How much have you spent this year on tech hardware?

Zardon · May 24, 2009, 02:03 PM

discuss!

BlueMak · May 24, 2009, 02:07 PM

If we are talking about January till now, then nothing, as I voted.
If we are talking about the last 12 months, then about £2500+

Zelig · May 24, 2009, 03:39 PM

Well under 500, I've only bought a second 24" LCD to replace my massive Sony CRT.

Don't expect to be buying any tech stuff in the next year.

Tyrsonswood · May 24, 2009, 04:25 PM

Well under the $500 I posted in the poll............ the dogs and cats have to eat too, you know?

Mac Daddy · May 24, 2009, 04:38 PM

From January until now I have spent around 700 bucks.

Stop It · May 24, 2009, 04:47 PM

I'm guessing you're using USD as the measure, as I can't imagine many people spending £5000 on PC stuff in a year.

Hmm, my spending checklist on PC stuff for the last year?

£140 on a Acer X223HQ 1080p Monitor
£170 on a Intel C2Q Q9400
£150 on a Sapphire HD4870
£20 on a SATA DVD Writer drive
£20 on an Audigy 2 ZS

And £200 on an Asus GTX275....Wait, No I didn't

Zelig · May 24, 2009, 06:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stop It

I'm guessing you're using USD as the measure, as I can't imagine many people spending £5000 on PC stuff in a year.

I think he purposely left out the measure of currency.

If you look at what you can actually buy, £5000 doesn't get you nearly as much more than $5000 USD as you'd expect from the currency conversion.

charm_quark · May 24, 2009, 06:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

I think he purposely left out the measure of currency.

If you look at what you can actually buy, £5000 doesn't get you nearly as much more than $5000 USD as you'd expect from the currency conversion.

thats true,,,, but if you really consider it,,, £5000 is a lot here, £1 is BWP13, that a load of cash!.. esp if your gonna import stuff...

lepel · May 24, 2009, 06:49 PM

About 60 euros on the ikari that's all.

Zardon · May 24, 2009, 07:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

I think he purposely left out the measure of currency.
.

yep, otherwise if I put $ the europeans complain. and if its pounds or euros the americans complain. Its not really that relevant anyway, just a ballpoint figure for the members to discuss in here.

**kris23** · May 24, 2009, 07:07 PM

uhh..... i spent about $24 bucks this year

Lowfat · May 24, 2009, 07:40 PM

way too much

Asmoday · May 24, 2009, 08:07 PM

Well below 500....Oh wait, I bought the PS3 after christmas but thats it.

swimtech · May 24, 2009, 10:35 PM

Spent the relatively big bucks last year - less than $500 this year - odds and ends, and $140.00 on cat food already

!

**Mousey** · May 24, 2009, 11:03 PM

Exactly £0.00 due to no job.

buburuza76 · May 27, 2009, 11:17 AM

Well, for the moment i don`t work. My boss fired me and he still pays himself like 3500$ a month, while i was there with 300$. That sucks. That`s why this year...and probably next one....no money for hardware.

Cannyone · May 28, 2009, 05:54 AM

From January till the present I've spent about $2650.

That's for a P45 motherboard, 4GB of DDR2-1066 memory, a 4870 w/1GB, and a case. Purchased independently, but all in the Feb/Mar timeframe.

Last week I bought a Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser AIO...

Then last Monday I ordered a case, p/s, CPU, motherboard, memory, heatsink/fan, and video card, for new Core i7 system.

It sounds like allot to me now. But it should only take a few months to pay down that credit card. In fact, all of the items before the Printer are paid off now. I can't stand being in debt!!

Sadly the HD4870 and the P45 board will go up for sale on Craigslist. I'm really dissatisfied with ATI's drivers lately (getting constant errors when I try to start the CCC...). And the Foxconn P45 board has consistently failed to impress (please! don't get me started on Foxconn's Tech Support...). So what will become my secondary system will revert to a 780i board with SLI 8800GTs (that might later be "upgraded" to GTS260s). The downside to this is that I don't like the hit I take in hard drive performance with the 780i. But the upside is that since I have to do a clean install it might as well be the 32-bit version of Windows 7. (On the new Core i7 system I'll install the 64-bit version of Windows 7... I'm hoping that "64-bit" becomes more mainstream and gets better support. But since the memory kit I bought is 6GB there's no point in only using half!)

