For us. All of us need to realize that MOST people don't spend 1-2k a year (easily) on PC stuff.
That is fair, but the 3060 launched at $329.
Now I know there were scalpers and outrageous markups, but if you shopped around...
I know I am a little unusual in that I tend to view my machines as revolving doors. Parts go in, and come out over and over again over their lifespans.
My current main build is technically the spiritual successor to my first 286 back in 1991, replaced one - or a couple - of parts at a time.
While there is nothing left from the 286 (I think the oldest part that is left at this point is probably some water cooling fitting from 2016 or maybe the 1TB Samsung 970 EVO I got in 2018 I still keep in there but barely use) I don't think I've ever done a complete from scratch build. I've always kept at least a few parts and moved them over bit by bit.
I college it was a whirlwind. Motherboards lasted a year, I went through several CPU's a semester. GPU's were a 6 month to 1 year thing.
Since then it has slowed down a bit.
Both the market and I have changed.
That said, I like to view the kiddos PC I built for him as an example.
He had a from spare parts build for minecraft and roblox way back using my old AMD FX 8350 and a 2GB GTX 460 starting in 2015 but I decided to build him something nice in late 2016.
It was
MSI B350 Tomahawk
AMD Ryzen 5 1600x
8GB RAM
2013 Titan 6GB
1 TB Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD
The GPU was my old one. At that point in time the AMD RX480 was out and performed similarly. It was easier and cheaper to just use my old Titan that was sitting in a box at that point than it was to sell it and buy a newer lower end GPU.
At some point the ancient Titan was no longer cutting it. In late 2019 before the market went haywire, I got a 2060 Super and popped it in instead of the Titan.
Then a year later in late 2020, I upgraded the Ryzen 5 1600x to a Ryzen 7 3800XT
At some point here I also added a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe drive, but left the SATA drive in there for extra storage.
That lasted until late last year (2023) when I upgraded him with a Ryzen 7 5800X3D. A couple of months later at the holidays he was upgraded to a 4070 Super, and 16GB of faster RAM.
Case, cooler, motherboard all stayed the same. So excluding the original investment in the build, I've spent:
2019: GeForce 2060 Super - $446
2020: Ryzen 7 3800xt - $370
2020: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO - $138
2023: Ryzen 7 5800X3D - $320
2023: 2x8GB DDR4-3600 CL - $41
2023: GeForce 4070 Super - $637
(that last one was a little high, but the kid had gotten turned around a near failing record and gotten straight A's in school, and I wanted to reward him with a nice gift for the holidays, so I cringed a little about spoiling him, nad did it anyway)
So, in order for him to have a reasonable mid-high up to date system, I've put in a total of $1,952 but that has been over 8 years, so - initial build aside (which actually wasn't too bad either, as I reused parts I had laying around for just about everything except the motherboard, CPU and RAM, which were a fantastic Microcenter bundle.) - we are averaging $244 per year, not $1-2k.
That seems a lot more doable.
Now I do know there was some fortuitous timing there. I got in right at the beginning of AM4 - a platform with record longevity - and was able to ride that train all the way to the end. I alos lucked out and got the 2060 Super right before the market went crazy, and got the 4070 Super mostly after it had slowed down again. But still. You don't have to go hog wild to have a decent system.
I also can't believe that motherboard has lasted for 8 years and still does everythign he needs it to.
I mean, sure, PCIe Gen4 would be nice, but it is not an earth shattering difference for anyhting he does.
