Each 2 years or so i buy something new or replace something that was reaching its end… But my current PC still has parts from an old 2008 PC… not many though.

It may be theseus ship by now, but… (dates and compatibility could be off, this is just memory)

CPU

2008 Phenom II 1100T,

2022 R5 3600XT

GPU (oh boy)

2007 nv iGPU 6000 or 5000

2008 nv 9800gt (died reaching 1 year + 1 week)

2009 nv 250 (until it died)

2010 nv 560ti (until it died)

2012 nv 9800gt (same old 2009 gpu, took it to a furnance and after that worked for + 1.5 years or so)

2014 nv igpu

2019 rd 560ti (still working, not installed)

2023 rd 6700xt

The rest is just details… some disc replacement, a new ssd, fan upgrades… well, of course, changing a PS that died…

It was nearly 0.5 to 1 upgrade per year when i was buying intel, now its around 0.25… maybe less

Fun thing, two of my gpus died while running the same game: stalker clear sky… i still blame the nvidia

I usually go 10 or 15 years on a motherboard. I’ll upgrade the CPU, GPU, and RAM in that time.

I tend to stagger my platform and GPU upgrades. It tends to be about 3-4 years between something being upgraded. So I’d technically call the platform upgrade a new build, even though it inherits some older components.

My last build was used for 10 years, and the one before that 4 years. I was planning to have my previous build last for about 5-6 years, but those were the days when Intel stagnated with 14nm++++ and AMD wasn’t really showing up, so I ended up prolonging its life a bit more. My current build should last me well into the 2030s since it’s an AM5 platform. So this is the timeline:

2008: New build. 2012: New build, plus old hard drives inherited as data drives. 2015: GPU, PSU and SSD upgrade. 2018: GPU, CPU and heatsink upgrade, retired old data drives from previous build and replaced with new ones. 2022: Platform upgrade (motherboard, CPU, RAM), case upgrade and new SSD to use as the main drive. 2025: GPU and PSU upgrade. 2028: Most likely going to be another CPU and SSD upgrade (provided that prices come back down to sane levels), and retirement of older drives.

When the cross section of hardware being reasonably affordable and me having money to spend meets.

So never again basically.

When my power supply died

Last time I did a major upgrade was a few years ago, got a new motherboard/cpu/ram because the old stuff was broken in some way that was causing weird problems. Glad I got that and some additional drives bought before all the current craziness. Before that it was a better GPU. So every few years I guess.

Well I was planning to upgrade this year, but with the AI-fuelled RAM crisis and PC parts in general being jacked up in price, I think I’m just going to wait until something breaks and hope that is after we’re out the other side of this.

I generally like to aim for 5-7 years and then build for an “upper/mid” range trying to keep it below $1500 with a GPU update in the middle of the timeframe.

I got insanely lucky and decided to rebuild just before the ram crisis, so I’m set with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 64GB ddr5 ram, and a 4070ti. I really really really wish graphics cards weren’t so damn expensive… I hate being vram starved so often but with the way things are now I’m probably skipping my mid timeframe GPU upgrade :/

Whenever my old one can’t run a game I really want to play. Last time it was stalker 2. It had been about 6 years since I’d built a pretty much top of the line PC. The 1080ti was one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

It’s kind of a fluid, ship-of-theseus thing where parts flow in and out of a horde of various workstations and servers.

Case/chasis: 15 years and counting

Motherboard/CPU: ~5 years (currently: 6.5 years)

RAM: ~2 years until maxed out (currently: maxed out)

GPU: ~3-6 years (currently: 3 years)

I had hoped to do a new build last year, but it’s just too expensive. For now I’m planning to use what I have until it breaks.

I added one other SDD to dual-boot linux, but it’s otherwise the same as when I built it in May 2020.

I was looking at upgrading the video card before all the prices went to shit. I’d need to get a new mobo to really make it worth the effort. I’m not sure adding more memory would really do a lot.

My previous computer was a laptop since I knew I’d be moving across the world and I got it in late 2014 or early 2015. It technically still works, though it just sits in a closet.

I’m thinking I just want to buy a higher-end laptop next time and just use this machine as a server. If I can do some gaming and video editing on it, that’s really all I need that’s intensive. I’m also debating whether or not to live in Japan full time or see if I can get work authorization somewhere in the Schengen area and just live in Japan part time. Bit of a dream with jobs the way they are now, though.

10 years

I’m usually on roughly a 5-6 year cycle. I typically aim for one or two notches below the best available and that tends to get me about 3 years on high-ultra, and another 3 on medium-high.

I’m running a 2018/2019 laptop I got in exchange from a friend around 2022 for an old TV and some cash 25€ or so. I doubled its RAM to 16GB a few years ago and it’s just fine. Im not paniny to upgrade it anytime soon. Three only moments I think about upgrading is when NVIDIA fucks up my Linux setup with their new drivers and I dream of switching to AMD instead of figuring out how to fix it.