BlueMak · May 28, 2009, 06:02 AM

I have a 4870X2 and never had a driver issue. Perhaps it is a mainboard issue or you just need to do a clean installation (ie reformat)

I added another site I visit regularly on facebook and now I get every single "post" on my home page AND I see them again when I visit the site lol. Pointless really...For myself that is.

Judas · May 28, 2009, 07:45 AM

if i get a ati ccc error or any issues ... i usually check my settings and find the cause.... and if everything checks out.. it's usually a installation error i've made or a faulty product....

Cannyone · May 28, 2009, 10:25 PM

Well, in regard to my ATI driver issues, I contacted ATI's Tech Support. They had me uninstall the drivers, run Driver Sweeper to clean out the registry and old files in the Windows directory, then reinstall the 9.5s. The Errors persist! And ATI has no other suggestion to offer me.

I do know this much, I get these errors more frequently after a cold boot. Once the system has been running for several hours they are far less frequent. The catch is that, since dual display no longer wants to function like I want, the only way I can change it is to open the CCC. (Which really means I have to try, several times, till I can get the CCC to come up.) However, that is getting to be frustrating.

It could be the Foxconn (ELA) motherboard. I know it does have other issues. Yet I'm stymied by the fact that Foxconn's Tech Support doesn't seem very competant. For instance: the manual is unclear about how SATA drives are ordered. I run 3 hard drives, and two of them are the same make and model. So I was having issues getting the boot files on a separate hard drive from the OS. I contacted Foxconn's Tech Support by phone. And though the guy supposedly looked at a copy of this board to verify, what he told me was wrong! Later I discovered that even though I had the onboard sound disabled in BIOS, it was in fact not disabled. This time I contacted their Tech Support services in Tiawan, via email. They took 2 weeks to tell me that they were unsure about my problem. So I've given up on Foxconn "helping me".

At the same time, I don't over-clock at all. Even my memory, which is designed to run at 1066 is just running at 800MHz. And the only deviation from an utterly stock configuration is that I have my hard drives set up in ACHI mode. But maybe something is wrong with the board. I bought it because it was PCIe 2.0. And I try to avoid mixing ATI video cards with Nvidia chipset boards, and visa versa.

However, IF I'm going to be forced to do another clean install. I have a good 780i board, and 2 8800GTs, in the closet. Plus that will give me an excuse to try Windows 7 RC1. And that leaves the "almost new" HD4870 in the closet, when I feel it would be better to try and get something out of it. Then throw in the Foxconn board to "sweeten the deal".

Yes, I realize that "next month" the ATI drivers might resolve all my issues. But I've learned from painful experience that I can't count on that happening. All I can do is try to deal with the "here and now".

Judas · May 28, 2009, 10:27 PM

just in the last 5 minutes... over 600 bucks

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/retailer...-put-test.html

niceguyrichy · Jun 2, 2009, 06:06 PM

couple of hdd's , X-Fi , new DVD writer , some memory, well under 500 so far.
looking at maybe a new gfx card for one of my comps later this month, and maybe a new cpu sometime soon, but that'll be it for this year unless something goes pop

ET3D · Jun 3, 2009, 12:26 PM

I spent about $600 on my new PC.

buburuza76 · Jun 3, 2009, 01:12 PM

Guys you are really spending a lot.I could use some money for some new hardware, someone from DH needs a hardwork young man?

