How often do you upgrade your PC?

[noel24]

Never again?

 

[Gars]

New games? meh
im with quadro M4000 and it works
the base is from 2018 - my last build= Prime X470+Rizen2 2700X+HyperX(2x16gb)
so, its even more then 8 years

 

[DrSuess]

Only when it no longer can complete the task I need it to do, within acceptable timespans.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

My CPU usually when it becomes an issue. My ivy bridge I5 lasted a full decade and it's still going. Had I not jumped on the NVMe train I'd probably still be using it.

My 5800x3d has barely scratched the surface, but given I dont play most modern games it could go longer. 12 years? 15?

GPU was usually every other generation, but now I'm still not really feeling it. The 9070xt isnt enough of an upgrade over my Red Lung priced 6800xt and nothing I play needs more power, so I'mma run it until it fails.

I've got enough RAM and storage to go a long time now.

 

[human7]

About six years is the cycle I go with, but buy top tier so the hardware lasts a while.

 

[Homerlovesbeer]

It was 6 years between upgrades when I upgraded this year.

 

[loki1944]

At 4K only my GPU upgrades matter now. Even my i9 14900KS can't double FPS vs my 2008 X58 platform CPUs at 4K ultra.

 

[VitalyT]

Once every 5 years, but my current PC (5 years old) will be my last one. Once it dies, I'll be on Mac + Linux only. Tired of MS nonsense, plus Macs are way cooler.

 

[AndrettiGTO]

I miss the overall enthusiasm this hobby had back in the day. Shame many view them as appliances

 

[bloomsun]

Yeah, and so many people only complain about anything and don't see where we have come, taking it all for granted. My god, we have path-traced visuals now with hundreds of FPS. Twenty years ago, we could have only dreamed about this as science fiction. And today? "Boohoo! It's not 'native' and **** AI." What's wrong with people? What the ****.

 

[Ysmir6723]

I change my whole computer & monitor every new generation.

 

[yRaz]

GPUs (yep, ran SLI for a good while) used to be every other generation.
8800GTS 512MB
GTX 280
GTX 570 (used them for 4.5 years and skipped to the 9xx series)
I decided to go all in during Maxwell and went with 980Ti cards in SLI. Found they were too big to easily keep cool and it was extreme overkill for any game so I moved to just a single 980Ti and used it for 6.5 years.
Going on 3.5 years with my 3080Ti and with how poorly the latest gen cards have been the 3080Ti will be another card I run 6+ years.

CPUs are usually 3-7 years.
Athlon X2 3800+
Athlon X2 5600+
Phenom II x4 940
i5-4670k
5900x
As it stands going on 5 years with 5900x and no near future plans to upgrade since it works wonderfully for all my needs.

What I have now should do me well for another 3+ years.

I forget the k6-2 I had, but had:

sempron 2800+(socket 754)
FX-60(939, I still have it)
Phenom 720BE(AM2)
Intel 3870k
Ryzen 1800x
Ryzen 3800x
And now I have a 5800x3d
I have a felling that if ram prices do not fall that this will be my setup for a long time

 

[Honest Abe]

I have historically saved up for what I consider a "Future proof" machine. And usually it's about every 5-8 years that I upgrade to the next.

 

[fazy shah]

I have enough pc power and wont be upgrading unless something fails now in this planned expensive memory cartel era.

 

[murkiewaters]

I recently went back to my old laptop with a GTX9xx GPU after my current PC died. If the old one fails too, I'm sticking to phones until I spot a really compelling deal on the second hand market.

 

[Tom Yum]

I upgrade when I can double the performance for the same price I previously paid, or when things break. That has me upgrading pretty slowly these days (~5-7 years), but in the 90's/00's it was every 18 months or so.

 

[captaincranky]

BE ADVISED: no AI was used in the writing of this post It's solely my proprietary long windedness on full display. (Otherwise know as 'time I'll never get back.)

