Your PC Builds - Battle of the Rigs

Marco · October 7, 2020, 8:08am

iOS 14 iPhone/iPad

Resale value is the last thing on my mind. Utility is first. Cost of ownership is a close second.

I do think resale value is a plus, though. You never know what you’re gonna need, when. In my life, I’ve randomly moved countries for various reasons a couple of times. In all those cases I hadn’t planned it too far in advance. So I’ve found myself needing to sell off tech items just to cut down on baggage and simplify my life.

Here are the results:

iPad mini after two years of use for 70% of what I paid

iPhone 5 after four years of use for 50% of what I paid

iPhone 7 after two years of use for 60% of what I paid

iPod Touch after 2 years of use for 70% of what I paid

Windows laptop after two years of use for 30% of what I paid

Windows desktop after one year of use for 30% of what I paid

So based on these experiences, I also feel more secure buying Apple stuff knowing that if I need to ditch it for whatever reason, I can get most of the money back. This is a huge advantage over Windows/Android gear that really has always lost value super fast (at least for me).

It’s not a bad point, but
It’s a plus for some people. For me, no. I just like being comfortable in my tech. I also hoard data. I took my desktop with me to Taiwan, sold the case in Canada, bought a new one and rebuilt it. I buy among the high value high end and expect to run it into the ground.

All my stuff in the same place.

Beauty. I really like this case. When I upgrade. Gonna keep it. I painted the sun on it.

Reselling stuff is basically…whatever I get from it. No plan, no budget. I run it until the perceived amortised value is 0.

Here’s another side of the coin for me. I could also get used previous gen Windows/Android gear for dirt and have a perfectly well-oiled machine for nickels on the dollar and resell it for similar to what I paid for it because it doesn’t suffer from driving-off-the-lot syndrome.

okonomiyaki · October 7, 2020, 8:43am

That’s a beautiful build.

Marco · October 7, 2020, 8:45am

Thank you! I had to call a laser company to cut out a stencil for the ROC sun. Of course nobody and my friends have ever heard of stencilling and the laser company was like… Ok… sure… whatever you want.

Also hours of prep work, hours of drying and kilometres of green painters tape were used.

Marco · October 7, 2020, 11:09am

I rebuilt the computer four years ago. I wasn’t even a member here.

The SSD’s warranty date is Year 105.

Taiwan_Luthiers · October 7, 2020, 10:53am

I have a laser cutter. How come you never called me?

Wee · October 7, 2020, 4:01pm

Can’t make out the PSU, but, given your love of all things Taiwanese, I’m assuming Super Flower?

Marco · October 7, 2020, 4:02pm

Yeah. a friend gave me his kilowatt Superflower and I like the colour cause it matches.

It DEFINITELY does not need a kilowatt. I just happened to acquire it for free.

Might as well

Wee · October 7, 2020, 4:11pm

I always use the white ones too, usually 850w. Even with dual x080 Tis, none of my builds ever seem to go over 600w on the UPS. Building one for a nephew this weekend.

Marco · October 7, 2020, 4:22pm

It’s rare that anyone needs more than 800 W.

My GPU is an R9 Nano. Got it on special.

frank_hnd · October 13, 2020, 3:59am

Let me find a pic of my build, let the build war begin!

Marco · October 13, 2020, 4:24am

Beauty!
Inwin originally only made their 303 and 303C with a black interior even if the exterior was white. I know a guy who knows a guy at the Inwin factory. Since they did have other high end cases that were white inside, they had the infrastructure in place to give mine a custom white interior and happily agreed.

frank_hnd · October 13, 2020, 4:30am

I wanted to buy an Inwin case for my wife’s PC but couldn’t find all-white case for a white build, now she got used to my Minecraft server random PC case and doesn’t want to change to something bigger. Now the Minecraft server parts are just lying around without a case or purpose haha

Marco · October 13, 2020, 4:40am

That’s funny. You could just get another PC case and put it together. Right? No use havin parts lyin around.

frank_hnd · October 13, 2020, 6:32am

My Minecraft friends are gone

Marco · October 13, 2020, 8:23am

Well… if the hardware is useful, it can be a spare PC or sold.

What kind of hardware is it?

frank_hnd · October 13, 2020, 9:35am

Nothing particularly great but it was more than enough for a MC server :

2-gen Pentium G something
Gigabyte GA-H61M-DS2 MB
12 GB DDR3 RAM
128 GB Kingston SSD

We mostly needed RAM as we played a lot of mods.

Marco · October 13, 2020, 9:48am

That could be made into a great home NAS with 10 Gigabit Ethernet. It has four SATA as well.

Xeon CPUs for that platform are cheap and provide i7 performance for a cheap mid range gaming system.

Taiwan_Luthiers · October 13, 2020, 12:53pm

I’m using i3 8300 which I heard is actually a very good cpu.

I like to improve my graphics sometimes because I am using nvidia 1050. But the problem is I think my PSU is maybe 400w and don’t think it will support anything more powerful.

frank_hnd · October 13, 2020, 1:10pm

I’m interested in doing a NAS out of it, it was a file server before but used the HDD on my wife’s build and now I regret it after my 2TB data disk died (it went to seagate yesterday). It was a headless server with Ubuntu server acting as MC, file and Plex server.

I’m not really sure I need a 10-Gigabit network though. I have a 1 Gigabit switch with Eero Pros taking care of the Wi-Fi part.