with small step by step upgrades. I have a desk i bought from IKEA 4 years ago and still use the same and extra screen i got from my work as they were about to throw away a few working ones.
Last 2.5 years since i bought the desktop I only really spent 65 euros to buy a new CPU cooler because the previous one died, 10 bucks for a good mousepad and upgraded from a 270 to a 470 (that would be 280E - tend to upgrade every 2-3 years). Nothing else really. And i do not see spending any extra money until Zen comes out as well. So average about 142 E per year?
EDIT: I forgot about a new desk chair about 170 E. Second hand from a bank. With that the average would be 210.
i guess i probably average a little over $1,000 a year. I have recently bought a $450 desk chair (to replace my metal folding chair) and $500 on a amp/dac. Spent around $250 earlier in the year on a new case and fans. Last year the only thing i bought was $1,000 IEMs. The year before that was probably around $1300 total with a new mic, monitor, videocard, and ram. Next year i'm probably going to upgrade mobo, ram, cpu, and maybe hard drives and will probably spend around $1000 on that, more if i do the hard drives as well. Year after i will probably upgrade both my monitor and videocard and will probably spend at least $1,000 on that combined. I have been getting mice for free to QA test, but the company doing that hasn't sent me their last two mice, so that might have come to an end, so i might be spending more a year now that i don't have that happening.
I don't spend much on stuff... last year I built the thing so ~$700, kb/m for around $80, and pretty much nothing this year...
$780/2years = $390 per year. That number will drop drastically next year as I have no planned upgrades atm so roughly $260 per year by this time next year once the average is applied. pc gaming is all about frugality... idk how some people end up spending so much each year... this is an average correct?
yep, you can definately be frugal. Its not that i need to spend as much as a I do. Its more like, well, i have the extra income and looking for a way to spend it. Well, i spend a lot of my free time at my desk, so its a logical area to spend the extra income. Especially if its like you have a planned income and a planned way to spend that and then you get or bonus or over time and want to spend that bonus or over time money on your recreation.