Dad wants £500

[Glassback83]

Ds is 16 this month and we wanted to treat him. We decided to get him a PC and my dad said he could build one (he’s been building them for years), so we agreed. We spent £400 on some hard drives and another £250 on a monitor. Initially, Dad said he had bits lying around he could use but said to give him a couple of hundred pounds for other bits. The PC would be from us and my parents. Got a message from Dad yesterday and he’s asking for £500. He’s explained that he’d added everything up that he’s put in it and divided the cost between us, even though some of the parts were laying around in the back of a cupboard. Says he’s had to buy a couple of things, o e of which I know is less than £10. Too late to change our minds now as it’s already built. AIBU to be really pi**ed off? Feel like I’ve been conned by my own parents.

I think you need a detailed list of items with cost - a proper breakdown of the amount requested.

Not nice of him!

@Glassback83 get the specifications of all the parts. What type of hard drive? What processor/motherboard? A high spec PC could be £2000 depends what you need. But this sounds like his idea of what to build was different from yours. Otherwise, have a conversation along lines of “Dad, I’m confused, this seems very expensive considering the idea was for you to build something relatively high spec for less than we could buy on the high street, can you give me a breakdown for the house insurance or it won’t be covered please”

I've now seen the list. The good news is that he has bought expensive stuff, he's not actually stealing from you. The bad news is that he has bought expensive stuff.

The most outrageous is £360 for a case. I have a name-brand gaming case that I bought for £70, about five years ago.

Sorry, I see it's 203 for the case. Still more than necessary, but in line with the rest in terms of spending.

The problem is that he's built far above the specification you signed up to fund.

Your dad is a CF here. He got over excited about building a dream spec PC but is expecting you to part fund it.

Remind your dad that he said he would do you a favour and build a new PC for less than the cost to buy one ready made in the shops that comes with a warranty. So on that basis, please take the amount you feel I still owe you off my future Christmas and birthday presents from you.

The case is ridiculously expensive. You can get that one for £120 ish.

I think you need to have a chat.

I bought my daughter a gaming one for 1400 a few months back. Honestly I don't think this is going to work out less expensive.

this is what I was thinking

It looks like a fairly decent spec and they are contributing £500 - you might not have decided to spend that much if buying one from Currys, but also wouldn't get as much for your money. If your son is playing games that take a lot to run he will appreciate a decent computer.

My partner loves building PC's, he is always looking for the best deals for the components. He could have got a lot of that stuff for a lot less.

I think he has gotten over excited and overspent.

What will the PC be used for, general use, gameing etc?

I would tell him that that is far much more than you can afford and more than agreed. He should sell it and give you back what you paid him.

I mean, I'd message him back and say 'you know the bit about this being cheaper for us than buying a new computer, it's not! So unsurprisingly this is way out of our budget. Disassemble it and I'll have a think about what we can do. I'll return the monitor. What can your return?

I know he had the case, GPU and motherboard.

But they're all on the bill he's sent you. From your OP I thought the idea was that he would contribute the items he had and you would pay for most/all of the rest. So has he bought new of things he had or is he now trying to recoup the money for things he had lying around?

Sell the parts you've bought and just buy one from a shop. That's horrible of your dad tbh

No idea about the cost of the cost of the components but watch how much he uses it and make sure it's not left on all the time or else it's going to cost a fortune in electricity with a 900 W power supply.

Decent pcs aren't cheap. That said the case is ridiculously priced. That fact that it's more than the cost of the processor is insane. The processor chosen is too weak to reach the full potential of the graphics card and water cooling really isn't necessary and actually make minimal difference to processor temp.

For a decent gaming pc £1200 isn't bad but the build of the pc you've listed seen to have spent in the wrong areas. I dropped £800 on a motherboard and processor alone in July.

Honestly I would say no. He’s been really unfair on you here and totally pulled the wool over your eyes. What if you couldn’t afford it?!

The thing I don’t like is that he spent £360 on a 1080ti - it’s an amazing card …. But it’s now 5 years old. Now that gpus have dropped its perfectly possible to get a nearly new 3060ti for similar money (although you could argue that’s knocking on 2 years old too, but the next generation isn’t out yet).

the thing I don’t understand was this ‘we spent 400 on some hard drives’ - what on earth did you buy?!

do you mean you bought an expensive PCIE gen 4.0 2tb ssd, and an 18tb piece of spinning rust?

seems excessive!

The components are reasonably priced for a decent gaming PC but he has overspent on the case, you can get some good cases for around £100-150 that will provide efficient ventilation and have enough space to fit everything in and keep it tidy.
Overall I would say it’s a fairly standard price for a gaming setup.

Oh and just noticed the cpu is absolutely ancient! And a quad core in 2022?! - no, no, no - don’t pay it. That’s a skylake intel cpu from 2016?! Wtf is he thinking?!

Your dad may have been building PCs for years but he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow in building a balanced gaming PC.

Show him my message. Please. Don’t let him build any more 😂😂😂

That motherboard CPU combo is 5 years old and incredibly out of date.

Sorry - 6 years old.

The only but he did very well on was fitting 32gb of ram (albeit slow ram) for £60. Kudos on that one bit.

He’s probably spent the £500 himself on new bits and given you the old (high end for 2016/2017 the time, but not today) components and priced them at full whack eBay but it now prices.