Vouchers for getting started

RedXIV

Hey guys,

My dad's birthday is coming up and as he's spent the last few years talking about wanting to build a computer but never having the money to do it properly, the family has decided on banding together to get him him a couple of hundred euro to get him started. Between the 4 of us, we should be able to pull together a 400-500 voucher, but i'm 99% certain he'll want to spend more than that.

With this in mind, we're wondering if we should just get him an amazon voucher for this amount to let him start buying parts or is there somewhere else worth looking? The other thing here is, knowing him, he may keep it for a few months while he pulls the rest of the money together so I want to make sure the vouchers don't expire/degrade.

Any recommendations from people here would be great?

Cheer,
Red

Digital Solitude

Amazon would probably be a good start, I don't think the likes of hwvs or mind factory do vouchers, amazon is more economical than dabs.

See how long Amazon's last for, its probably 12 months

Unless he's gaming, vr or photo/video editing he's not going to put more than €500 in without seriously dicking about

grindle

Amazon gift cards are ideal for this situation. As long as he doesn't dawdle for a literal decade his gift card balance will be all good.

What exactly will he be doing with the PC? If he just wants a basic desktop/internet/media machine chances are the €400-500 will be grand.

Edit: post-pippage! Egads.

Digital Solitude

If he's a peripheral fan I suppose he might splash on headphones and a mech keyboard and tasty mouse, but that's adding about €350 at most (€200 headphones, €100 keyboard and €50 mouse)

RedXIV

He's not a hardcore gamer but he'd be beyond average PC consumer (as in he's comfortable reading /writing code, debugging issues and playing with new gadgets) so while he doesn't need anything state of the art, I'd expect him to rack up a significant bill.

He definitely will play games occasionally on it and he uses his current one to control the media system in his house. He would do a bit of photo editing but nothing at a professional level. The thing is though I could see him being interested in VR so that pushes the price up significantly.

Even if the initial vouchers for him started, fathers day and Xmas could see him cover whatever he can't cover himself throughout the year

Digital Solitude

Pull the VR interest out of him, if he wants VR, he wants an i5 min, if not, then an i3 is probably overkill

grindle

RedXIV wrote: »

I could see him being interested in VR so that pushes the price up significantly.

A VR-ready build can be had for <€1000 nowadays. That'll drop a bit once Polaris shows it's head (and further again if he's willing to buy a second hand 390 once Polaris is out).

He can save up for the Vive/Oculus himself - or ye can pay half again next year if this is the kind of thing ye like doing for him.

RedXIV

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Pull the VR interest out of him, if he wants VR, he wants an i5 min, if not, then an i3 is probably overkill

Ah to be fair, when he was specing out the machine he was thinking of paying last year, he had an i7 in it

... Until my mother said they needed a new sofa

mayordenis

here's the thing, he could get the build with the vouchers minus the the graphics card, he can save the money as you expect and get the graphics card later, in the meantime he'll have built a good non-gaming pc.

i7 is unnecessary in almost every way.

decent mobo, i5, 8gb ram, SSD, Case, PSU thats all thats needed for now.