UberPC - An investigation into PC Component Prices

[Lenny]

Slow week, this week. The carriage went up by a few pence, and the Blu-ray drives dropped by a few quid. My hunting knives are starting to rust, and my crack squad of assassins are baying for my blood... either that or their wages.

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UberPC

Original Price 02/04 - £5,023.82
28/06 - £4,444.40 -£579.42

UberPC - 28/05/08

From last week:

1TB HDD - down £0.03 (4x 0.75p)
Blu-ray - down £7.05
Carriage - up £0.13 (£17.81)

Total for the week = down £6.95

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RealisticUberPC

Original Price 11/04 - £3,602.55
28/06 - £3,240.63 -£361.92

RealisticUberPC - 28/05/08

From last week:

Carriage - up £0.12 (£17.48)

Total for the week = up 12p

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You can't have drops of a hundred pounds every week, sadly. Still, both computers have dropped by over a tenth, which is nice.

[Lenny]

Week 14, which, I do believe, means that it's the third month milestone for the UberPC!

I've had to change the graphics card once again as the 'standard' XFX seems to have been discontinued. As before, I've chosen the card nearest to the price and specs of the previous card.

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UberPC

Original Price 02/04 - £5,023.82
05/07 - £4,414.75 -£609.07

UberPC - 05/07/08

From last week:

Motherboard - down £3.55
Graphics Cards - down £7.07 (2x £3.54)
PSU - down £17.33
Carriage - down £1.45 (£16.36)

Total for the week = down £29.40

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RealisticUberPC

Original Price 11/04 - £3,602.55
05/07 - £3,214.54 -£388.01

RealisticUberPC - 05/07/08

From last week:

Motherboard - down £3.55
Graphics Cards - down £3.54
PSU - down £17.33
Carriage - down £1.42 (£16.06)

Total for the week = down £25.84

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Another month, and another failure. The UberPC dropped a total of £188.65 this time (a massive up on an increase of £28, but not enough), bringing the total drop to £609.07 - just under an eighth of the total price. Really, it should have dropped over twice that (around £1255) for my hypothesis to be correct but, alas, it's not to be.

[Lenny]

One more week has gone by, and one more graphics card has disappeared, forcing me to change it... again. I'm pleased to say, however, that prices are still dropping.

Yes, I know I'm a day late, but I've been rather busy.

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UberPC

Original Price 02/04 - £5,023.82
12/07 - £4,382.55 -£641.27

UberPC - 12/07/08

From last week:

Motherboard - down £21.90
Graphics Cards - down £10.30 (2x £5.15)
Carriage - no change (£16.36)

Total for the week = down £32.20

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RealisticUberPC

Original Price 11/04 - £3,602.55
12/07 - £3,214.54 -£415.06

RealisticUberPC - 12/07/08

From last week:

Motherboard - down £21.90
Graphics Cards - down £5.15
Carriage - no change (£16.06)

Total for the week = down £27.05

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Yesterday marked the third month milestone for the RealisticUberPC, and you know what? It's around £70 off (£170.81) the 'required' drop for the components to halve over six months. Not bad, really - a definite improvement on the 70p increase of the last month.

As long as it drops below the £3000 price mark then I'll be happy (even happier if the UberPC drops below three grand, too!), but my hypothesis won't be proven unless it drops below £1800.

I think that at the end of everything, I'll have at look at the components separately.

EDIT: No update next Saturday, but I've roped a friend into checking the prices for me, so I should be able to post on the Wednesday I'm back.

[Lenny]

Originally Posted by Lenny

No update next Saturday, but I've roped a friend into checking the prices for me, so I should be able to post on the Wednesday I'm back.

Well it's Wednesday, I'm back, and in my inbox was an e-mail from said friend with all the prices!

And a little thing that I found amusing - on a bus in Malta on Saturday, we passed a shop with a familiar sign outside: SCAN! Rather coincididental, I thought.

Anyway, damned typical - one component falls by £30, so another decides to be smart and go up by £40.

