QOTW: What's the most you've spent on a single PC component?

[aniilv]

200£ for 4790k

Why spend more :]

[LSG501]

Depends how far back I go because what might not seem like a lot now was a lot more expensive back at that time due to relative income etc..

I suppose it's my dual athlon MP1900+ from back when I was at uni, I had to have 2 cpu's for it to run on the motherboard, which was just as expensive as those cpu's, actually pretty much everything on that rig was expensive. IIRC the rig was around 2-2.5k when most 'home' pc's were around 1k and the cpu's, 1GB ecc ram (I think, might have been 1.5GB) and motherboard basically made up the difference. Min wage was like £5 per hour so you can imagine the relative cost in today's market. It might have been expensive but value for money wise it was a bargain, it was higher spec than the rigs at uni and I didn't need to upgrade half way though my degree like many others and overall I think I actually saved money.

I suppose £400 on 17" IPS TFT when they were 'new tech' could also be something I could consider.

The funny thing is that due to 'timing' if I replace some of the parts of my current rig I'd actually be paying more now than when I bought them so they are likely now the most expensive parts in this pc, they weren't when I bought it, I paid £225 for my 1060 6GB gpu yet it's now going for £300+ which would make it the most expensive part lol.

Mind you when you think about it from a perspective of how much something cost for what it actually does, I'd argue things like my logitech mx master mouse or my 3D connexion controller are a much more expensive item even though they come in a lot less than a gpu.

[Saracen]

As LSG501 said, this is going to be about how far back.

For instance, £4.5k on a CD burner. Or rather, package of software and hardware. SCSI-based Yamaha CDR100, IIRC, and DOS-based Personal Scribe software. The drive was about £3.5k, and the software to drive it another £1000.

Oh, and a box if 10 CD-R blanks = £150.

Thing is, in those days, if a hard drive 'hesitated' to do a T-Cal, (thermal calibration) the CD burner ran out of data and turned your £10 blank into a mug coaster. So, you really needed AV-rated hard drives, and my externally stackable Micropolis AV drives were £1k each.

Oh, and add about £2k for an A3 flatbed scanner, and about £3k for the film scanner (35mm), and then the £10k (all bar about £200) for the all-singing, all-dancing 386 PC, and you have a tidy little sum.

I also remember £1500 for a 338MB ESDI hard drive, at one point. Also, £1000 each for some fancy US Robotics modems, and as I was running a BBS at the time, which obviously was pre-internet, each "connection" required a modem, so x modems meant x concurrent connections.

Oh, and my first SLR tape drive was pricy, but much faster and more reliable than whatever DAT drive I was at the time, and they weren't cheap either. Then there was £3.5k on a networked HP laser (mono).

This game used to be seriously expensive. Then again, offer the right services and it was a good time to be an independent service provider. Unlike now.

[Shane74]

AU$1209 Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 5960X Back in 2014

First and probably last extreme cpu for me, Have always bought the second best every build but had to try the top one at least once!

[Counterpart7]

$1100 AUD on my gtx 1080ti

[Phrontis]

Quite a while ago now, 2006ish, but £1300 EACH on a pair of Xeon 5482's for a Supermicro workstation I built. Still got it, but its retired. The processors go for £40 on Ebay now.

[3dcandy]

£319.99 for a SCSI Yamaha CD Writer for my Amiga system back in about 1992. Add inflation... say about £550. And discs at £2 a pop. And they would fail. Quite often

[Ciber]

I spent around £750 on my monitor, a Samsung SM275T. 11 years on and I think it's still a great screen.

[philehidiot]

I spent around £750 on my monitor, a Samsung SM275T. 11 years on and I think it's still a great screen.

I see a monitor as a different level of component if that makes sense. A CPU / GPU will always have a limited life (new versions of DirectX, etc) but a good screen is an investment which can often easily last more than a decade. Like you I tend to spend (relatively) big on the screen and ensure I've chosen well so it lasts. My old one must have been with me for well over a decade and that was nearly £600 (very cheap for the spec at the time) and I ran it until part of the backlighting seemed to fail and it got noticable dark spots. Even then, I gave it to someone else who is still using it.

I think as long as you choose well, a monitor is more akin to a (relatively) long term investment as there are unlikely to be huge technological revolutions that make your existing one obselete. HDR and frame syncing stuff are nice to have but they're not going to render a perfectly good screen useless.

[peterb]

£319.99 for a SCSI Yamaha CD Writer for my Amiga system back in about 1992. Add inflation... say about £550. And discs at £2 a pop. And they would fail. Quite often

I bought one of those for a Windows 95 system in 1997 - not sureit was £400 though, I think orices had fallen to around £200 by then - still a lot of money though. I probably still have it in a box somewhere - together with the cut down ISA SCSI adapter card!

[excalibur1814]

nVidia 690 or my AOC monitor (Ultra wide thing).

The 960 looked amazing. Removed the driver, shutdown, slapped the card in with more than enough power etc, booted, installed the latest version, restarted and then... black screen after logging in.

Sent it back.

Happened to a few people and there was NO WAY that I was going to wait for a new driver, or use an old driver, when spending £600+. Well done nVidia.

[dfour]

£440 on my HD 290X pre order. Water cooled it and its still running in my gaming machine now.

[Kanoe]

My R9 295x2 OC graphics card was £750, that took the crown from my Dell U2410 which was £500.

Both still going strong.

[darcotech]

Nothing special, but MSI GTX 1070 Aero OC is most expensive component last year.
Though it was just after my 4K laptop with GTX 1070 and i7. That was more than 2000$.

What I would like: AMD Threadripper 1950X...

[aidanjt]

Spent over £400 on a 24" 1920x1200@60Hz monitor some 11 years ago. I still have it, but it was driving me nuts, so I'm borrowing the old man's hastily-but-not-really-needed 27" 1440p@144Hz Freesync monitor for the time-being. I'll probably end up buying it off him if I end up buying an AMD GPU, if the prices return to some semblance of sanity, that is.

[Tunnah]

£720, 1080Ti, and worth every penny. I like to think I'm pretty responsible when building PCs; I built my current rig around an i5-2500 and 460s in SLI, switched to a 2700K for only £160 down the line, and kept the graphics cards up to date with SLI models giving the best bang4buck. If nvidia had kept their sensible pricing on the x70 line I would've gone 2x1070 instead, but the 1080Ti worked out better due to SLI becoming more of a hindrance