Hey There, Big Spender

SO I've been talking about purchasing a new PC for a while, holding off until I returned to England, or moved elsewhere.  The reason for the delay was my ineptitude in product searching and internet usage.

Everyone told me to look in Korea, because surely everything would be cheaper there.  I did look, and I honestly came up short.  Everything I found (cameras, PC parts, even power supplies and heavy duty converters) turned out to be an almost perfect match in price to the UK counterparts.

Then, yesterday, Amanda showed me a website.  My eyes were opened to the possibilities of cheap Korean goods.  I feverishly gad about the internet looking for the cheapest components I could source, comparing them to their UK brethren.  I sourced a similar PC to the one I submitted on my blog a few months ago and, to my amazement, found it to be no less than six hundred pounds cheaper here than in England.

I went about sourcing modern components, and have found an £1800 PC for, wait for this to blow your goddamned minds, £1,100.  Everything is top spec bar one omission, an SSD.

Let me explain this omission:

I have witnessed the performance increase, and usability increase obtained through utilising an SSD.  The whole computer becomes more responsive, and, frankly, more pleasant to use.  In picking top notch parts however, I have also opted for a motherboard that has a 6gb/s hard disk interface, and USB 3.  No current SSD's can saturate a 6gb/s line, or even fill up half the bandwidth.

I've read a number of reviews regarding the new sandforce controller, and the new Vertex 3 SSD, which is a native 6gb/s part.  This will enter the enterprise sector shortly, if it hasn't already; and desktop parts will become available in the next few months.  Therefore, I will buy a 2TB drive, use it as my main for now, and swap it into pure storage when I get the new SSD.  Of course, this also has the added benefit of me being able to build up my reserves of cash once more.  While not a full months pay, this computer isn't far off, and I need a substantial amount to relocate for my next job, wherever that may take me.

Another fact that blew my mind, was that it's cheaper to source parts from a brick and mortar shop, than on the internet.  I know my track record with internet surveillance isn't particularly strong (see above), but I searched for a number of hours last night, finding the best prices I could.  I marched into the shop, with the thought of saying 'beat this, if you dare,' and the clerk simply smiled, phoned up some people (back of a lorry, anyone?) and came back with universally cheaper prices.  I couldn't source the RAM from him (he insisted it doesn't exist, we shall see) but this is included in my budget anyway.

On a side-note, I gave him a 500,000 won deposit for him to acquire the parts by tomorrow at 5pm.  What are the odds of him never turning up, and my 500,000 won going walkies?  I think they're pretty high, actually.  Somewhere in the region of 25%.

At least I didn't give him the full amount, eh.

Specs and pictures incoming, when the final thing is built.

On a side-note:  This picture made me laugh.