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UberPC

Original Price 02/04 -- £5,023.82
19/07 -- £4,392.91 -£630.91

UberPC - 19/07/08

From last week:

Motherboard - down £29.37
Case - up £39.73
Carriage - no change (£16.36)

Total for the week = up £10.36

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RealisticUberPC

Original Price 11/04 -- £3,602.55
19/07 -- £3,197.86 -£404.69

RealisticUberPC - 19/07/08

From last week:

Motherboard - down £29.37
Case - up £39.73
Carriage - no change (£16.06)

Total for the week = up £10.36

[TheEndIsNigh]

Is this the beast that you actually use or some fantasy. Also what about that Vista? Is it any good on the old UBER?

[Lenny]

It's the beast I want to build in September... well, unless the UberPC drops by a grand, I'll be building the RealisticUberPC, or something very similar to it (I'm thinking of cutting back on the PSU, and changing the graphics card - the GTX280 was recently released. I think the article HappyJoe posted earlier in the thread was about the new core that they run on), which I hope will drop below the £3000 mark by September, October at the absolute latest. The good thing is that the RUPC is simply a lower spec version of the UberPC, which means that I can always upgrade when I have the money - so yeah, the UberPC will be the beast I use at some point in the future, if not an UberPC with upgrades of its own (I'd love two monitors, f'rinstance).

As for Vista, I'm a fan of it regardless of the machine it's running on. Saying that, though, 64-bit Vista could do with more support, particularly from anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware companies and companies who build firewalls.

[TheEndIsNigh]

Myself I get along with a £200 HP Pavilion admittedly with a x 16 graphics card and 1GB ram (oooo x 16 gosh) still it does for me. At work I suffer the indignity of a £280 similar machine with wait for it XP professional MMMM. Then again I only potter about with C compilers and PCB layout packages and with those I find the actual time spent crunching is far outweighed by the thinking time between events.

The really annoying thing is waiting for the printer to wind itself up into actually picking the paper up and then ticking it along at 10 dots per second.

What I would really like is an A3 colour laser but it's now having to take second place to a new scope. My last one just died after 30 years. Pah they don't make scopes like they used to in the fifties.

[chrispenycate]

No, they don't make scopes like they made them in the fifties. But in every way I can think of they make them better. Lighter, cheaper, more flexible, wider bandwidth; and I'm not even talking about digital memory scopes. Remember how often you had to recalibrate a valve scope, as it warmed up and stabilised? Sure, I was sad when my telequipment finally gave up, but it wasn't convenient for field tests; it weighed half as much as I did.

I suppose the great advantage of thosebig old monsters was that you could actually repair them, unlike the newer ones.
Assuming you had the test gear to do so, of course.

[TheEndIsNigh]

Chris: Yes but they lasted. You felt you were getting your monies worth. It's sad really it was a fine old Tectonics 465 + DVM bought on my first day with a new company after leaving ICL (those were the days my..... But they did end)

Ok so it "fell" on the floor a couple of years ago but it wasn't;t the first time. Sadly as you say I can get almost the same functionality for about 250 quid now so repairing it would be unjustifiable. (the new one is also a digital storage scope)

Ah well

[Lenny]

DISASTER!!!!

The QX9770 has disappeared from Scan. No biggy, I thought, believing I'd be able to find it on Aria, but, DISASTER!!!!, the QX9770 does not exist on Aria!

At that point I gave up. Which means that there'll be no UberPC update this week. That isn't to say that I've packed up for good, however - I've noted down the prices of the other components, stuck them into my sppreadsheet, and will continue to do so, even if the CPU doesn't rematerialise. If it does grace us with its presence again, then I'll sort of 'reverse extrapolate' the price to fill in the missing blanks, and post one big update for the weeks I missed.

In the meantime, I'm going to take the chance and nail down the build for September.

[Overread]

strange - has the CPU been updated with a new model?
If it has it should be going for much cheaper in sales now that a newer (more shiny!) model is out!

[Lenny]

I don't think it has, no. The QX9775 (the 771 socket version of the QX9770) is still around, but there doesn't seem to be a replacement 3.2hz model. The closest to it is the QX9650, which is 3.0ghz and £300 cheaper.