I've always played on consoles because they're convenient, but most of my friends are moving to PC gaming. I currently have about £300, and although I'm too young to get a job, I receive pocket money and expect to have roughly £1,500–£1,700 by the end of 2027. My plan was to buy components one at a time whenever I could afford them, partly as motivation to keep saving and working hard. However, I'm worried that PC hardware will improve and prices will change before I have all the parts, so buying early might leave me with outdated components or expired warranties. Would it be smarter to save the full budget and purchase everything together closer to the build date? I'm interested in building the PC myself rather than buying a prebuilt, and my parents may be able to give me some flexibility with the budget. Any advice on planning this would be appreciated.
2 Answers
I’d avoid buying parts years before you’re ready to build. New hardware comes out regularly, prices fluctuate, and individual component warranties may run out before you even use them. Save the money, research parts as you get closer, and look for good deals or sales when you’re ready to buy everything around the same time.
It’s worth checking reputable used marketplaces for deals, especially for things like cases, monitors, and sometimes older CPUs or graphics cards. Just be careful with used power supplies, storage, and GPUs, and make sure you can test anything expensive. For a new build, having the whole budget available gives you much better flexibility.
I’ll take a look at used parts, but I’ll be especially careful with anything that could be unreliable or difficult to test.
That makes sense. I’ll probably avoid buying anything unless it’s a genuinely great deal and I’m close enough to building that I can test it.