Well, it's doubtful that any of Techspot's "power users", would consider any current project of mine an. "upgrade". But.I gotta do me, so I'll boor y'all with it anyway.

From the beginning: About 20 years ago, Intel released what turned out to be an overly ambitious "road map", to their expected massive leaps in performance, and shrinking of their process widths in the not too distant future. As it turned out, it was a total fantasy, engineered to blow the maximum amount of sunshine up stockholders a**es. So, we had 14nm+++++, seemingly ad infinitum. I swore off building anything, until they could deliver a viable 10nm CPU.

As it turns out, I reneged on this, and built a Skylake rig, (i5-6600k, GTX-1050ti) in the meantime. The board and CPU were on sale at Micro Center, for something around $220.00 for the pair.

Imagine my effusive joy when gen 12 was announced, with a 10mn process. So, given all the great reviews surrounding the lowly i3-12100, I just had to make good on my "threat" to build a new machine when the 10nm CPUs were finally introduced. I finally got around to putting that PC on the line last week. In my own defense, I did buy "the real" 12100 with IGP. Not the quick, "save 10 bucks and satisfy your 'gaming jones' on a budget, 'F' model".

This is when the real aggravation started. The VGA market opened up a bit, and I grabbed a GTX-1650 for about a deuce.Then, Newegg put up the GTX-1660ti up for about the same price. Since the return window had closed, and in spite of my begging to Newegg's customer service rep, I was 'forced' to buy the 1660 outright. I did get a slightly better than advertised price, and a ten dollar credit to boot.

Well, one of the gamer boyz here took offense at my choice in video cards, and proclaimed me an 'idi0t' for not buying an AMD 6600. This 'debate' spilled over into page long PMs, topically covering everything from my poor choices in gear, to what a fabulous president 'diaper don' would make.

Fast forward a few years. Newegg put an i5-12600k on sale for $150.00, and get this, WITH a FREE 'Team Group' 1TB NMve drive included. (Plus a free game, which I never cashed in).

My original plan was to pop in the the i5 in place of the i3. However, I quickly became aware that the 12100 would be orphaned., "all dressed up with no place to go", so to speak. (keep in mind this was just before the massive price gouge that now pervades the industry.)

What else could a lonely old man with a bad attitude do, but collect all the parts to build another rig around the i5;12600k. These exist in a stack of boxes, still sitting around the living room..

In direct answer to Mr. Franco's original question."how often do you upgrade your PC", the answer is either, "when I get around to it". or. "whenever I get good and god damned ready", whichever come first..

If anybody has gotten this far, and condescended to read this entire post, a hearty "thanks for reading", a Happy Mother's Day, and a big juicy "Cheers", goes out to you. You earned it...

 

[Achaios]

I think I'm done with the PC gaming hobby. It's not pricing that pushed me away, I think I just outgrew it.

Zero incentive to play any new games and I rarely game more than a few hours a day. Some days I don't game at all.

My current rig runs all the (old) games I care to play. Same Haswell/Z87/1080 build I've had since 2013.

I only replace parts that fail like I did replace one of my HDDs a year ago. Not seeing myself investing either in a new desktop PC or laptop PC as my current rigs just work with no hassle.

 

[daffy duck]

Gaming forms only a small part of my wanting to upgrade. There's a lot of BS perpetrated by influencers and review sites about gpu's and the need to upgrade. Only a fool rushes out and upgrades to play the latest POS bug laden AAA title or worries about raytracing. I only do a serious upgrade after about 5-7 years. Productivity is a far bigger drivers for me as well as much faster storage and connectivity options.

I often just upgrade peripherals rather than the core system.

 

[abactuon]

I often just upgrade peripherals rather than the core system.

I bought the Corsair specifically so I'd never have to upgrade. I'll only replace the headphones and speakers once the LC3 is working.

 

[Peter Farkas]

Are you also experiencing that passing on a computer gets harder and harder?