Lowfat · Jun 4, 2009, 07:35 AM

In just storage (HDD's, RAID cards, SSD's) alone I spent just shy of $5K. Although likely over half of it I have sold while upgrading.

procupine14 · Jun 4, 2009, 10:27 PM

Well, including in my estimate only parts for my three systems, thus far this year I've spent:
$10 new watercooling tubing (yet to be installed)
$19 new liquid cooling fluid (also waiting for the move to new apartment to get done)
$50 for RAM etc for HTPC
$20 bluetooth adapter for my PC to Phone stuff
$38 new OCZ water block
$51 OCZ RAM
$160 HIS 4850
$170 Hanns.G monitor
$40 Kingston laptop RAM
and another $70 on a new pair of headphones and a seperate mic

So, I haven't dropped a lot of cash this year as compared to last year which I haven't added up but minus shipping I'm sure was around $1500 easily.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lowfat

In just storage (HDD's, RAID cards, SSD's) alone I spent just shy of $5K. Although likely over half of it I have sold while upgrading.

phew! at least you sold some of it off in the process

Neshi · Jun 4, 2009, 11:13 PM

just 60 euro's for a 4850, and that's it. I am really contemplating about getting a bigger screen as I watch alot of movies and this 17" doesn't really cut it... But I am hesitant with dishing out €250+ in one go. Maybe when I have moved to New Zealand I will get a new screen..

gamerguy127 · Jun 8, 2009, 10:32 PM

i just built my new system this year, after saving for ages total costs including the screen and a few extras, are about £900 or so maybe slightly more, but have just ran into £60 to do something else with my computer, anyone suggest anything extra i can get for around £60?? i was thinking about getting another 2GB of ram for £41 but i'm not sure, anyone got any ideas?

Tyrsonswood · Jun 8, 2009, 10:53 PM

go for the ram

gamerguy127 · Jun 8, 2009, 11:03 PM

kl will that improve my performance much?

May 24, 2009, 02:03 PM	#1
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? discuss!

May 24, 2009, 02:07 PM	#2
BlueMak HH's Asteroids' Dominator Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Hellas->Macedonia->Thessaloniki Posts: 13,248 Rep Power: 326 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? If we are talking about January till now, then nothing, as I voted. If we are talking about the last 12 months, then about £2500+ __________________ The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm *Sic semper tyrannis.*

May 24, 2009, 03:39 PM	#3
Zelig HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Canada Posts: 3,187 Rep Power: 69 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? Well under 500, I've only bought a second 24" LCD to replace my massive Sony CRT. Don't expect to be buying any tech stuff in the next year. __________________ --

May 24, 2009, 04:38 PM	#5
Mac Daddy DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 7,950 Rep Power: 78 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? From January until now I have spent around 700 bucks. __________________ "My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

May 24, 2009, 04:47 PM	#6
Stop It HHs' Resident Kitty Lover Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Biggleswade, UK Posts: 1,389 Rep Power: 73 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? I'm guessing you're using USD as the measure, as I can't imagine many people spending £5000 on PC stuff in a year. Hmm, my spending checklist on PC stuff for the last year? £140 on a Acer X223HQ 1080p Monitor £170 on a Intel C2Q Q9400 £150 on a Sapphire HD4870 £20 on a SATA DVD Writer drive £20 on an Audigy 2 ZS And £200 on an Asus GTX275....Wait, No I didn't __________________ Sig Courtesy of Mousey

May 24, 2009, 06:49 PM	#9
lepel HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Belgium Posts: 552 Rep Power: 39 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? About 60 euros on the ikari that's all.

May 24, 2009, 07:07 PM	#11
kris23 Going Insane..... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 5,990 Rep Power: 121 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? uhh..... i spent about $24 bucks this year __________________ Hardwareheaven Super-Moderator Building a new computer system and not sure where to start? Click Here! last updated (5/18/11) Rosewill FUTURE case replaces CM 690 II with its greater interior length. Building a PC: Step by Step Guide Written by Kristopher Pedemonte and Nathan Marks-Forder Edited by Allan Campbell Questions or Comments? feel free to post them in the forums!

