Attn: C5th and AMD gurus

[kalniel]

Over £145? worth and you are legally required to declare it and pay inport duty/VAT.

[c.ruel]

But who is going to know that it is worth more than £145? No one has ever stopped me. If you just leave the cpu, ran and mobo in their respective packaging whack it in a brown paper bag and say it is all second hand who is going to be any the wiser?

[Pob255]

A lot of electronics, esp laptops will be overlooked as it's assumed to be personal luggage that you are using not selling.
Whole computers or parts less so.

Legally you are required to declare any goods you've bought from another country and are bringing in or are taking to another country to sell and have to declare the value, customs can impound the goods pending investigation if they value them at an amount over that which you should pay duty on then at a minimum they will hold them until you pay the duty or YOU can prove that the value is under the minimum for duty.
That's the least, they can also take you to court for Evasion of customs duty.

A simular thing happens with packages sent over seas, If you're sent a package then the value of any goods must be declared on the box, some times it'll get through without being caught and additional charges leveled, some times it it will (if you receive regular packages then customs checks them more often as your name gets flagged) if you receive a lot which are all "declared" under the minimum, then your packages will start to get flagged for random inspection to check the value of the items.
Not sure what will happen next, as the sender is responsible for correct declaration and the receiver is responsible for additional charges, if you keep doing it you'll probably come under investigation from HM Revenue & Customs
Generally most people are too small scale to warrant an investigation and all overseas packages will get flagged notice esp if the correct cost is declared.

Custom charges can even separately arrive after you've received the goods btw.

[c.ruel]

so to summarise for the situation of the OP. He is very unlikely to get caught ... but if he does he will pay alot? So unless prices are drastically higher in Oz he should buy there!?

EDIT: Surely as well these are the rules for Britain, as he will be going from Britain to Oz it is the Austrailian rules that matter not the English ones right? That's the other thing because people at airports in Britain really don't seem to care what you do as long as you are departing and not arriving.

[Phage]

For simplicity I will probably buy over there. Plus GST < VAT at 10%. Unless anyone knows of some bargains ? I'd be happy to take them through customs. They tend to be more worried about quarantine than 2nd hand computer kit.
Case, PSU, HDD, GPU and Optical I'm OK with. But the AMD mainboard setup I'm not familiar with. So far I have the following,

955BE
870 chipset MoBo
4gb RAM at 1600Mhz
W7 64

Anything I've missed ?

[Attila the Bun]

Quick check on a Aussie component site suggests a price of around A$151 (£93) inc GST for a 955 BE, on SCAN it's about £110. A$239 (£147) for a a Sapphire 6850 - SCAN about £154 for the Sapphire.

I don't know what the Oz delivery costs are but why risk fines and carry heavier bags when you will pay about the same for the components there abouts.

[Phage]

Absolutley. But if the savings on a 2nd hand chip, memeory or mainboard were worth it....After all if I buy them, they are 2nd hand. And the value is low, relatively speaking.

[Attila the Bun]

Absolutley. But if the savings on a 2nd hand chip, memeory or mainboard were worth it....After all if I buy them, they are 2nd hand. And the value is low, relatively speaking.

Sorry...I must be having a blond moment...are you buying second hand here and taking them with you or buying new here and saying they are 2nd hand to Customs?

Also will you need to factor a cooler in if they decide they want to be OC experts

[thegalaxyboy]

The X3 450 for around £58 on Scan it quite good value. After that it would be the Intel Core i3 540 for around £80 and after that it would be a Phenom II X4 955BE for around £108 on Ebuyer. After that it would be the Core i5 760 for around £140 to £150.

Regarding the motherboard the MSI 870A-G54 was around £69 on Ebuyer and had USB3.0 and SATA 3.0 but it seems to be not available on Ebuyer any more. Other websites sell the motherboard for between £70 to £75.

If you don't mind going for the older 770 chipset these motherboards have USB3.0 too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-sata-raid-atx

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-8...-sata-raid-atx

At around £70 to £80 the 870 motherboards tend to have both USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 ports.

This 790X based motherboard is only £70:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=37386

It does not have USB 3.0 or SATA 3.0 but does symmetrical Crossfire and has the SB750 southbridge. There is also a USB3.0 version of the motherboard:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-sata-raid-atx

Re the 955 AMD, there's a mere £10 difference between the 955 and the 965, surely for this price the latter would be a better option? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/186428

[GT-R]

Re the 955 AMD, there's a mere £10 difference between the 955 and the 965, surely for this price the latter would be a better option? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/186428

AMD Black Edition cpu's have unlocked multipiers so its very easy to overclock the 955 to 965 speeds and beyond, which is likely the reason why pricing is so similar.