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

[CommanderAlex]

I bought all my PC parts all at once instead of buying gradually because of any return policy. If I were to buy a part a month ago and I finally built my PC and there is a problem with that part, I can't return/exchange it and would have to RMA it then. 

[bgibbz]

On 5/25/2016 at 5:20 PM, CeremonialSnips said:

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. .....

Hunt around for deals, record them, and then order from somewhere that price matches. I got most of my parts from Microcenter because they pricematched everything from newegg. The only parts i didnt buy from Microcenter was my case because they were sold out of my particular model, so i bought that on newegg (or amazon?)

[B16CXHatch]

Every computer I've built I bought the parts separately. What I do now though is make sure I have to enough to buy the motherboard and CPU close enough together so that I can test them within their return periods. I buy everything else piece by piece when I have some spending money. I also reuse a ton of parts from previous machines if possible to get a working system as soon as possible and change out to new stuff (if needed) when I can.

[toms94z71]

Both systems I have built in the past 2 years I bought the majority of the parts at the same time although not all from the same place. I added things to both of them since they have been built though.

[lightningterror]

Motherboard 2 months before rest of the parts.

Gpu 2 months after the system was built.

hdd 1 year earlier.

[Two-Socks]

First build I bought all over at least a week or a few more than that. More on the second. Even more this third (re)build I've scouted out parts a bit more than that even mostly because of case mods. It's actually been such a help stretching it out because you'll find that you're constantly missing things. Example: "Oh I might want this white SATA cord" or "Oh crap I need pwm fan splitter(s)". 

And of course *upgrading* all specs is a constant. Yey tech D:

[ddrkreature]

When I could afford the parts individually. Though I did buy the CPU, ram, and motherboard together

[brune67]

I kinda figured out what I wanted, then I ordered the parts that I needed to order, and went and bought the parts that I needed to all together except for the case.

[LordLeewee]

My desktop was an all in one I've upgraded here and there over time so all that remains is the case. My secondary PC/htpc was all bought at once, apart from gpu I already had but that was "only" £300 worth of bits

[LordLeewee]

18 hours ago, Centurius said:

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. 

 

I think this is the only way I'd do it in bits, so I had a working computer with the first lot of parts

[TetraSky]

I got mine individually... That was a mistake.
Buying one part at a time actually cost me more in the end than I would've spent if I had made a single order.
Mainly because I had to pay for shipping on every single parts I bought and also because some parts went on sale by the time I was buying the last parts.

 

I will not make this mistake again.

[v-raze]

I always hunt out deals. I usually have quite a few builds in varying stages of completion, so I spend a considerable amount of time finding the best deals and often the direction I take a build depends on the parts I find for it.The same applies when I get a commission from a customer. I explain to them that if they want all the parts brand new and at once, it will cost quite a bit more, whereas if they can afford to wait about a month for me to get the absolute best deals and allow me to use used parts, they will get a far, far higher performing machine for the same price.

[shibbs]

My first computer was all at once. From then on, it's been one piece at a time, or CPU/MOBO/RAM combo.

 

 

[Swndlr]

I got everything in the span of about a week, minus my power supply because New Egg had to send me a new one.

[Wolther]

I got everything in the span of 2 months. I waited for random deals. Patience was key.

[Sauron]

I bought all the parts I needed for the system to function. It doesn't make any sense to buy them one by one, you won't have a working pc until you get them all and at that point you might as well just buy them all together. The one exception would be if you find a crazy discount on a piece and get that before you can afford the rest.

[Citadelen]

I got my parts over the October to February.

[ZimFreak]

Since you asked about my first build, I did order that all at once from Newegg. Then I learned to be smarter. The last comp I built about 6 months ago cost me about $1000, but I saved easily at least $200-$300 by waiting and watching sales on reddit.com/r/BuildAPCSales.

[biggiebody]

I bought all my parts together than as time went on, I upgraded individual parts. 

[nims0c]

I bought them individually as they went on sale. I used pcpartpicker to view the historically lowest prices and decided how much I'd be willing to pay accordingly.

[slap_shot18]

I've had a pretty interesting upgrade path. I actually started my first build with a budget of 400$ which was all the money I had at the time. I ended up with a nice G3258/GTX 960 combo I couldn't have been more proud of. I used my friends old 1080p monitor and some generic mouse and keyboard. About 4 months later I had a friend who wanted to get into PC gaming and had a budget for 800$. He was going to buy new but I had found a great deal on a 2600k/GTX 970 build with beautiful red sleeved cables and GTX 970. He bought it and right after I convinced him to trade that system for my i5-4590/GTX 960 (I since upgraded) +150 and copy of Windows as the 800$ PC didn't have Windows. He accepted and has been extremely happy with my old system (he's not a very big hardware freak and just enjoys ARK). I now had this awesome 2600k/GTX 970 PC and I needed someway to fully utilize its power. About 1 month later I found a great deal on Craigslist on the monitor I have today a Dell 144hz 1ms G-Sync 1440p tn-panel monitor as well as aquiring some real gaming peripherals (m65 RGB and G510s). About a month after that (about 2 weeks ago) I stumbled across an EVGA 980ti FTW for only 400$. Id be a fool to pass that up so I quickly jumped on it and just hours later sold my 970 to a friend for 200$, effectively paying 200$ for a 980ti. My PowerSupply at the time, an EVGA 500w 80+ supply started to make weird click noises so I figured better safe then sorry and bought a brand new EVGA 850gq 80+ Gold PSU. I'm glad I did because yesterday a friend offered me another 980ti SC edition for 375 and I accepted. I have yet to pick it up but when I do I think I'll have finally hit a point of satisfaction in my build till I decide to watercool. I don't know if this answers your question but I just think I've had such an interesting upgrade path. When I started I could barely scrounge 400$ for a build and now the total cost for my build is close to 2000$. I went from a 15 year old with now money to a 16 year old working 20 hours a week to save for college and feed my addiction to good PC parts.