I was just looking at doing a DIY build and updating my setup which is WAY out of date and took a look at the tax on said component I'm thinking of buying.
Noting that and what the cost of a new GPU would cost plus tax got me wondering....do any of you here, in your states/provinces/countries have a tax break weekend on computer parts every 4 or 5 years?
Considering computers are now a need not a want considering in how many things they're used for in every day life I think a fair argument can be made for such a weekend. If not this then an individual tax rebate that could be used the same way. Thoughts?
I'm considering seeing if I can get such legislation passed by talking to my lawmaker.
Comments
There are
states in the US with no tax weeks or weekends that cover pre-built computers. DIY and custom built pcs tend to be seen more as a premium or extravagant item.
Yes but I think you may agree.
Doing DIY or custom could see you buying better components that will last you longer. Some of the pre-builds can have cheap components or obscure ones that make them hard to repair if anything breaks before that 4 year set. I think at least Dell I was watching a video where it had some obscure PSU or something else you had to find that exact PSU based on how the mb was set up. I think Lenovo was another.
There's a whole Gamers Nexus set of video's on how to find a competent pre-build and some of the choices are awful.
I absolutely agree
DIY can be better for a simular price. But hand built pcs, where I'm from, are classified in the same way as 4k televisions or custom motorcycles. An extravagance. People would look at you like you were asking to buy your gold plated yacht tax-free.
Interesting.
I grew up building PC's with my dad so pre-built PC's are comparatively weird to me. I mean this was before Gateway.
Granted at the beginning it was all pre-built with the Micro-PC's but after the market became open with motherboards et al in the 80's pre-builts kinda died in some places.
Mac's and Amiga's were the exception and sadly the latter died which it didn't deserve. Japan also had some pre-builds with the Marty and the X68000 but were the NEC PC98/99 systems all pre-builds?
In my state - Massachusetts
We have a tax free weekend every year, normally just be for the school year this year it was Aug 14th and 15th. Most things are fall under this.
Except for
Meals
Motor vehicles
Motorboats
Telecommunications services
Gas
Steam
Electricity
Tobacco products
Marijuana or marijuana products
Alcoholic beverages, and
Any single item whose price is more than $2,500.
So most high end pre-built pc's or laptops. But a DIY PC would be. I did this 2 years ago to build my daughters PC and the year before to get my partners laptop. We replaced our TV this year.
When I live in Oregon there was no sales tax and when I went up to Tri-Cities WA area, I showed my ID and did not have to pay there either. But that was years ago, so do not know if they still do that.
So it counted if you bought all the items at one place?
And the total was more than $2500?
So Massachusetts doesn't have ZERO sales tax on groceries? That surprises me.
How much?
They want how much?
I have been building my own kit since 197... well, around then.
Originally, it was cheaper to build one's own but then the pre-built quantities went up and the prices came down. These days it comes out about even, but that depends on what you're building.
I struggle to understand how you can spend $2,500 building your own PC. In the UK a decent mobo can be found for £70+, a 500Gb HDD for around £50. Unless you are going for a fat gaming rig then that should be all you need, since you'll be reusing an old case, power supply, screen and keyboard. Of course I don't use Windows so my OS isn't locked to the hardware (and doesn't cost $$$ every time I upgrade!)
If something gets too old or out of date it gets repurposed and some of the parts go to the next iteration. I only buy new when something breaks and I don't have a spare.
Incidentally, if you buy Dell then you're basically stuck with Dell parts, since they go out of their way to make it all non-standard. #2 son had a Dell PC which failed recently. It was 10 years old and clogged with dust. I tried replacing the mobo with a hot spare (my own thin client!) to get him online but all the connectors needed tracing and rewiring to get it to fit.
They are good for what they are and robust, you just can't maintain them yourself. They are designed for business. Lenovo used to be IBM but I think that Dell bought them out as well, so the same applies.
...And in the UK there's no tax holidays for such things either. It's VAT at 20% on everything, when you can find it.
Penny
Lets do a tally on the high end complete.
Ryzen 5950X-$750
ASRock mITX B550 Phantom-$170
G.Skillz 3200 64 gig kit-$275
nVidia eVGA 3080-$850-890 2215-2255
850 Evga SFX PSU-$170 2425
Samsung 980 Pro Gen.4 nVme-$360 2785
Case-$300
$3045-3085
That's what my spec. looks like with all the ideals currently and NO I am not doing that right now but if I wanted a complete build that would be the cost with said motherboard minus $170 and that was on sale. Now if you add an ASUS fully specced Dark Hero or other X570 boards you can tack on likely close to double on those boards.
Keep in mind when I said complete I meant as close to Futureproofed as possible at this time. That 64 gig. is maxed given the way the board is 3600 at that size would bottleneck the RAM.
Obviously the graphics card definitely puts it over but now we have an issue getting them without being price gouged. Best bet there is to join eVGA's queue at the launch if you're Canadian or American, If you're European and not in the first half hour or even 5 minutes you're screwed. The European queue is an insult for their wait times.
Those are close to what my daughters spec where.
For her pc last year. Which is still a very good pc. Big differince are ASrock x570 Pro-4 MB, MSI RTX 2070 and NZXT 710i case with AIO cooler. But the cost was about the same.
I agree right now the biggest problem right now with building a pc is fight bots and scalpers on GPUs. I got lucky and was able to get a 3090 over on the Air Force Base a couple weeks ago at near MSRP for my next build.
Wow.
Did it have the tariff taken off or something? eVga is so cheap because most of the fabrication is made in Taiwan and they're outselling everyone like crazy. A number of people have complained about some of their boards being weaker than they would like or having problems on models but when they screw up they step up on customer service from what everyone says.
My ideal build past that would honestly be a 3080FE, not just because it's cheaper but because it's smaller too. I'm looking at creating a portable desktop PC as I want PCVR on the go with no Facebook or WiiGig/5G right in the headset. After the warranty ends I would open it up and set it to water cool along with the CPU, not to overclock them but to just put less wear on them.
You reminded me there's another expense I'd have to add for the time being...an Air Cooler.