Creating a budget for backup hardware

[Saturos]

Now that I'll actually be using my PC for something productive, I've been thinking of creating a monthly budget for replacement parts for when my aging PC starts dying off piece by piece.

Every month, I plan to buy one part until I have everything I need on standby for just this scenario. What should be on the budget for the first month's backup hardware? I was thinking about a replacement PSU first, then the next month, a replacement CPU, then the next month, a replacement video card. Presumably I was looking into a GeForce 9800 GX2. (although I may install this sooner than later. :naughty My current PSU is an Enermax 600 watt. I really want to get a modular PSU, like I wanted the first time, but I had trouble finding any that was at least a 600 watt.

What do you guys think about a budget like this? My buddy tells me to just invest in a macbook instead because they are best suited for business apps and to have one machine for work and the other for play. Honestly though, I really don't know much about intel macs.

BTW, I have an nforce 500 AM2 socket motherboard. If decide to get a 9xxx series card, will this mb support it?

 

[Rico]

why would you do this? Electronics get cheaper every day. If you buy parts that you don't intend on using "for later" you are wasting your money. You can buy $100 piece of hardware today that will be worth $50 tomorrow (figuratively).

What exactly is wrong with just putting your money aside in savings somewhere?

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

All that seems very unnecessary. I'd suggest just installing two identical hard drives in a RAID 1 array (where the same data is written to both hard drives) for redundancy, so if one of the hard drives fail you'd still have your data. Use 2-4 sticks of RAM instead of just 1 (4x1gb instead of 1x4gb, for example), so if one stick dies, you can just get rid of the bad stick and still have a functioning PC.

If you're really worried about your video card dying someday, you could just upgrade your current motherboard with a new one with an integraded GPU. So when your video card dies, you just move the plug and enable the integraded GPU in the BIOS and use that until you can get a new card.

Good PC components should last you years, barring any unforseen consequences /pun.

BTW, I have an nforce 500 AM2 socket motherboard. If decide to get a 9xxx series card, will this mb support it?

If your motherboard has a PCI-E x16 slot (which since it's an AM2 motherboard, I assume it does), it'll support it.