Buying A Gaming Computer Post-GST – Damage Assessment

The introduction to Goods & Services Tax to Malaysia began a month ago, the prices of components changed quite a fair bit so in this article we’ll have a look at what it was and what it is now.

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For the comparison, I’ve prepared an AMD and an Intel gaming setup that’s under RM 3K in price, not including monitor, speaker, keyboard and mouse.

AMD Setup

Item Pre-GST
Feb 2015
Post-GST
April 2015
Difference
FX-8320E RM 569 RM 603 RM (%)
ASUS M5A97 R2.0 RM 320 RM 339 RM (%)
Kingston 1x 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz RM 240 RM 228 RM (%)
Intel 530 120GB SSD RM 275 RM 297 RM (%)
ASUS R9 270 RM 635 RM 663 RM (%)
Seasonic M12II 620W RM 359 RM 379 RM (%)
Cooler Master N300 Casing RM 179 RM 189 RM (%)
Total Cost RM 2577 RM 2698 RM (%)

Intel Setup

Item Pre-GST
Feb 2015
Post-GST
April 2015
Difference
Intel Core i5-4460 RM 635 RM 689 RM (%)
ASUS H81M-K RM 190 RM 201 RM (%)
Kingston 1x 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz RM 240 RM 228 RM (%)
Intel 530 120GB SSD RM 275 RM 297 RM (%)
ASUS R9 270 RM 635 RM 663 RM (%)
Seasonic M12II 620W RM 359 RM 379 RM (%)
Cooler Master N300 Casing RM 179 RM 189 RM (%)
Total Cost RM 2513 RM 2646 RM (%)

Observation

Regardless of setup, the price increase hovers around 5%. Do not that % difference between the items doesn’t necessarily tally to the total % as the % are all derived from the figures on MYR.

If you bought your computer about 2 months ago, you would have either spent less for the same setup or have a better rig with the same price. For example, instead of an AMD R9 270 card you could probably get an nVidia GTX 960 card that’s about the performance of an AMD R9 280X card. Tough luck for all of us PC Enthusiasts.

So how does this observation help you, other than making you feel bad about your purchase. 😛 The only thing I can think of is that your components could fetch a higher resale value, or if you price it based on Pre-GST price then it could help you close the deal really fast.

That aside, there’s actually nothing good to say about the tax implementation.

About the specs

Ah yes, some of you might be asking about the listed specs above. The AMD rig costs a little more but it’s more powerful should your software be able to utilize multiple-cores. Tasks like video rendering does benefit 8-core systems more than 4-cores. That doesn’t mean the AMD setup will be fastest all the way, the Intel setup would take the lead and in some cases have a huge lead over the AMD 8-core setup because Intel processor is capable of processing more instructions per second.

Here’s what the estimated performance difference is like (NOTE : The Core i5-4460 is very similar to the Core i5-3470).

compare
Source : Anandtech Bench

That aside, the AMD setup above has the advantage of being overclockable, meaning you could install a good 3rd party heatsink and push the performance of the processor. The Intel setup does not have this flexibility. The AMD setup comes with 4 DIMM slots for system memory but the Intel setup has only 2, you’ll have to chalk up a bit more to get that.

2 thoughts on “Buying A Gaming Computer Post-GST – Damage Assessment

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