How long does a PC last?

[THE TUG BOAT]

This might be a stupid question but I am looking to build a gaming PC and have been looking at youtube videos and most of the experts say that you will have to build a completely new PC in three years and I think thats a complete waste of money. can you please correct me if I am wrong.do people just not upgrade their PC anymore? so would I have to build a new PC in the next three years or could I at least upgrade it for 10 years to come

[UberFiend]

If you buy the right parts at the right time it doesn't have to cost a bomb & will be competitive for a good 5 years and run for around 10 years or more within reason.

Intel i5 k model processor
Best graphic card you can afford
600W~650W PSU
8GB 1600mhz ram
Motherboard
HDD
OS
Case
Coolermaster Hyper212 cooler

Overclock it & should be good for a while.

[Air]

Well, that depends on if you maintain your PC. Although a motherboard's socket type will end up becoming outdated within that period of 10 years. Over that time, you'd probably end up replacing every single part in your computer anyway.

[Joker]

It's not necessary to upgrade your PC every 2-3 years unless you like to game on the highest settings or want a new feature like getting PCI-E 3.0 or 4.0, USB 3.0, SATA III 6/Gbs, RAID, higher memory speeds like 3200 MHZ/DDR4 etc. New features are always being developed. The great thing about building your own is saving tons of money when upgrading. Just replace the graphics card or CPU/mobo when needed and you end up with a much higher quality system.

I don't recommend trying to keep the same build for ten years.

[Abisha]

those experts are very wrong.
the real computer revolution is come to a end, they are at a threshold they can't make them any faster, unless they come up with very new alloys.
or Quantum computers
so i say a general life spawn of current hardware is around 5 a 6 years atm.

[Azza ☠]

Console life span - 1-3 years, replace entire system.

PC life span is however broken down into upgradable components. Their hardware life span is around 3-6 years and can be upgraded regularly.

For example,

Motherboard + CPU, pretty much every 2-3 years there's a major new generation. This works in a Tick/Tock cycle, so best to aim for every second generation if you want the best. So 6 years+ is fine in most cases. Intel redesigns the motherboard to work with the CPU, meaning sometimes a replacement of both, but way less bottlenecking. Direct access from CPU to memory (memory doesn't need upgrading as much) and from CPU to graphic processing (graphics is where it all ends up).

Operating Systems, for as long as you can stand it - again Tick/Tock cycle with Microsoft. Win XP good... Vista sucks, Win 7 is a fixed up version of Vista... Win 8 sucks moving to mobile/tablet/touchscreen devices, Win 9 will be a fixed up version of Win 8 with the PC desktop mode reapplied. Aka: Aim for every 2nd, or 4th generation if skipping.

Graphic card life span for staying at ultra resolutions 3-5 years. If you aim for every second generation (3 years - remember the tick/tock cycles and wait for a bit of price drop) and still have some good resale value on your old card (keep the box and everyone in good nick), selling or trading in. The Tick/Tock cycle here for Nvidia is to reduce size and power levels first (Tick Stage), then beast it up (Tock Stage), however also note they release the entry level cards first, so you have to wait a bit for the real gaming ones in that tock stage. They can be quite pricey, till the next tick stage brings them down. So buy now the previous tock stage, while in the next tick. The Nvidia GTX680 or GTX770 peaks ultra resolutions at 1080p without bottlenecks/lag, so there's your first limit to stay for years on end if you don't care for 1440p (else GTX780 will do for now). Ignore the GTX800 series. 4K (UltraHD) should be completely ignored as overpriced and not even real 4K (tick stage - stepping stone to get there), untill Nvidia Pascal cards are launched (2016), which should start fully supporting 4K monitors.

Mouse and Keyboard life span can be 8-10 years, such as with a quality Logitech G500, Razer DeathAdder, or similar. These gaming devices can be abused every day / all day for years on end if you get a good one.

