Ha, I used to build computers for people so I'd sell them my 5 month old motherboard and CPU and often graphics card at a discount and get new stuff for myself.
That was also in the Pentium III and Pentium 4 days where they were changing clock speeds every 4 weeks and the faster clock speeds actually made a huge difference.
Not like now where unless you're playing some heavy duty games you don't really need a super fast CPU with piles of RAM. A Core i3 or i5 paired with an SSD will make Windows 7 fly, regardless of a lower clock speed (Lower being a relative term since they are all 2+ ghz) where back in the day the jump from a Pentium 4 2 ghz to a 2.4 ghz machine running Windows XP made a huge difference. Never mind Windows 98 on a Pentium MMX at 200 MHz to a Pentium III at 500 MHz.