Hello Fellow Mustachians!
I am a long time reader of the site and forum, but didn't bother with registering, (I was busy pocketing the massive savings from not using electricity to create an account). However I am now requesting some advice from you with thick and fully grown money mustaches.
My PC wont start anymore. I am fairly well versed in IT, and spent 5-10 hours trying to repair it, going through checklists etc, but apparently the motherboard is gone. It was and Asus P5KE board, and wont post anymore - this is a well known issue btw, and there is no solution.
Anyways, the PC showed erratic behaviour for around 1.5 years and then finally one morning gave up. This was in August, 2013. Being the badass I am I decided to wing it, because I have a work laptop and a smarthpone as well. However, a certain itch started to manifest itself a couple of days ago because I have this big box + flatscreen collecting dust being completely useless at my desk.
Since I built the PC myself I know exactly which parts to swap, how to do it etc. Unfortunately, since it is over 8 years old it is "very" outdated in terms of available parts etc. Seems like I need to buy a MoBo + CPU + DDR3 RAM. Apart from this I have everything else at hand.
The total for the "repair" would be USD 150. Additionally, I can write this off as a business expense on my small company, so it would reduce the tax liability by the same amount. There is probably no resale value of the old parts, and I would donate the old RAM to a family members PC as it runs only on 1GB.
My questions is: Do I need a kick in the nuts, because I already have a work laptop and smartphone so I dont need this extra luxury item?
Or do you think I should go ahead and replace the parts? Would you exchange your hard earned USD 150 for a few depreciating electronic parts?
Pros:
I won't have to use my work laptop for personal stuff anymore, or only to a much more limited extent
A completely working, fancy, high end (for me) PC for only USD 150, by replacing some parts.
No more dust collecting, as I usually am a heavy user.
Cons:
USD 150. I could save this extra and earn 4% forever on it. More money is always better
Thank you in advance for your help!
Edit: I just gave it a second thought and I feel my main motivation to repair it is I still like to own and buy new shit. However I feel physically bad when spending money, hence the dilemma