May 24, 2009, 07:40 PM	#12
Lowfat Xtreme Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Grande Prairie, AB, Can Posts: 4,251 Rep Power: 99	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? way too much __________________ 27" iMac: i5 750 * 80GB X25-M G1 * 4GB DDR3 * HD4850 Stacker: 2600k * P8P67 Pro * 4GB DDR3 * 80GB ioXtreme * 30GB X25-E * (2) HD6950 * Asus D2 * Enermax Revo85+ HWD: (2) Xeon E5649 * EVGA SR-2 * 6GB DDR3 * 8800GTS * 1000W Antec FT01BW: (2) Xeon E5645 * EVGA SR-2 * 6GB DDR3 * GTS210 * Gigabyte 800W Odin GT Storage: (2) Sans Digital TR8M-B * 29TB

May 24, 2009, 08:07 PM	#13
Asmoday Demonic Join Date: May 2002 Location: In the cold, dark north... Posts: 5,198 Rep Power: 90 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? Well below 500....Oh wait, I bought the PS3 after christmas but thats it. __________________ How You can help Hardwareheaven by using Digg

May 24, 2009, 10:35 PM	#14
swimtech HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: North Carolina Posts: 4,040 Rep Power: 122 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? Spent the relatively big bucks last year - less than $500 this year - odds and ends, and $140.00 on cat food already ! __________________ It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

May 24, 2009, 11:03 PM	#15
Mousey Synth's Long Lost Bro Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Web Design Hell Posts: 7,156 Rep Power: 243 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? Exactly £0.00 due to no job. __________________

May 27, 2009, 11:17 AM	#16
buburuza76 HH member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Where you can`t make a life Posts: 345 Rep Power: 25	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? Well, for the moment i don`t work. My boss fired me and he still pays himself like 3500$ a month, while i was there with 300$. That sucks. That`s why this year...and probably next one....no money for hardware.

May 28, 2009, 05:54 AM	#17
Cannyone HardwareHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2006 Location: Albuquerque NM Posts: 85 Rep Power: 38 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? From January till the present I've spent about $2650. That's for a P45 motherboard, 4GB of DDR2-1066 memory, a 4870 w/1GB, and a case. Purchased independently, but all in the Feb/Mar timeframe. Last week I bought a Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser AIO... Then last Monday I ordered a case, p/s, CPU, motherboard, memory, heatsink/fan, and video card, for new Core i7 system. It sounds like allot to me now. But it should only take a few months to pay down that credit card. In fact, all of the items before the Printer are paid off now. I can't stand being in debt!! Sadly the HD4870 and the P45 board will go up for sale on Craigslist. I'm really dissatisfied with ATI's drivers lately (getting constant errors when I try to start the CCC...). And the Foxconn P45 board has consistently failed to impress (please! don't get me started on Foxconn's Tech Support...). So what will become my secondary system will revert to a 780i board with SLI 8800GTs (that might later be "upgraded" to GTS260s). The downside to this is that I don't like the hit I take in hard drive performance with the 780i. But the upside is that since I have to do a clean install it might as well be the 32-bit version of Windows 7. (On the new Core i7 system I'll install the 64-bit version of Windows 7... I'm hoping that "64-bit" becomes more mainstream and gets better support. But since the memory kit I bought is 6GB there's no point in only using half!) __________________ Eagles may Soar! But Weasels don't have to worry about being sucked into a jet engine...

May 28, 2009, 06:02 AM	#18
BlueMak HH's Asteroids' Dominator Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Hellas->Macedonia->Thessaloniki Posts: 13,248 Rep Power: 326 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? I have a 4870X2 and never had a driver issue. Perhaps it is a mainboard issue or you just need to do a clean installation (ie reformat) I added another site I visit regularly on facebook and now I get every single "post" on my home page AND I see them again when I visit the site lol. Pointless really...For myself that is. __________________ The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm *Sic semper tyrannis.*

