Take it easy fellas... All Madz is trying to say, that for a stock/light modified car, a manual boost controller will be more then enough to give you the boost level required. Therefore the money saved from buying an EBC you can put it toward an aftermarket ECU which has much more power gain potential... It all comes down to your power goal and application... anything up to 200rw/kw from a R33 a manual boost controller is more then enough as long as its tuned well...
Back to the topic... My belief is if the design and construction of the CAI system is hi flowing and seals the POD from the hot air in the engine bay, it will do as good of a job as the $300 setups... How do you think all those performance CAI systems were made?? All by trial and error in some ones garage till they found the best design and put it into production and that’s why the consumer pays so much due to all the time, effort, materials, labeling, packaging and marketing behind the product… Just because something is home made does not make it a poorer quality or 'bodgy'.. Just check out the DIY section.. there are hundreds of threads which will save you $$$ by Doing It Yourself...
Cheers