في أكتوبر 2024، بعت صديقي الكمبيوتر القديم بعد أن أبدى اهتمامه بالتحديث من نظامه الحالي، الذي تضمن معالج I5-3550 وذاكرة DDR4 بسعة 8 جيجابايت وبطاقة رسومات GTX 1050 ومحرك صلب بسعة 500 جيجابايت. في البداية، عرضت عليه نظامي الأقوى، والذي يحتوي على معالج i7-8700k مُ overclocked إلى 5 غيغاهرتز مع تبريد AIO وذاكرة DDR4 بسعة 32 جيجابايت وبطاقة رسومات 3070 Ti وقرص SSD بسعة 2 تيرابايت من نوع 970 Evo وقرص صلب بسعة 2 تيرابايت من نوع Barracuda ووحدة طاقة بقوة 750 واط من نوع ذهبي، مقابل 500 دولار. رفض ذلك، مبررًا ذلك بحدود الميزانية ورفض زوجته، و insist على شراء الكمبيوتر القديم.
وافقت على تركيب بطاقة رسومات 1080 Ti في النظام وبيعه له مقابل 400 دولار، وأوصيته بأنها ستحسن تجربته في الألعاب بشكل أولي، لكنه سيحتاج في النهاية إلى تحديث بطاقة الرسومات، واقترحت له بطاقة 3060 Ti كخيار مستقبلي. الآن، بعد عام، هو مغضب ويقول إن النظام "مخلوق" لأنه يتعطل عند إصدار الألعاب الجديدة. دعم بطاقة 1080 Ti يقتصر حتى DirectX 12.1، بينما تتطلب معظم الألعاب الحديثة دعمًا لـ DX 12.2، وانتهى دعم المحركات للبطاقة بمرور وقت قصير بعد البيع. لقد أوضح لي في ذلك الوقت أن قدرات البطاقة تشبه PS4 أو PS4 Pro وأنه سيواجه قيودًا مع الألعاب الجديدة. رغم ذلك، يشعر بأنه تم إيهامه ويتساءل عن عدالة السعر. بناءً على قيم السوق الثانية في ذلك الوقت، كان النظام مع بطاقة 1080 Ti يستحق حوالي 800 إلى 850 دولارًا.
Tell him to kick rocks and go make new friends.
This person doesn’t seem like a good friend.
You told your friend you tried to sell him the computer with a 3070 Ti, but he refused. That’s the end of it. It’s not your fault he isn’t familiar with drivers, updates, or hardware longevity.
I wasn’t aware of the end of support when it was sold. They announced it about four or five months after the sale. I told him I couldn’t see into the future.
With a $1200 budget, you can definitely build a solid mid-range PC if you avoid overspending on unnecessary extras like excessive RGB lighting, numerous high-end case fans, or premium cases. Opt for a reliable base model GPU such as PNY, which offers excellent cooling for the price, standard RAM, and a cost-effective air cooler like the Thermalright Assassin. It performs comparably to many AIO coolers, as highlighted in Gamers Nexus’s review.
Many people prioritize aesthetics over performance, sacrificing potential upgrades in GPU or CPU tiers by allocating funds to decorative features instead.
The monitor was a good value for the price. He had been using a poor-quality 60Hz 1080p monitor that seemed outdated. At the time, a 4070 cost $800, which is a mid-range graphics card.
That’s fair. Normally, $900 would still put you in the mid-range category, but with current RAM and SSD prices, it significantly cuts into that budget.
It’s interesting how this relates to friend drama. Sometimes external factors, like financial stress, can strain relationships.
Your friend will never be happy no matter what you do. You don’t owe him anything, and he can buy his own PC like everyone else. Offer to buy the PC back at a fair price—around $100—so he can put that money toward gas to go get a computer. In short, your friend is being cheap.
He definitely is.
If you want to game on PC and run new titles without them looking like PS2 games, be prepared to spend at least $800 on the PC and $300 on a setup. Otherwise, consider the price-to-performance ratio and convenience of a console.
He already has a PS5, a Series X, and a Switch 2 (which was the Switch 1 at the time).
He owns every console but won’t contribute $280 for a 5060.
I recommended the 5060ti since he just bought a 1440p monitor, and I didn’t want him to be disappointed with the 8GB card. It’s only $430 on Black Friday right now. But he thought it was too much and insisted the monitor was the problem. Honestly, just discussing this is exhausting.
He doesn’t need both consoles since there are no more exclusives and they serve the same purpose. He could sell the Xbox and use the money for a decent graphics card. He won’t be playing at 1440p on any other 60-class card, so with Friday deals, he should really consider a 5060 Ti.
Yes, but you end up spending more on a console. Games are expensive and can’t compete with Steam sales.
You’re right that Steam sales can be significant—Battlefield 6 just released and is already 50% off. However, you don’t necessarily end up spending more overall.
A PS5 costs $500, so you could buy 10 full-priced games before reaching the point where you think, “I could have bought a decent PC with that money.”
If you’ve owned a PlayStation, you likely know that game sharing is common among friends. You can split costs 50/50, wait for a sale to split the price, or sometimes the game is released on PS Plus.
My friends and I frequently share games from each other’s accounts. I’ve played many games for free because my friends had them in their library, and others, like Rocket League and Dead by Daylight, were available through PS Plus.
Your friend seems to be making a poor decision. I think you should have sold your original system to him for $500, which was a fair price, and had him pay $100 down with the rest at $20 per month with no interest. If you still have the 3070 Ti, consider doing that now—sell it to him as a down payment, let him pay off the balance, then buy the 1080 Ti from him and sell it on Marketplace.
I sold the PC a year ago. I’m considering buying the 970evo back for $100 to help him feel better about the price, since he didn’t want to go above $400. At the time, I was factoring the $500 into justifying my own new build and a new GPU for my wife. I ended up putting a 3070ti in her rig instead of a 3060ti.
He got so upset recently that he financed a completely new build on a 24-month card.
I couldn’t have gotten $500 from him anyway—it took him five months to pay the full $400 at zero percent interest.
The computer was six years old when you sold it, and it still works, so he could resell the desktop as is. He’s upset over something you couldn’t control, so it’s not your fault. He can either get over it or not. Since the system works, it’s not a lemon, and you’re not a dealership anyway.
He’s upset because a random friend told him the PC wasn’t worth $400 when I sold it to him, so he took their word over mine and accused me of screwing him over. I’m seriously considering whether I want to remain friends. I was trying to help him get into PC gaming with an entry-level medium build that included the recommended GPU. At the time, he was essentially gaming on something equivalent to a PS3.