Hard drive life span, 4 years+ if SSD, HHD can life for extremely longer periods of time, up to 12 years+ if you really wanted. After 4 years of continuous usage/abuse, failure just starts to kick in and error correction applied. 80% of hard drives will still be working after that. Solid state drives just have the shorter lifespan.

etc...

I personally upgrade on tock cycles, selling my old hardware (2-5 years old) at a good price still with their box, manual, disk, and everything in very good nick. This way the upgrades only cost a little extra each time, or sometimes even almost free.

[THE TUG BOAT]

thank you very useful :)

Originally posted by Azza ☠:

Console life span - 1-3 years, replace entire system.

PC life span is however broken down into upgradable components. Their hardware life span is around 3-6 years and can be upgraded regularly.

For example,

Motherboard + CPU, pretty much every 2-3 years there's a major new generation. This works in a Tick/Tock cycle, so best to aim for every second generation if you want the best. So 6 years+ is fine in most cases. Intel redesigns the motherboard to work with the CPU, meaning sometimes a replacement of both, but way less bottlenecking. Direct access from CPU to memory (memory doesn't need upgrading as much) and from CPU to graphic processing (graphics is where it all ends up).

Operating Systems, for as long as you can stand it - again Tick/Tock cycle with Microsoft. Win XP good... Vista sucks, Win 7 is a fixed up version of Vista... Win 8 sucks moving to mobile/tablet/touchscreen devices, Win 9 will be a fixed up version of Win 8 with the PC desktop mode reapplied. Aka: Aim for every 2nd, or 4th generation if skipping.

Graphic card life span for staying at ultra resolutions 3-5 years. If you aim for every second generation (3 years - remember the tick/tock cycles and wait for a bit of price drop) and still have some good resale value on your old card (keep the box and everyone in good nick), selling or trading in. The Tick/Tock cycle here for Nvidia is to reduce size and power levels first (Tick Stage), then beast it up (Tock Stage), however also note they release the entry level cards first, so you have to wait a bit for the real gaming ones in that tock stage. They can be quite pricey, till the next tick stage brings them down. So buy now the previous tock stage, while in the next tick. The Nvidia GTX680 or GTX770 peaks ultra resolutions at 1080p without bottlenecks/lag, so there's your first limit to stay for years on end if you don't care for 1440p (else GTX780 will do for now). Ignore the GTX800 series. 4K (UltraHD) should be completely ignored as overpriced and not even real 4K (tick stage - stepping stone to get there), untill Nvidia Pascal cards are launched (2016), which should start fully supporting 4K monitors.

Mouse and Keyboard life span can be 8-10 years, such as with a quality Logitech G500, Razer DeathAdder, or similar. These gaming devices can be abused every day / all day for years on end if you get a good one.

Hard drive life span, 4 years+ if SSD, HHD can life for extremely longer periods of time, up to 12 years+ if you really wanted. After 4 years of continuous usage/abuse, failure just starts to kick in and error correction applied. 80% of hard drives will still be working after that. Solid state drives just have the shorter lifespan.

etc...

I personally upgrade on tock cycles, selling my old hardware (2-5 years old) at a good price still with their box, manual, disk, and everything in very good nick. This way the upgrades only cost a little extra each time, or sometimes even almost free.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by AFr1CaN_BEa$t:

This might be a stupid question but I am looking to build a gaming PC and have been looking at youtube videos and most of the experts say that you will have to build a completely new PC in three years and I think thats a complete waste of money. can you please correct me if I am wrong.do people just not upgrade their PC anymore? so would I have to build a new PC in the next three years or could I at least upgrade it for 10 years to come

Depends what you buy. There are people still running first generation i7 processors who can still keep up relatively well. More so if they are overclocking.

Gaming and professional software are probably the only things actually demanding greater hardware performance. Mundane stuff can still run on old Core 2 Duos released in 2003.

