As we all know, the price of high performance cars can cost well over $100K
How much can the very, very rich spend on their high performance home computers?
And what do they get for their money that most of us don’t?
CRAP! I did it again:
How high-priced are ridiculously expensive desktops?
The price-range for computers is a lot closer than that for other things. You could build a parallel supercomputer cluster in your garage (consisting of a bunch of regular computers) but hardly anyone wants that.
Serviceable computers start at just over $500 and pretty good ones can be had for $1000 or so. Gamers tend to be the ones that demand the most in their computers and really good gaming computers can be had starting at about $2000. After that, the cost/benefit curve really starts to flatten out. I suppose you could spend $6000 or so on a computer if you really tried. You would have to buy every single cutting-edge component the second it was released however. Within a year, that system will be equivalent to the $2000 computers though. The only to really up the price is to buy some crazy monitor or printer.
Besides using all state of the art components, hand crafted exotic wood cases are also available to those willing to pay for them. I know a guy who had one built to match the burl wood desk he had custom made. I believe he paid something like 2K just for the custom case.
Do you like luxury? Do you enjoy fine things? Silks? Furs? Fine exotic woods?
I suppose if you really tried and built an under the desk parallel supercomputer in a customized case, more memory than Nasa, RAM up the wazoo and all the latest components, then you might spend 10k. But you would really have to try hard.
It’s not too hard to spend 8K on a computer with off-the-shelf parts. A friend and I sat down with the newegg catalog and made an 8K computer, not counting stuff like dual 30-inch monitors or anything like that.
I find it interesting that $8K to $10K is about the limit.
Rich people spend a lot more on homes, cars, jewelry, furs, even sound systems.
Maybe part of the the explanation is explained in this excerpt from custome computer maker:
We only use retail version premium name-brand hardware components to assemble your tastycomputer (with the exception of hard drives and floppy drives, which are normally OEM versions, meaning that they are fully-warranted premium components, but without the associated retail packaging.
It would seem there’s not much sizzle in computers.
A high-end PC based workstation for computation or graphics rendering can easily run in the upper four digits through about $12k. Much of this will go into the largest, fastest memory you can buy and the most expensive bleeding edge video adapter available. Going to a multi-processor motherboard, interconnect memory bus like that supported by the AMD64 architecture, and a 1Tb RAID 5 config you could easily spend in excess of $30k. This would be more akin to an HPC server than a desktop workstation, of course, but if money were no object (and I had a place to put it that it wouldn’t deafen me with the fans running full out like Jack Bauer on the trail of a nuke-carrying terrorist) I could put that system to use.
You’re right, though, that this computer will be worth a small fraction of the initial cost in four or five years, especially if it’s being used for high performance computing. The same is true for our formerly high-end SGI servers; bad-ass MIPS R16000 crunch monsters that we shelled out $60K-$100K for six to eight years ago, surplus/salvage now that is worth more in terms of the precious metals inside than as a run box. The same is pretty much true of commodity PC hardware. (Just try running XP on a six year old Pentium II and see how far you get.)
Stranger
I just configured my build-to-order Mac Pro: $15,579. Granted, that’s with a modem that I don’t need, but it’s made up for in my company’s discount plan. Thank goodness I don’t have 1-Click turned on at my Apple Store account!!
The economics of high end goods are very sensitive to the type of good, to the point where you can’t even depend on consistency between men’s and women’s clothing.
If you’re not limiting yourself to desktops, you can drop a few million on a machine, but it’s not clear why anyone would.
It’s not clear why anyone would drop several thousand dollars on a few feet of speaker cable, but they do.
I configured an Alienware workstation up to ~$15,000.
That’s with 2x Dual-Core processors, 16GB RAM, and a lot of fast hard drive space.
Boxx makes a workstation with 4x dual-core processors, up to 128GB RAM, and 13+ TB hard drive space. It’s expensive. Just how expensive I can’t figure out without calling.
Well, if you want to start high…
I remember seeing an executive desk with built in computer once, that was very expensive, but really you were paying for the desk more than the computer.
Yes but they claim it does something. What are you going to claim your cray is doing in your garage, filtering out unwanted harmonics from your toaster?
Cars, clothing and jewelry can be hand crafted from raw materials and those are the ones that typically cost the most. Nobody (or to be safe, probably nobody) can hand craft an integrated circuit - you need a fabrication system, labs, testing equipment. Whatever it is you can create can easily be mass produced without loss of quality - a Ferrari cannot be, and even if it was, part of the perceived quality is the perceived individual attention to detail the car receives. The equivalent in the computer world is already commodity - a lot of smaller high performance computer manufacturers have careful people who know what they are doing assembling and testing every one.
I guess the difference is that given $20K to spend on parts, I can build you a top of the line computer that is going to be within 1% of the theoretical maximum you can get out of those parts. A lot of people can. Given $20K of steel and fiber glass there is a handful of people in the world that can make a working car, much less the best car you could, and even then it’s a lot more subjective.
There are lots of uses to which a suitably-minded individual could put a supercomputer. The speaker cables really don’t do anything, except empty one’s wallet; the computer, arguably, does.
It’s the law of diminishing returns. With speaker cable, expensive stuff works better, but so incrementally that the price can only be justified by those who are rich and stupid.
A really expensive computer is more justifyable because one can make money with it, eventually offsetting the cost (theoretically).
I don’t beleive that the expensive stuff works better. It does not work better than a high gage extension cord.
As usual, it all depends.
How big is your desk? How much are you willing to spend?
More speed.
More graphics.
More sound.
More this.
More that.
More Bells and Whistles.
Multiple displays.
More memory.
More RAM.
More. More. More. More.More.More.More.