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.

He’s probably seen this thread 😂

I think for sure the components were his old ones. It makes absolutely no sense otherwise. He’s probably had a crisis of conscience.

He led you down the garden path. I hate it when parents do its a gift, no it's a loan, no we're dividing the cost, nope it's a gift again.

Depends on the spec whether it's a bargain for that price or not. I'd expect tge GPs to contribute though not just provide the labour.

My daughter built one which cost almost 2x that much - gaming mad, daft unbelievable graphics and spec!

5 years ago I bought a water cooled HP Omen for my son. It was over £3k. He still uses it now for gaming such was the spec.im hoping it lasts many more years too!

Either martyr, or totally ashamed of himself for being so shady.

This does change the context of everything now he’s given it to you.

Now, for £500 all in if that’s what you’ve spent now total, you’ve got a good machine.

underpowered cpu in 2022 terms, but that’s the only issue. Upgrade when your son has the money, but it’ll work acceptably given the money spent.

My son built a gaming PC for 800. More than he thought but 800 euro not pounds

I've got to the end and I'm relieved by your update. I wonder if you were right that your mum put him up to it. (It's odd that he wanted to split the cost of the second hand stuff he provided but conveniently didn't add in/split the cost of the brand new stuff you bought.)

Suggest you offer him the £200 originally discussed and deal done.

The gpu is fine. No need to sell it. A 1080ti is still a monster. It’s the cpu and motherboard that need replacing to create a balanced system.

I’d say that’s fine, Dad - I’ll add in the cost of the monitors and hard drive too and we can split evenly.

Either everyone is splitting it fairly or they’re not.

I think that’s what I’ll do now, just transfer the £200.

Unless he stays at home for uni he won't be taking a desktop pc with him. Totally impractical for students - they use laptops.

How strange, especially with the latest update that he's no longer asking for money!

There's something strange happening behind the scenes. I'd want to know if they're having money trouble, unless one of them (your mum?) has form for trying to take advantage where money is involved. And if this is how they usually are, I'd keep money out of the relationship after this. No more splitting gifts without a stated, iron-clad budget. No more trusting them in matters where it could end up costing you.

Bought a refurbished dell PC with Windows 10 for £250. Monitor. keyboard and mouse £50. Works perfectly.

My son has built quite a few gaming PCs, the prices look about right to me except the case and maybe a bit much on that video card, he could have got a nice case for half that. The RAM seems very cheap though so probably balances out

Having said that the memory you bought seems pricy and a bit OTT for what he is likely to need. Did you get a huge SSD drive?

eBay

Wow he's so mean. And now he's a martyr. At least you know not to trust him again.

No idea about computers but I’ve had similar with a family member over a bike. I hope you get it resolved OP🤞

I don’t need,, or want, a PC but reading the posts has made me really want @SwanBuster to build me one 🙈

But can it play crysis?

OH had a look at the spec, said rude things and walked away.

In future, your Dad doesn't know quite as much about building PC's as he thinks he does.. or, he was trying to rip you off charging you for stuff he already had spare. Lesson learned!

Just going on my experiences. Sure the performance is probably not anywhere as high as available now. But I would just rather reliability. The only way to know that is to buy an older model which didn’t spontaneously combust a day out of warranty.

Sure as a gaming computer this might affect his gameplay. But he would probably rather play a micro second in lag than not play at all and I doubt the friends he is playing with have the US super computer either. So it’s hardly dramatic.

😂 @Glassback83 why does your poor mother get blamed for this?

It’s good that he u-turned though, I doubt he was actually conning you, I know a few techie people and I see this happen time and time again with them. These are the steps in the process I’ve observed:

Step 1- “ that X is a silly price, it’s gets good reviews but half of that stuff you wouldn’t choose and it doesn’t even have -Y”

Step 2- “ I wonder what be the optimal X if you were to do it yourself, I probably have half of what I need lying around, and I have that really good Z that I need to do something with anyway”

Step 3- waaaaaay too much research and time spent on forums- now essentially decided they have to make the greatest X ever

Step 4- first round of purchases, one or two at least don’t play well with the other parts

Step 5- second round of purchases and now way off schedule

Step 6- waay off schedule, at least twice the price of the first X which was supposedly way over price, and enough processing power to run CERN, but the Microsoft office is not installed and there’s no microphone or camera because “it’s better to get those separately anyway”

Step 7- “doesn’t matter that i have all this extra bits because I can just use them in the next X project- will save a bit of time and money”

REPEAT

It probably will be a really good PC though, let’s hope your DS “gets it”

When I was looking at building mine I researched a lot of GPUs as the prices for them back then were just silly so this was the most costly part. The 1080ti was struggling with some of the newer games played on the highest settings back then.

It's what I have in my system and tbh it's fine for me, I have no issues and won't be rushing out to upgrade it anytime soon, but I'm not a 16yo boy I play Sims 4 and watch YouTube and occassionally pretend to write some bits of code.

If OP's son is wanting to play the newer, graphics heavy games on ultra-high settings he might be dissapointed. That being said it will play most games on medium-high settings.

Motherboards I admit I know virtually nothing about. I understand they have different sockets and ports and some don't have wifi built in etc but other than that I wouldn't understand why a better quality motherboard would effect performance.

Happily I would!

There is absolutely no ‘might’ about it. A CPU / GPU combination can deliver a smooth experience and a given target frame rate for a given game at a given resolution, or it will not. It’s black and white.

Comparing a computer for gaming to one used for general productivity purposes is an apple and an orange comparison.

Yes sorry @SwanBuster I know the thread has moved on, but obviously you know you’re absolutely correct re: the 1080 vs 3060. I just focused on the first items on the list OP’s dad sent her. When I saw over £300 for that case, I really didn’t even bother getting to the bottom of the list. That already answered the entire question for me, re: “am I being conned”: yes. If the first two items show you’re being conned, the next ten will, too. And the fact OP kept saying “hard drives” and £400, which sounds wrong from having to do hard drives over here recently (either you build new which requires one, or you update, which requires adding one, but you shouldn’t have to build new with two). I just had to update a PC over here, and I would really recommend that if anyone already owns a PC, you think about adding new parts vs. buying an all new machine. You’d be surprised how easy it is to switch things out now (and I’m NOT good with things like this at all), and you’ll get a lot more for your money, normally, especially since often, you only need to upgrade maybe one or two aspects of your computer. BUT I would look up all prices yourself before trusting anyone to just do it for you, without markup.