When you built your first PC did you buy all of the parts at once or get them individually?

[CeremonialSnips]

When you built your first PC did you buy all of your parts at once or did you buy each part separately?   I'm asking because I've bought a power supply, cpu and water cooler, however I don't have my storage, ram gpu etc.  Did you hunt around for deals, or just go with what the price of stuff was at the time?  I'm asking this because I am wondering how much time you take to assemble parts, and how much time you spend hunting deals out.  I'm in Canada, so our pricing is pretty high, making me want to try to find the best deals/prices possible. .....

[Vivilacqua1]

I bought them as I got money.

[Automobili3XF]

I bought one piece at a time, when i could afford them, some came out of my then-previous computer.

[Guest]

I bought everything at once but from different companies (New Egg NCIX ect) 

[thekeemo]

At once.

I cant use the parts till I have them all.

And once I have the money for them all the overall price is lower and I can test them within the return period.

[g12601]

I kind of did both. I got the "important" parts from a store. I first got my processor, RAM, power supply, case(returned, got a new one from the internet due to size). Then I got my hard drive and the case from newegg and Amazon. Later I bought a graphics card and then upgraded RAM.(Graphics from a store, RAM from Newegg)

[Alice in game]

Got everything in one shot. I personally do not see the point to buy parts and let them sit on my desk. And If I cannot buy all at once, I would buy all the essential components first to at least have a machine, even if it on stock  cooler and on onboard graphic.

[GreezyJeezy]

at once, its better that way, less risk or something happening just having parts laying around waiting for them to be put together (like boxes getting stepped on) 

[GreezyJeezy]

and usally if you have to wait by the time you can buy it all there will be sales or price drops. so it can save you money

[TheBestUserName]

Bought it all at once.  

 

Prices fluctuate too much in all stores to stress about finding the best deal.  Just do your shopping and get it over with.  And recognize now that you'll probably see the same parts cheaper later. Just get over it and be happy with your computer and not the $10 you might have saved waiting three weeks, or the $20 waiting four weeks... etc.. etc...

[CeremonialSnips]

28 minutes ago, TheBestUserName said:

Bought it all at once.  

 

Prices fluctuate too much in all stores to stress about finding the best deal.  Just do your shopping and get it over with.  And recognize now that you'll probably see the same parts cheaper later. Just get over it and be happy with your computer and not the $10 you might have saved waiting three weeks, or the $20 waiting four weeks... etc.. etc...

Thats the problem though, prices fluctuate a tonne outside the us.  In canada a decent z170 mobo is 250+

[TheBestUserName]

1 minute ago, CeremonialSnips said:

Thats the problem though, prices fluctuate a tonne outside the us.  In canada a decent z170 mobo is 250+

So?  What are you going to do about it?  Keep waiting for a price drop? How long?  You could wait forever with that mentality.  

 

Prices fluctuate in the US, too, you know.  I bought a wifi adapter last month.  Two days later the price went up $15 from $35.  

[VinsinityKT]

Check pcpartpicker and see how low the price was compared to the lowest price recorded. 

[TheRandomness]

All at once. 

[Marinatall_Ironside]

The vast majority I will buy altogether. The case, I can buy before the rest of the system like I did a long time ago.

[AngryPandaPC]

Piece by piece over about 2 months.

[LogicalDrm]

`Well, the first which I was picking was custom prebuild (2002). Second I bought all at once from two shops (2008).

[Daiyus]

Mine was piece-meal. I almost do a tick-tock approach; platform, GPU, platform, GPU with random bits in-between.

 

My very first PC was bought from my brother-in-law stupidly cheap. I can't even remember what the platform was because I accidentally fried them when I tried to re-case the thing (first ever tinker) so I kept the HDD and GPU (Asus GTS 450) and bought a new platform (AMD FX-4170) with an AIO cooler. I then got enough money together to swap the GTS 450 for a Powercolor HD 7870 PCS+. After that I picked up a Blu-Ray Drive and an SSD. I've recently swapped out my case, motherboard and CPU for an mITX SFF Xeon E3-1231 v3 based rig. My next upgrade will be the GPU.

[M4st4M1nd]

PC components become redundant far too quickly. I saved up and bought all at the same time.

[Smitty07314]

I just recently completed my first build not to long ago. I took a couple of days and searched the interweb to find the best deals and would keep track of the best prices. From there I spent one day and just bought everything I thought I needed at that time. Waited a few weeks and they all turned up. This worked out great for me other than the fact my mobo was DOA. And then I proceeded to ship back the screws that came with my case thinking they came with my mobo but anyways.... i had to buy more case screws  

 

So basically do whatever you want. if you want to hunt around for better deals and take a longer time to gather all the parts do that. If you are itching to get to building just spend an afternoon and buy them all then and just pay a couple hundred more.

[ThinkWithPortals]

I bought mine all together, not gradually.

[MilfShake]

All at once, the 30 day return period in Canada is very important to pay attention to. You have to know each and every single pc of your stuff works.

 

Sure you can do RMA with the manufacturers but I personally cannot wait for weeks without my computer.

[Aviyara]

Both? Does both count?

 

My girlfriend wanted a gaming computer when her laptop died, so she and I built a PC with an upgrade path. When her laptop died, the Pentium Anniversary Edition had just came out; MicroCenter had a deal bundling it with a good Z97 board from MSI for like $100, so we snagged it and a Hyper 212 EVO. The GPU was a 750 ti, the HDD was a 1TB WD Blue, the PSU was a Corsair RM650 they had on clearance for some reason, and the case was some crap Zalman box that we essentially got for free after all the various rebates.

 

Over the two or so years we've had it, every single piece has been replaced as things went on sale and our pool of spending cash has gone up. Ironically the case was the first thing to go, replaced within two months by a Corsair 400R. (My girlfriend's password was F*ckZalman for the longest time after the nightmare of working within that case.) The Pentium became an i5 4690k, the 212 EVO became a H100i, the RAM went from 4gb to 8gb to 16gb, the 750ti became a 970, the HDD was supplanted by a Samsung 850 EVO (though is still part of the rig), the PSU became a modular 750W, and finally the motherboard was replaced when the case was replaced again, this time by an Asrock Z97 ITX and a Corsair Air 240, respectively.

 

Best part? All the retired parts still live on as our "guest PC" and media center. The Pentium was finally replaced by another 4690k (from my personal rig), meaning we have a guest gaming computer stronger than many of our friends' primary computers. 

 

So yeah. Both.

[byalexandr]

Started from the bottom now we're here.

[Centurius]

Couldn't afford everything at once so I got the case, psu, motherboard, cpu, ram and ssd first. Then a few months afterwards two hdds, gpu and an aio cooler.