Hi G

When I was looking for a replacement gaming rig for my daughter. I decided to go second hand. So long as you buy through eBay and pay via PayPal, you have two methods that protect your purchase if anything went wrong, i.e if you were sold a duff computer or component, you are insured by both, so long as you can prove it didn't work. (I bought a laptop for my wife about 4 years ago, a day after receiving it the monitor stopped working. i contacted the seller and was asked to return it and they would exchange it for a like for like laptop. weeks later I'd still not received a replacement so contacted them again. They apologized and said they had difficulty finding one that was similar so offered a couple that were not as good, but with no reduction in price. When I tried to contact them again, they had disappeared. I contacted both eBay and PayPal. Because I had evidence that I'd returned the laptop and could show that I'd tried to get a like for like replacement from the vendor, PayPal refunded all of the money i'd paid for it.

Anyway, I spent a couple of weeks checking all the computers that were suitable and found on average second hand computers tended to sell from between 33% to 50% of their actual worth with respect to the total cost of all the components if you were to buy them new. I also found that computers with at least one part missing, usually either the hard drive, operating system or the graphic card would sell even cheaper; for example one computer I had my eye on was missing the graphic card, but the total cost of all the other components were approaching £2000 (it was virtually new, with most of the components being hi end versions, though from the previous generation from the latest, with a really nice full sized gaming case etc. It sold for just over £400 because most people looking to buy a second hand computer want a computer that you just need to plug in and start up, not one that you needed to buy other parts for. Unfortunately I missed that auction by several minutes as I'd forgotten to set the alarm to remind me. I always bid in the last 20 seconds with a counter bid that is usually the maximum I'm willing to bid. I was really annoyed at myself for missing that one. In the end I got her a decent AMD system that ran much better than my older second gen i7 for a decent price and that is presently being used as a workstation by my son as he finds doing his university work on his own newly built gaming computer (that is similar to the one I'm rebuilding, though his CPU is a Ryzen 3600X). Even though it's being used as a work station it can still play the latest games despite it being at least 5 years old now.

If you are willing to buy second hand, and have a lot of patience you can find some great deals on eBay that could save you a fortune and net you a decent computer. I missed a Ryzen 7 3800X last week (I'd already bought the Ryzen 5, but happened to notice that the Ryzen 7 CPU was ending at an unearthly hour; i.e at 5.30am), so I knew there wouldn't be many bidders around. I was going to go for it, but didn't set the alarm :( When I checked later, it had sold for £175, which is around half the price of a new one. I bought two second hand Nvidia GTX 980Ti graphic cards (with 6GB of gRAM each) a couple of years ago, just after the series 10 had been released and got them for about a third of the price of new ones; saving a lot of money in the process. They are still running really well and so far I've been able to run all of my games with graphics set at maximum, with decent frame rates.

I've found that the worst time to bid on eBay is at the weekends and at the beginning of a new month (usually when people have received their monthly salaries). The best times are mid week to Friday morning and the last week of the month before pay day. You just have to find the components you want that are ending at the times that are less likely to have bidders present.

I used to bid on a lot of stuff until a few years ago (mainly WWI and WWII German stamps plus pre WWI German stamps going back to around 1860, and rarely lost a bid because I stuck to certain times and always waited until those last seconds to put my first bid in.

Anyway, I hope you can upgrade in the not too distant future. I've been lucky enough to have been able to afford to build quite a few computers over the last 20 years. but that is partly because I don't have any of the usual vices (i.e. I don't drink or smoke) and hardly ever go out for meal (mainly because I've rarely found a restaurant that can cook decent vegetarian food; ( I can count on one hand the number of times we've been out for a meal over the last 10 years)

drink alchol or smoke, so save a lot of money.

Soooo , any chance to see the specs of your new rig ????
I promise I will not get CRAZY jealous ... much .... :-)