Assuming you have finally figured out what you want out of your custom computer and you want to figure out a system to keep track of the cost as you go around shopping, I’d like to move on to the topic of budgeting.
Usually this is where most people window shop, make a list, and then sum up the grand total (subtotal + applicable taxes + shipping and handling + misc costs for purchase). But this usually ends up being a waste of time, or rather, the time that could have been allocated to carefully check the parts and price is now shifted to the time now used to “restart” the window shopping, listing, and re summing the grand total again. In other words: if you simply have a list of parts that you would like to buy without the researching the prices and taking a second look at comparable products of similar or same performance, purchase costs, cost of purchase from particular retailer, then costs could go quickly up past the initial estimated budget cost as you purchase your parts as you go along.
The reason that it’s best to take this more cautious approach in budgeting/researching is that, although it’s true that new parts come out quarterly throughout a year – sometimes the software industry being ahead of the hardware industry when it comes to new product release cycles – you’ll be able to get a more clear idea of what’s looking like in the market for the products with whatever features you’re looking for in particular.
The best tool to use when budgeting cost for a project is a spread sheet. If you’re familiar with using spreadsheets, then you can style your spreadsheet after the one that I have as an example following, re-arrange it entirely, or – if you are really good and familiar with spreadsheets, make your own modeled after the one I have for example.
Reasons I recommend a spreadsheet is because spreadsheets can be set up to automatically calculate the sum of subtotals, taxes, estimated shipping and handling costs and allow you to organize items in the manner that best suits for you to visually see what you have in your project list. Making charts is really an option as the numerical figures and sums should give you enough idea as to where the cost of the parts has in total – Although it does not hurt to have visual cues to understand what components are going to take up how much of your budget.
This would also make the whole research aspect easy as you can create individual books within one spreadsheet that have the different possible build configurations that you can possibly want and the different costs of each without having to resort to making different lists (written or in a typed text file) all the time.
The listing of categories should go by name of product, quantity, subtotal, taxes (for the individual product), shipping and handling, and grand total. Each item row is going to have the aforementioned categories listed in that order. After all the items have been listed, as you’ll see in my example that you can download, you’ll notice that there’s a column of grand totals for each of the individual prices. This should allow you to easily select the grand totals and sum them. Also it’s wise to have the sub totals, taxes, shipping and handling, all categorically summed up and presented before the grand total so as you can have a clear idea where the costs are coming from where. It could sometimes be the shipping and handling and/or taxes of certain items that can raise the cost of your project between 10% to 25% on average. So it’s best to have these different costs that go along with each item to be categorically listed and summed for analyzing what you want to do.
Low, mid, and high range P.C. build project costs.
Usually when a new piece of hardware is introduced into the market, such as faster central processing unit, a storage device of larger capacity and speed, the hardware considered “high-end” of last year has it’s price cut down or have it’s priced slightly lowered and then slowly or quickly disappear from the market. When this “old” hardware model is replaced with a new model, this hardware becomes “mainstream” in terms of cost because, due to it’s pricing, becoming more accessible than it was prior to most consumers that once wanted it but could not afford it. So it trickles down to the point where a low cost budget system can be built at half the cost of what it would a year or two ago.
High end systems are usually where the phrase “the sky is the limit” rings true. If you have the money, you can buy anything to build your dream machine. But the thing with high-end systems is that they are typically not good at deprecating when comparing to the initial cost of the entire set of components making up the entire system. This is, again, caused by the release of new model hardware components that usually cause prices for the parts end up deprecating sometimes steeply. So when this happens, this typically ends up making any means of potentially selling off individual components for upgrades or the entire system build, to be impossible to be done on the initial cost price for building. But the great thing about high end systems, especially if you’ve done a thorough job at checking at the entire line of hardware that will go into it and have estimated the particular parts that you’ll buy to expand or periodically at will, you can end up with a system that in the long run, is not as valuable (if you look at the prices of the individual parts making up the build), but has longevity to be of constant use to you as the user for a long period of time and not require much maintenance or run frequently with hitting a particular performance ceiling. Note that “future-proofing” is impossible and that your high-end system will, in due time, will at some point need to be replaced by a newer and more nimbler system build. So the best advice for people that intend on building high-end systems that they’ll want to keep for a long time is to save money on the side for the next high-end build so that way, hopefully, your budget will be larger and you can build a system that will last your periodically longer than your current one did. Of course this is theoretical and is subject to how the user feels and/or has researched as to where his or her system build compares to other average systems of present in terms of running the latest current software.
And because this is a continual process of hardware replacing hardware from certain price ranges, what constitutes as a “low-end”, “midrange”, or “high-end” PC varies from time to time. So research in finding what price ranges of total cost constitutes to being any of the three categories must be done prior to looking around for parts. Usually, most people who build their systems go with building mid-range system. This is because many components that are targeted for mid-range computers are usually about getting “the most bang for the buck”. And also assumes that you’ll be following what most PC builders will use as far as software is concerned (gaming, video and audio editing and encoding, programming, etc). So you’ll sometimes find some hardware, such as a graphics card, that has almost all the features of a high end graphics card model with the difference being the overall speed and memory it has (where real world performance is just as good as the high end graphics card in respect to general performance). And also remember: it all comes back to what you want out of your computer in respect to what you will be doing frequently with it and also how long you’ll be expecting to keep your particular build.
“Low end” computer builds are usually with the intention of specific particular use, such as a home media center, a network terminal, or for basic office/scholastic needs. These systems are cheap to build and are financially easy projects to get done quickly. If the research for the hardware to be used is done right, you can build a low end system which can be easily upgraded later with more performance components such as faster RAM, graphics card, and central processing unit which will make the longevity of that budget system go beyond just the supposed intended time of use. The only thing to be aware of course is that, if your components are going to be comprised of cheap end parts, expect performance for things beyond what your system was intended to do (such as gaming) are going to result hitting a performance ceiling no matter what upgrades you do. It would be a good idea to invest on a mid-range ATX motherboard with a performance oriented chipset that will allow for the better use of hardware upgrades in the future than going with a micro or pico – ATX motherboard where chipsets are going to severely limit your systems overall performance.
And that’s it for the abstracts for budgeting for a PC. Here’s my example of a spreadsheet I developed for my build. If you want to modify or arrange your own spreadsheet and use this as a template for your own spreadsheet calculator, by all means go ahead.
The spreadsheet comes in both Open Document Spreadsheet and Microsoft Excel formats.
- Sonokamome’s Hardware Spreadsheet Calculator Version 2.0 (.ods)
- Sonokamome’s Hardware Spreadsheet Calculator Version 2.0 (.xsl)
I will be updating my spreadsheet calculator from time to time and I’ll have a section for it on my site. Enjoy!