How much do you spend on PC desktop hardware every year?

[BrightCandle]

Anandtech readers and posters are far from typical in their usage of PCs, not least because they tend to buy desktops. We sometimes talk about the typical user and I am intrigued to understand the typical Anandtech user budget for PCs to better frame these discussions on value.

How much a year do you spend on desktop hardware including monitors and peripherals?

 

[veri745]

I usually spend about $800-1000 ever 3 years or so, with minor upgrades in between, so I put 200-300.

 

[UaVaj]

only play with all the eye candy on so it varies from year to year depending on how well hardware keeps up with software in maintaining eye candy.

excluding initial investment for a eye candy system $2000.

overall average ~500/yr.

 

[Face2Face]

I don't know BrightCandle....? you got a pretty weak system, im guessing you did <$100 year..

 

[Eureka]

Quite honestly, not a lot. I buy big but then I use it for 3-4 years, so the price ends up much less per year. I also try to sell what I don't use anymore.

 

[2is]

Tough one with out some calculations. I typically do a complete build once every 3-4 years with a GPU upgrade at about the mid point. So i'll likely be keeping my current system for at least another 3 years and upgrade the GPU (or add a second one) sometime in the near future.

 

[Makaveli]

In years past it was higher but in the last few years there haven't been a need to spend as much. I would have fall into the $500-$1000 range before. Now I may do that in a 3 year time span instead of yearly. The performance of PCs today just last much longer so the need just isn't there.

 

[zootedd]

I spend what I can, when I can.

 

[Idontcare]

Definitely >$2k/yr. My Newegg account history alone is showing ~$600 just for the month of Jan 2013. 2012 for my newegg acct was ~$2.2k. Doesn't include other hardware sites (frozencpu, etc) and amazon for hardware purchases.

To be fair though all my hardware is bought with the intent of being dual-purpose. Business and pleasure. Well...I guess it is mostly for pleasure, but still

 

[nickbits]

i really have no idea but my guess was about 500

 

[TuxDave]

I'm guessing $100-200 if you're averaging out the cost of getting a new PC every 7-8 years. Excluding complete rebuilds, I usually end up <$100 a year on small peripherals that break.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Dang I wish I could count what I get to spend for work builds but most of the time I spend between $400 and $500 on my home systems.

 

[tweakboy]

I let 5 years just go buy before I upgraded. But during that time period yes I buy periphilars.like mouse , or pad ,,,,,,,, or usb stick or a hard drive. You can avg it out to maybe 40 to 140 dollars depends on the year and what Im buying,, gl

 

[sourn]

I'll go with around 800. Though it's not very accurate, and just an off the top of my head figure after looking at my new purchase, and adding in some more for misc. purchases. Not to mention I usually buy all at once, but last year I got new 30" monitor after deployment so that's 800 right there lol.

 

[tweakboy]

What up Christian, good to have you here for us.

 

[nOOky]

About every 2 years I build a new system which is usually around $1,000 or so. I have to maintain 4 PC's at home and I'm usually gradually upgrading something at least once or twice a year. I'm at the point now where I don't know what would make my main system appreciably faster. I'm probably good until next Christmas time.

 

[Soulkeeper]

Every single free dollar
I was doing good at maybe 600-800 for a few years, but last year I spent well over twice that. Everything I buy I don't _need_ but I do it anyways.

 

[Denithor]

$300-400 range, I always sell off my older parts to upgrade people's systems then rebuild innards of mine. Keep two systems, sell off parts from older when time to upgrade the main.

 

[bigrash]

In years past it was higher but in the last few years there haven't been a need to spend as much. I would have fell into the $500-$1000 range before. Now I may do that in a 3 year time span instead of yearly. The performance of PCs today just last much longer so the need just isn't there.

I don't spend much every year on my pc. I upgrade every 3 or 4 years, and end up spending about $1500 on a new system.

 

[Zardnok]

Dang I wish I could count what I get to spend for work builds but most of the time I spend between $400 and $500 on my home systems.

ROFL, yeah if we are counting work systems, I spend about $2000 per week! My personal system I upgrade every 4-5 years, with the current system I built in July costing right at $2000. I have been eyeing another gtx670 and 2 more monitors, but I need to come up with an extra $1000 to make it happen.

 

[Grooveriding]

Too much. Fluctuates year to year but over $2000. I do sell replaced parts off after I take whatever I can to improve another system in the house when I upgrade. That balances it out. If you upgrade regularly you can generally recoup a decent bit of cash when you swap parts by selling off the stuff you're replacing.

Past few years I've been spending more on mechanical hard drives for storage than anything else. Just blew $1200 on eight 3TB WD Reds.

 

[moonbogg]

I put 1500-2000 but i'm not really sure. I build complete new usually every 3 years or so with gpu upgrades inbetween, but I only had my 2600K rig for a year before going 3930k with new GPUs and everything so who knows. Bring on the Geforce Titan SLI! (jk)

 

[ShadowVVL]

went with 200-300. I buy hdds every now and then and spend $800-$1200 every 4-8yrs on a new system.

But maybe 200-300 is a bit off.

 

[ShintaiDK]

As other says, hard to say.

For example last year I guess it was around 1000$ This year more like 400-500$. 2011 the spending 0$.

Will be more regularly now I guess, since the GF started gaming.

 

[Lonyo]

Last year I spend around £2000/$3200, but that was because I was at the point where I was upgrading a 3 or 4 year old desktop and replacing a 3 or 4 year old laptop, and putting some bits together for a NAS box, and upgrading storage elsewhere.

This year so far I've spent £500/$800, most of which was today on a new monitor and some new innards, and I do plan to buy a Haswell tablet later in the year, and probably some more storage as and when required.
And maybe try and make a small Haswell based ITX gaming computer of some sort as a fun side project.
So maybe £2000 isn't going to be that unusual going forward.