May 28, 2009, 10:25 PM	#20
Cannyone HardwareHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2006 Location: Albuquerque NM Posts: 85 Rep Power: 38 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? Well, in regard to my ATI driver issues, I contacted ATI's Tech Support. They had me uninstall the drivers, run Driver Sweeper to clean out the registry and old files in the Windows directory, then reinstall the 9.5s. The Errors persist! And ATI has no other suggestion to offer me. I do know this much, I get these errors more frequently after a cold boot. Once the system has been running for several hours they are far less frequent. The catch is that, since dual display no longer wants to function like I want, the only way I can change it is to open the CCC. (Which really means I have to try, several times, till I can get the CCC to come up.) However, that is getting to be frustrating. It could be the Foxconn (ELA) motherboard. I know it does have other issues. Yet I'm stymied by the fact that Foxconn's Tech Support doesn't seem very competant. For instance: the manual is unclear about how SATA drives are ordered. I run 3 hard drives, and two of them are the same make and model. So I was having issues getting the boot files on a separate hard drive from the OS. I contacted Foxconn's Tech Support by phone. And though the guy supposedly looked at a copy of this board to verify, what he told me was wrong! Later I discovered that even though I had the onboard sound disabled in BIOS, it was in fact not disabled. This time I contacted their Tech Support services in Tiawan, via email. They took 2 weeks to tell me that they were unsure about my problem. So I've given up on Foxconn "helping me". At the same time, I don't over-clock at all. Even my memory, which is designed to run at 1066 is just running at 800MHz. And the only deviation from an utterly stock configuration is that I have my hard drives set up in ACHI mode. But maybe something is wrong with the board. I bought it because it was PCIe 2.0. And I try to avoid mixing ATI video cards with Nvidia chipset boards, and visa versa. However, IF I'm going to be forced to do another clean install. I have a good 780i board, and 2 8800GTs, in the closet. Plus that will give me an excuse to try Windows 7 RC1. And that leaves the "almost new" HD4870 in the closet, when I feel it would be better to try and get something out of it. Then throw in the Foxconn board to "sweeten the deal". Yes, I realize that "next month" the ATI drivers might resolve all my issues. But I've learned from painful experience that I can't count on that happening. All I can do is try to deal with the "here and now". __________________ Eagles may Soar! But Weasels don't have to worry about being sucked into a jet engine...

Jun 3, 2009, 12:26 PM	#23
ET3D Hopeless Dreamer Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Dreamland, near the pool of infinite graphics cards Posts: 3,055 Rep Power: 103 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? I spent about $600 on my new PC.

Jun 3, 2009, 01:12 PM	#24
buburuza76 HH member Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Where you can`t make a life Posts: 345 Rep Power: 25	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? Guys you are really spending a lot.I could use some money for some new hardware, someone from DH needs a hardwork young man?

Jun 4, 2009, 07:35 AM	#25
Lowfat Xtreme Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Grande Prairie, AB, Can Posts: 4,251 Rep Power: 99	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? In just storage (HDD's, RAID cards, SSD's) alone I spent just shy of $5K. Although likely over half of it I have sold while upgrading. __________________ 27" iMac: i5 750 * 80GB X25-M G1 * 4GB DDR3 * HD4850 Stacker: 2600k * P8P67 Pro * 4GB DDR3 * 80GB ioXtreme * 30GB X25-E * (2) HD6950 * Asus D2 * Enermax Revo85+ HWD: (2) Xeon E5649 * EVGA SR-2 * 6GB DDR3 * 8800GTS * 1000W Antec FT01BW: (2) Xeon E5645 * EVGA SR-2 * 6GB DDR3 * GTS210 * Gigabyte 800W Odin GT Storage: (2) Sans Digital TR8M-B * 29TB

Jun 4, 2009, 11:13 PM	#27
Neshi S.N.A.F.U. Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Wellington, NZ Posts: 3,260 Rep Power: 150 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? just 60 euro's for a 4850, and that's it. I am really contemplating about getting a bigger screen as I watch alot of movies and this 17" doesn't really cut it... But I am hesitant with dishing out €250+ in one go. Maybe when I have moved to New Zealand I will get a new screen.. __________________ If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live? Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Jun 8, 2009, 10:32 PM	#28
gamerguy127 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: England Posts: 168 Rep Power: 27 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? i just built my new system this year, after saving for ages total costs including the screen and a few extras, are about £900 or so maybe slightly more, but have just ran into £60 to do something else with my computer, anyone suggest anything extra i can get for around £60?? i was thinking about getting another 2GB of ram for £41 but i'm not sure, anyone got any ideas? __________________

Jun 8, 2009, 11:03 PM	#30
gamerguy127 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: England Posts: 168 Rep Power: 27 System Specs	Re: How much have you spent this year on tech hardware? kl will that improve my performance much? __________________