A Fair Price

[helpiveimploded]

In my ongoing tradition of asking questions for seemingly idiotic reasons, I'd like to get you guys' opinions on something.

When I build my much-vaunted new PC in the weeks to come I'll be selling my current rig to my brother to offset the cost. So, the question I want to ask is: is £600 a fair price? I'm not asking because I want to fleece him for as much as I can get, but rather that he is a complete computer ignoramus (in a nice way, but he did ask me this morning to underclock all my components before giving him the PC so it'll last longer - QED) and I don't want to feel like I'm ripping him off. To save the wear and tear on your mice, I'll post my specs here for your viewing pleasure. To answer the question I'm sure someone will ask otherwise, I've had the computer for just under two years, and the overclock was done less than a year ago. The Caviar drive is brand new, installed just a week ago.

Processor : Q9650 @ 3.5GHz
Motherboard : Asus P5QL
RAM : Corsair DDR2 800MHz
Cooler : Coolit Domino All-in-one Watercooler
Hard Drives : 150GB Velociraptor
250GB Hitachi 7200RPM
1TB Hitachi 7200RPM
2TB Caviar Green WD20EARS
Graphics : Sapphire HD6850 @ 900MHz
5.25" Drive : LG DVD Writer with Lightscribe
PSU : 600w random brand, foisted onto me by company that built my PC
Case : InWin Conqueror
Sound Card : Creative X-Fi Xtreme
OS : Windows XP Home
Windows Vista Home 64-bit

Cheers for the input, guys. And if someone can come up with a convincing way I can explain to my brother that squeezing ten years of life out of a PC he wants to use for gaming is totally redundant, please tell me. He doesn't seem to believe me, for some reason.

[DennisMenace]

What something is worth, what you could sell it for, and what it would cost to replace - these are three completely different things.

Your system would cost well over £1000 to replace, but I doubt you'd get over £500 for it. That said, I'd rather pay more to buy something from a friend who had cared well for it, than take a chance on an unknown 'bargain'. Assuming that it is stable and trouble-free, £500-£600 seems fair to me, although I hardly ever buy second-hand PC gear.

I'd be tempted to steal the VelociRaptor and/or Caviar for your new build, and use a small SSD for the boot drive and do a fresh install (unless you have an OEM copy of Windows, which makes things a bit more complicated - so consider Windows 7). An older 30-40Gb SSD can be found for £50-£60, which would still be faster than the VelociRaptor, which you could use with another SSD for a blisteringly fast new system (Z68 with SSD caching?).

Or forget the VelociRaptor altogether and get a fast SSD (eg OCZ Vertex 3 or Crucial M4) and a cheap 7200/5400rpm drive - Scan have had a few good deals on 1TB Spinpoint F3's and 2TB EcoGreen F4's recently, so keep your eye on their "Today Only" page.
[eg 2 x 1Tb F3 = £75, NCQ/7200rpm looks ideal for RAID]

Finally, if that system has got to last 10 years (?!), get a half-decent PSU for £50+, especially if you keep it overclocked. And if you can wait a few weeks for Z68, even if it's not what you want, it should push H67/P67 prices down.

[helpiveimploded]

Thanks DennisMenace, for your input. I've looked after my PC very well, nursed it in an almost Florence-Nightingale sort of way, so I think perhaps £600 is a fair enough price, considering I've told him I'll replace any components that break within a year. I'll also be his tech support ad infinitum, so I feel a bit better about the price now.

My brother is the sort of person who only changes anything once it becomes absolutely necessary (his current PC is about nine years old, has no USB 2.0 support, and still uses the original AGP graphics card - I often find myself surprised that it doesn't have moss growing on it) so his concern is that it lasts as long as possible, rather than being relevant to the use to which he intends to put it, which is gaming. Obviously ten years is a stretch, but it's not far off the amount of time he's been pawing at the ageing carcass of his current PC.

[alexander]

I'd say closer to £400 to be honest with you

[helpiveimploded]

Well, because I like to overdo everything to the point of utter nausea, I've priced each component individually based on used prices on Ebay, and it's coming out around where I thought it would (£570 assuming no charge for the operating systems). I significantly undercut the price I arrived on for each component as well, so I'm confident that it's a fair price. Thanks for the advice anyway, though I think your estimate was a little low, Alexander - consider that the CPU and graphics card alone (which, I meant to say, is less than a year old too) would be worth at least £200, and that most of it is still under warranty. He'd be hard pushed to find a similarly powerful system for less money, I think.

[jim]

I reckon DennisTM is probably on the money. No doubt, selling as parts over the net, you aren't going to get £600.

But with all the added benefits that come from buying off a family member/friend, well those make a big difference. Least of which, although I hate to say it, is the ability to go mental and blame somebody else when it goes wrong, somebody who feels a need to actually make some effort to fix it - as opposed to some faceless seller from eBay who will just fob you off once they have their feedback. I'd say you're justified.

And at the end of the day, I can't imagine either of you would be seething at a £100 over/under price. Now let's hope it lasts as long as the previous PC

[helpiveimploded]

Thanks, snootyjim... I think if it's to last as long as the previous one I'd better invest in a second pair of defibrillators.