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Weekend Open Forum: What's the oldest part in your PC?
Although most of us upgrade our systems regularly, it's generally uncommon to replace every single component -- even for a fresh build. Instead, parts less crucial to daily performance such as optical drives, bulk storage, cases or even power supplies are recycled over the years, serving tours through several hardware generations. Likewise with peripherals, which often remain deployed until they're busted or totally obsolete.
This week, we want to hear about the parts of your PC that have been on duty for the longest period. On my end, I think the Thermaltake Tai Chi chassis is the oldest component still in use (it's also my most regretted tech purchase), having been bought in 2005. As close second and third place picks, I recently removed a decade old 40GB Maxtor hard drive and a floppy drive from my system, though they weren't actually being used.
User Comments: 106
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Its the DVD burner from Samsung. Don't remember the full model name ! It was installed around 3 years ago and it doesn't work anymore, but I am too lazy to replace it cuz I don't use DVDs any more ! :P
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Yamaha CRW-F1 CDR. It's used to burn audio cd's only, because the audio quality of the cd's it writes is extremely good and it writes cd's in such high quality and low speed that simply no stand alone cd player, no matter how old, will be able to read it.
For instance I own Philips CD100, I think one of the first cd players. You can burn an audio cd on any modern dvd-rw blue ray writer and the chances are very high these old players won't read them.
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Probaly the cpu and 1 of the hdd's
cpu = x4 965
hdd = seagate 300 gb
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TitoBXNY said:
My Fatal1ty XFi Soundcard is a few years old. I also have a 300 Gig Maxtor Drive with old pics and game saves.
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Jason_AJ_or_w/e said:
I was just thinking this and its my Sound Blaster X-fi, I'm ready to retire it.
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Windows XP
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Zalman Flex CPU cooler.
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T77 said:
It's got to be my HP Deskjet 3745 printer, has been around for at least 5 years.
Everything else is 3 or 4 years old.
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Oldest part I have in/on my rig is my Antec 900 case. I cant see any reason to upgrade unless GFX cards get even longer. She's a beast 2 front 120mm, top 240mm, back 120mm and side 120mm fans. Cool as ice!
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PSU. there are 6yo PSU and 4yo PSU on both my builds. co-incidentally both are acbel.
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Although I have a nicely working AMD Socket 754 Athlon 64 3200+ system with a Radeon 9600 and an Audigy 1, that is not my main box. The longest serving component in my main desktop is the CPU, an Athlon II X4 620, one of the original ones with the disabled L3 cache (mine has come through and had the L3 work on 3 different boards by 3 different makers). It does what I have needed it to do faithfully since release in 2009 and I expect it to continue until at least Windows 9, I have absolutely no intention of ever letting my CPU be subjected to the indignity of WinME, Vista or 8 as it runs 7 just fine.
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TS-56336 said:
My LG 24X Read-Write DVD-ROM. It's been 6 years now.
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Soulj4ck said:
AMD ANHTLON XP 2200+, 74GB MAXTOR,I think everything on my pc is from 2005 ^^ accept the gpu.
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Corsair 650 Watt power supply... 4 years old
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fimbles said:
Old lightscribe IDE dvd burner.
Maybe 5 years old or more, never use it apart from os reinstalls.
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Well built my first system 2 years ago and haven't upgraded anything. Everything was bought new. So really don't have any old components. I imagine I'll be reusing my haf x and my power supply for a long time.
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bangs777 said:
Seagate barracuda PATA drive 160gb since 2006
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Oldest parts are my DFI LanParty x48 motherboard with a Core 2 Duo E8600 overclocked to 4 GHz. Everything else has been cycled a few times (hard drives, power supply, sound card). Video cards get updated the most, about every 6 to 12 months (currently a GTX 670). Still powerful enough to play every game I've thrown at it on highest graphics settings, most recently Borderlands 2.
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I'd say the oldest component in use today with my main rig is definitely the WD 320GB SATA disk, which I use to store my Virtual Machines. That's now several years old and going strong. I'll eventually replace it with a larger Hitachi disk though.
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Matt W. said:
In my desktop gaming PC I built after making it out of the AGP scene, I transferred my 320Gb Seagate SATAI drive to the PCIe build of which I am still using today. In fact, I am looking at selling it soon as of recently - that along with the second oldest part, being the 500Gb Seagate SATAII drive. After that the third oldest component would be my 8800GTS (640Mb) card of which I have had to oven bake several times in the last year to get her to run just a little bit longer after the sauder joints somewhere failed at times.
But... ...now that I've come to the end of my post I've realized I guess my oldest part just may be my NEC DVD-R/W drive (PATA) that I got probably some seven years ago - I dunno - somewhere back in '05 something perhaps.
What will be my newest piece of hardware to come? An SSD of course.
...But then again why settle with my Asus P5K-E AP-Wifi motherboard running SATAII when SATAIII bandwidth specs are out there?!? ...It never ends, does it. -
dcnc123 said:
My dual core d510 atom CPU 1.6ghz used as server in my internet cafe
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In use would be a 500GB Maxtor from 2000 something with 5.3 years of on time, its a redundant backup at this point in its life but still in use. The oldest part I have in my gaming PC is the Razer Sound card from a previous build. I had an old P4 630 system running until I sold it, but its still in use in his possession.
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Darth Shiv said:
3.5" floppy drive. Had the case for years too... Lian Li PC69 I think (but probably not the oldest part). The floppy drive isn't connected but is screwed into the case.
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Zalman 500 Watts power supply. bought it november 2009. still use it with my core i5 2300 and GTX 670 and 8Gig RAM without problems
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I have a plextor dual layer dvd burner, has to be circa 2004. Plextor make great drives, it even worked with x64 when it came out.
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