so weve had the worst so lets see who has grabbed the best bargain. ill start it off. coolermaster cosmos s brand new for 80 of the finest english pounds from (wait for it) pc world! the guy behind the counter was gutted as he was going to buy it the next day when he would of been paid. lets here your stories. best one recieves some milk buttons
Nvidia 8800GTX O/C Bought it in 2007 and still having no problems playing the latest games in my stepson's PC.
Most of my computer TBH, I only buy when I think I'm getting a good deal! If I had to pick one, I'd say the motherboard. I paid about £80 iirc for a socket 1366 motherboard when they were pretty new, and you just can't get them at that price even if it isn't perfect.
8800GTX here also, bought it for £190 at end of 2007 (less than a year after its release, about same time as 2900XT's release) lasted me a good 2 years. Antec p182, still using it and never felt the need to upgrade. Q6600 G0, 3.6GHz on air cooling and could still be going strong today.
I bought a coolermaster stacker around 4 years ago from newegg in the US. After rebate it was $100, back when the dollar was 2 to the pound so it cost me 50 quid. Took me a couple of months to "arrange" a business trip to the US to collect it, but well worth the wait. Then a couple of weeks back I added a second GTX 480 which was 250 quid from scan. I know it doesn't stack up to the 580, but for 150 quid less??? It will be getting watercooled, overvolted and overclocked anyway!
MSI X58M. Quite an unassuming motherboard, it's mATX and it was one of the cheapest X58 boards at the time. No heatsinks on the power regulation circuitry around the cpu socket. Nevertheless, it thinks nothing at running an i7-920 at 4Ghz, 7 sata devices, 6GB of 1600 CL8 ram and a 460GTX. Military-grade components, indeed.
I bought a Crucial C300 128GB SSD for £179 from Ebuyer yesterday. Was £22 cheaper than normal because the box had been opened but contents were still sealed when it arrived this morning
Not as awesome as many of the suggestions earlier, but mine's an Epia VIA 5000 Mini-ITX embedded board that I got for the grand total of absolutely nothing. It's now sitting as the heart of my new NAS build, with 1GB of DDR, a dual-channel wireless PCI card and a gigabit Ethernet card (all of which I also got for free - being a quality engineer in a big industrial PC company has its merits!) I don't know if it can be considered a purchase if I didn't pay for it, but I'll still throw it out there.
Well mine may seem a little off-topic, but the best bargain I ever got was from CEX. They had a Saitek X-52 Pro Joystick and also Saitek Rudder Pedals. The pedals were £12 and the stick £25 and that was two-years-ago. Currently they still cost approx. £175 when bought together! Cheers, MP
ahh forgot my best is probably a logitech g25 that was brought off my mate 6 months ago. he used it once then sold it to me for £80 bargain
XFX750i SLi board. Bought as faulty for £19.50 and yet all i've found wrong is a single SATA connector not working 5770 also bought as faulty but its not failed me yet after 8 months. Paid £35. Saitek Eclipse II. Just because its awesome.
My primary screen. Paid an arm and leg, has broken once, but still the best purchase ever. I stare at this thing daily and am still impressed by the colors and really everything about the screen. Haven't really bought anything major after this (coming to 4 years now).
My Laptop (old Packard Bell with AMD Sempron), wasn't firing up - guy gave me £40 to fix it but went and bought another one. The laptop is still going after 3 years (re-applied some thermal paste and voila - one working machine!).
last one from me is a coolit alc domino for £30 also from the pc world bargain bucket also forgot the numorous pc's collected from the tip that required bugger all doing to them so i could get my mates into pc gaming
Sy plus box for £4.50 plus P&P as it was faulty and wouldn't boot. Put in a new HDD and away it went. Good times! Other halfs mobile on contract with free PS3. The lottery scratchcard I bought that won £100 Bought an 8800gtx from ebay for £7 as faulty, but can't get it to work, is that an almost bargain. Any Steam games in the Xmas sale
My best bargain ever was getting my HIS 4850 (about 3 weeks after it was initially released) for a ridiculously low price, my friend was going to throw it out because he was certain that it got fried in a power-cut. So I offered to give him the £15 in my wallet at the time to take if off him. Turned out all it needed was a quick bit of fresh soldering on a few loose bits connecting the memory to the board. It works like a charm now and has been giving me many joyful moments playing shiny games. My best/favourite purchase would have to be the one done in November last year, when I finally made the upgrade to an IPS panel and bought one of the Dell Ultrasharp monitors. Everything has looked so much clearer since.
Mark 2 golf for 40 euro being stripped at the moment. PC wise it would have to be my E6750 or Antec 1200. Can't judge my sandybridge yet..
I'd say my Phenom II x4 955BE. Ebuyer had them on sale for £90 for about a week. The C3 stepping ones and all. I was going to spend £70 on a Phenom II x2 550 and risk the lottery of core unlocking. So when I saw the 955 at £20 more, it was a steal. It's at £113 now and was £120+ after I bought it. I guess my cheap Asus motherboard I bought 2years ago, that's allowed me the upgrade path, deserves some merit. It was £30 or something! It's about to be laid to rest as a shiny new birthday present is looking up at me from under my desk! lol My mate bought a Mark 2 Golf for £50. It lasted two years before he sold it for £200!!!