It seem like in my circles that it used to be some was without a computer or making due with some old relic, but these last years everyone sort of have what they want. And there is even some who have moved to just a laptop or even a tablet, having no interest in a PC.

My dad is always happy to take whatever PC I have to spare.

 

[BrightlightJohn]

I tend to alternate gpu and cpu upgrades every 2 years. But when intel stagnated on cpus I stopped that side and just did GPUs. There isn’t much gain to be had there either unless you jump to a 90 class. So I’m waiting until is see an improvement that matches the dollars I’m spending. It’s looking like one or the other every 4 years, if necessary. Currently on a 5800x3d (mb purchased in 2020) and a rtx 4080 (late 2023).

Agreed. I have an 5800X3D on a MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk MAX WiFi and a Shapphire 9060 OC. Works good in all the games I have. No hurry to upgrade the CPU or GPU.

 

[Hellbishop]

I have historically saved up for what I consider a "Future proof" machine. And usually it's about every 5-8 years that I upgrade to the next.

Same plan here. Just got a homemade built system in June of 2024 thanks to my brother inlaw who retired from thirty plus years in I.T. and wanted to hook me up with something extra special before he moved out of state. So now am good for 5 to 8 years with my i9 12900k, 32gb ram, RTX 3080 (12gb vram, 2TB NVMe SSD and 8TB Western Digital hard drive, Windows 11 etc. Been playing everything on high and ultra with no issues. Also have three other of my previous pcs going back to 2006 as backups so I always have something to game on.

 

[Hellbishop]

Yeah, and so many people only complain about anything and don't see where we have come, taking it all for granted. My god, we have path-traced visuals now with hundreds of FPS. Twenty years ago, we could have only dreamed about this as science fiction. And today? "Boohoo! It's not 'native' and **** AI." What's wrong with people? What the ****.

Totally agree. Been pc gaming since 1994 and before that on a Commodore Amiga 500 since 1989. Its incredible what we can play and how we can play it. I was stunned to see I could play STARFIELD at 5k after finding out my RTX 3080 (12gb vram) could use DSR to upscale graphics beyond my imagination with the same performance as playing at 1440p on my i9 12900k. It's also funny how everyone is always pushing high framerates when I have been gaming at 60fps with no problem when it comes to enjoyment. Would not surprise me if in the very near future people will be building furniture and entertainment items at home with 3D printers just by buying a build schematic online and presto magico just like the way we buy games, films, music online we can have physical items at any time of the day or night in any kind of weather built in our homes or apartments. Probably won't even need to pick up the necessary materials for the 3D Printers just order it online and have some drone deliver it from some huge resource factory/warehouse.

Ai is fantastic and has helped me so much when it comes to minor health annoyances like heartburn and acid reflux while giving me plenty of info on things like arthritis etc with the same advice I get from my primary doctor. Shoo it even acts as a great therapist and psychiatrist advising me on legal measures which can be taken in annoying situations like the troublesome upstairs neighbors who are always being a nuisance and causing flooding damage.

Yep we are living in a science fiction world yet people are just complaining instead of enjoying it all to the max.

 

[bloomsun]

Totally agree. Been pc gaming since 1994 and before that on a Commodore Amiga 500 since 1989

Ai is fantastic.. Shoo it even acts as a great therapist and psychiatrist advising me on legal measures

Yep we are living in a science fiction world yet people are just complaining instead of enjoying it all to the max.

Yes, exactly. I'm 44 years old, German. I started with an old 486 DX2 with 4 MB RAM and look where we are now. It's crazy. I can totally appreciate the progress, which is insane actually. I never understand how people cannot appreciate and recognize this.

Just look 20 years back. What was a AAA game 20 years ago? Let's go to 1999, Quake. At the time, state of the art. We didn't even have resolutions like today. We were playing in like less than 1080p, by far.

And now look at Cyberpunk with path tracing in 4K, which you can now, with multi-frame generation, even play in hundreds of FPS.

People really forget how far we have come.