» A look at computer component prices over time «

Update July 2004
*Cough*
That year went fast!
I do have the data piled up in a growning mountain of "todo's" so sooner or later I'll put it all in.
It's more a historic interest thing anyway, really ... he mumbles lamely
*Cough*


Out of interest, I managed to put together a full media-media system for around £185 ex vat...
(2.4Ghz P4 Celeron, 256Mb DDR, 40Gb hd, 17" monitor etc etc.)
The more things change, the more they stay the same. As ever, the price points remain the same but the bangs per buck keeps doubling year after year!


Update July 2003
Ye gods, nearly a year since I updated this page. Too busy doing to do, I guess. Fortunately I have all the details on spreadsheets and such so I will get round to entering them in the near future.

Out of interest, I managed to put together a full media-media system for just £187 ex vat (1.8Ghz Duron, 256Mb DDR, 17" monitor etc etc.). Scary eh. I spent more that that upgrading the memory on my workstation...

Fall 2002...

I don't do advertising, but this one at Watford's raised an eyebrow. Really good price - and it's retail!
Creative Geforce 4 Ti4600 :- £175.00 ex. Vat - £205.63 inc. Vat (save £70)

Not to be outdone, Dabs are offering the PNY flavour of the Ti4600 for just £160 (£188 inc vat)


You might also want to check over the current chip prices for September 2002.

Jump to notes


Ten predictions that will shake your world
"Gartner gives Moore's Law, which posits that processor power doubles every 18 months, a 70 percent chance to continue unabated through 2011. Gartner projects that by 2008 the typical desktop computer will have 4 to 8 CPUs running at 40 GHz, 4 to 12 gigabytes of RAM, 1.5 terabytes of storage, and 100Gbit LAN technology. By 2011, processors will clock at 150 GHz and 6 terabytes of storage will be common. And, there are numerous technologies such as nanotube transistors and spintronics that could jump the next hurdle when CMOS reaches the end of its run, Claunch said."

Just for this week ('cos I'm 40 today *cough*) I've added above a comparison showing the better prices you can get by shopping around a touch, or changing the component brand. No tat mind! Interesting, no one touched my favourite supplier on DDR. I'm mindly surprised P4 prices never fell through the floor. Next week then!

Next month I'll regit things to take into account changing techologies like the ATI 9700, Athlon 2.6 and P4 2.8 - all of which are filtering into distribution over the next week or so.

Out of interest, given the the ATI 8500 is around £112, the 32Mb ATI 7500 is a mere £25 while the new 128Mb ATI 9000 pro is only around £69. I am eagerly waiting prices on the Radean 9700 Pro.

All being well, I will update this every other week. At the end of each year I will do pretty graphs depressing everyone with the fact that their £300 videocard and £500 chip are in the bargain bins with the other obsolete stock

I wish I'd kept my records from the past few decades. Hands up those who recall paying (ex sales tax) £995 for a 5Mb drive (yes Mb) the size of a breeze block? A decade on it was a 1Gb SCSI for the same price.   Another decade from now and it will be fond recollections of the 1Tb drives...

Anyway, fact of life that the components will change, as will the brands, through I will keep it as constant as possible. I'm going with the high end and volume items rather than currying favours with any one brand or manufacturer:

• The memory will be "major on third" or original like Samsung (as opposed to branded sticks like Crucial and Kingston or the really nasty stuff stuff of dubious origin...).
• The hard drives will be 7200rpm Maxtor, Seagate or IBM as opposed to the cheaper 5400rpm drives.
  *Note* I am giving prices for the IBM drives for the present because they are noticeably cheaper than others.
  Based on the one I keep returning, they run very hot and are intrusively noisy. Of greater concern is IBM's apparent recommendation that you don't run it for more than 8 hours in a day!!!   Use the price as a guide and see Storage Review for better alternatives at a comparible price. My money is on the quieter 80Gb Seagate or the 5400rpm 120Gb Maxtors, so much so that I gave my IBM drives to my children because they are too noisy for me and I simply don't trust them not to die and take my data with them!
  IBM bows out of harddrive business.
• The Nvidia GeForce 4 were released 7th March 2002. At present I'm using Sparkle for the price.  I'm using the Realtek on'es myself mind.
  As soon as prices become available I'll replace the ATI 8500's with the far faster 9700 series.
• Processors will ideally be the retail rather than OEM versions - better fans and less concerns about fakes. Watch for plummeting P4 prices!

ALL PRICES ARE IN UK POUNDS AND ARE BASED ON ONE-OFF TRADES PURCHASES AND EXCLUDE VAT/SALES TAX.

These are representives prices, not necessarily the best prices. If you know where to look you can get better prices at retail for some products, and trade veterans like myself can often negotiate substantial discounts elsewhere...


September (2202) saw Intel P4 prices fall up by up to 62% at the high end. Savings all round. Unless you just bought, in which case you have just wasted over well £200. Ooops!

Note: Between now and the end of May Intel chip prices are to fall some 57% - That will bring the 2.2Ghz chip to under £200 (ex vat) - more in line with the AMD prices. If you are buying a motherboard too, get one using the upcoming 850e chipset, available from May 6^th.

*The beggers only £238 if you ship from the States!

At present 512Mb Rambus is a begger to find and as such the price is grossly over-hyped. That said, 1Gb PC133 SDRAM's are a joy to get too - last price I chased (31st Jan 2002) £299 from Dabs.com

Notice the 25% jump in memory prices from Jan-Feb? Or the 20% drop for the Athlon in the same period...

Memory notes
SDRAM as memory goes is paling into insignificance and will cease to exist by 2004, wholly replaced by Rambus and, moreso, DDR which will actually be cheaper than SDRAM in the relatively near future. 2004 will also begin to see mass production of DDR-II.

May 11th 2002 - 1.0 GB DDR PC2100 Registered ECC (major brand) £344.50 a pop