If you buy a lower grade i3 or midrange AMD, you're going to run into issues 3-5 years from now that you probably cannot fix without upgrading. If you buy a high end i5/i7/AMD chip that you can overclock you can keep your existing PC running for far longer.

Sockets tend to die within 2 years. AMD is a little longer, but they just don't stick around. So it's best to buy the latest socket as there is generally 2-3 generations that use it and when it's time to upgrade, you can then buy the last generation that fits the socket and you'll be good for 2-4 more years.

I went from an old LGA775 that simply had no newer processors to a LGA1150 i5 4670k. That processor should last me 5 years as I can overclock it. With a new GPU, I should be golden.

Lasting 10 years on the same parts is probably not possible. But replacing just the GPU and CPU over 5-8 is doable.

[76561198003810202]

Originally posted by AFr1CaN_BEa$t:

This might be a stupid question but I am looking to build a gaming PC and have been looking at youtube videos and most of the experts say that you will have to build a completely new PC in three years

That's the most bullsh!t I've ever heard.
I got this PC in December 2007 or January 2008 and I can still play most games at 1920x1080 and medium-high settings.
Fifa runs at a constant 50-60fps at max res with 2x AA, CS GO runs at 50-90fps and other games such as Skyrim or DOTA2 also run well, and this is a 6+ year old computer with parts that came out in 2006.

Spend a good month or so researching different PC parts and comparing GPU and CPU's, reading reviews, EVERYTHING. Even prices on several websites such as newegg pcspecialist etc to get a good idea of what's best for your money.
If you live in the USA $1k will last you for 5 years if not longer.


The most important thing you have to look for is the MOTHERBOARD. Get a good one that has free RAM slots left over and extra PCI-E slots or whatever is used nowadays.
I haven't looked at or read anything computer related for years so I'm really far behind with everything, but I really recommend you get a good quality Mobo with in-depth BIOS settings for overclocking and just incase anything goes wrong.

[_I_]

i still have a pentium 3 voodoo3 build that still works, back from late 90s
if you take care of your machines they will last a long time

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by _I_:

i still have a pentium 3 voodoo3 build that still works, back from late 95s
if you take care of your machines they will last a long time

Assuming capacitors don't go bad. They just don't make stuff like they used to.

[VisciousFishes]

Originally posted by Azza ☠:

Console life span - 1-3 years, replace entire system.

PC life span is however broken down into upgradable components. Their hardware life span is around 3-6 years and can be upgraded regularly.

Snip (apologies)

This is perhaps the best answer I have seen for this question and i tend to agree. The 500 series cards were wicked from Nvidia and my current 700 series GPU card is also prety darn good.

[_I_]

Originally posted by 100% Recycled Awesome:

Originally posted by _I_:

i still have a pentium 3 voodoo3 build that still works, back from late 95s
if you take care of your machines they will last a long time

Assuming capacitors don't go bad. They just don't make stuff like they used to.

ture, the old caps were designed to last for years, around 10 years ago, cpas were known to go bad after around 1-2 years, newer sold state caps will last a long time again

[Carlsberg]

The pc will last until it no longer fulfills your requirements, when it no longer runs the software you need/want to run. If your a gamer then you want something that you can upgrade at minimal cost because sure as s*** you will upgrade it, if all you run is office apps it will last for years.

[[UFO] rad87gn]

I have a TRS-80 Model 4 and Apple II GS that still work fine! lol. But seriously, my PC has been running 24/7 for almost 3 years now and is still fine. Good components last a long time. I've had servers at work that have ran 24/7 for over 12 years. 2 that have ran over 5 with no reboot. No joke.

Most major name brands with good components estimate 50,000 hour component lifespan for home PC parts (almost 6 years running non-stop.) Most will probably last longer than that. It will be outdated before it probably goes bad. Most good power supply units will last even longer. Most times 2 full system upgrades worth.

[Marble]

Mine is edging toward 5 years old, will be building a new one at the end of the year.