For all and especially battlestation owners, how much did you spend on your computer? Initially? Over time?

Started with about $300 on a prebuilt.

Video cards: $400 in video cards since then. (GeForce 2 pro, 9600GT, 6850HD, and now 270x)

Processors: $350. (1.6Ghz pentium single core, 2ghz or so AMD processor that I don't remember, athlon II x4 640, and now a 2600k(free))

Motherboards: $220. have lasted a bit longer, and I've gotten cheap ones, so I haven't spent much on them. I think overall I've gone through three.

RAM: $56 not much change here. I kept my DDR2 for as long as I could, found some free DDR3 that died after not long, and I'm still running with 8GB of DDR3 g.skill ripjaws. The ripjaws were $56 brand new off newegg.(This should give you an idea of how long I've had the RAM).

DVD-RW(:Free) is ancient. It was free and has been in at least 4 builds now. It works when I need it to and never gets used the rest of the time.

USB/mediagear(lol)/SD/MicroSD/MS/MS duo:(free) is old as hell. I got that from my pops a long time ago.

4 cases: $40. 3 were free and the one I'm using now was a mistake purchase, but I'm stuck with it now until I somehow obtain enough money to get the one I want.(Girlfriend cheated on me, left my job and moved back to Kentucky. Very stupid idea.)

Power supply: $40. I've gone through two.... Welp. I should really upgrade this one next. Raidmax PSUs aren't known for their longevity, however, I'm really impressed it's lasted this long. The first one came with my first computer and the RaidMax 430W was a cheapo one I needed to replace the dead one with the old style power connectors.

Fans: who cares? Probably got 50$ invested in fans over the years. Cheap ol' Kingwin fans that died a lot, then got the 230mm fan to replace most of those cheap ones.

OS: $15. Never paid for an OS until I got windows 8 for "laptop".(XP Pro and a hand-me-down vista/7.

HDD: $240. HDDs used to be expensive as hell, so I kept my first one as long as I could. Got one for free, paid about $110 for a 250GB(IDE). $70 for 750 external, $60 for a 1TB internal to replace the two drive I had in my system that were ancient.

Most of my stuff gets carried over from build to build, and sometimes I end up with enough spare parts to build another and sell/give it to somebody. Although, "spare" RAM is hard to come by.

/r/computers Thread