Your computer life cycles?

Krieg

Just wondering what peoples computer life cycles are like?
(ie; how often you buy/build a new computer, level of upgrading, low/mid/high performance comp etc.)

Personally Ive found myself on a 4 year cycle for the last 14 years. So I buy a new computer every 4 years, not intentionally, it just seems to happen that way.

Previous to my current PC, I only ever got Mid performance computers that could play some games but well capable of word processing & internet. But PC gaming is now my main pass time so I have fairly decent rig that i occasionally upgrade.

It struck me today that my comp will be obsolete (by my standards) in the next year and a half, which funnily enough would be the end of its 4 year cycle.:pac:

lmimmfn

i buy every 2 years, generally mid->high, i only replace cpu+mobo+ram and keep the rest, i7 mobo + cpu + ram cost ~450 euro after selling my old stuff lol.

My gfx card cycles are messed up, i had an 8800GT for 2 years, bought an nvidia 260 last April for 170euro( 120 if i flogged the 8800GT ), but then last november i got the option to get a 5850 for 100euro + my nvidia 260 so took that, but normally 2 year upgrade for gfx card and the same for cpu+mobo+ram

Have the same case and main harddrive for 5 years, DVD drive for 4 years, PSU for 2, main 22"screen for 3-5years

cherryghost

GPU upgrade every 2 years, even though its not needed.
CPU upgrade every 3 years, even though its not needed.

A RAM upgrade is normally realistically the only thing that actually should be upgraded tbh

Solitaire

Don't really have one due to my build cycles getting messed up years ago. I managed to mistime my buying of a 6600GT (curse you Oblivion!) so that when I was finally forced to get a cheap dual-core CPU I had to get a cheap mobo with AGP to keep the 6600GT (the PCIe cards back then were all dire prices and I was skint!). Then I had to upgrade to a HD3850 at launch because games just wouldn't run on my (by then long-suffering!) 6600GT and thus had to get a cheap AM2 mobo with PCIe. God, was that a bad idea in the long run... Not much later I picked up a HD4830 for little more than half the cost of the HD3850 not even long after launch but by then I'd already upgraded back to my first full ATX machine in years. OCd E5200 + OCd HD4830 = evil budget gaming rig Shame multithreaded apps don't agree with my choice of CPU back then...

massy086

got givin a old p3 dell as my first pc (loved it lol). then bought a p4 dell on adverts and upgraded the ram to 2gig hard drive to 500gig and changed out the cpu a couple of times. then found this GREAT group and built my first rig asusp5k-delux bought on adverts e8400 overclocked to 4ghz and ocz reaper 8500 and corsair 620 bought on adverts 50 euro. 5month,s later went looking for a q6600 and bought 1 of a scammer on adverts for 90 euro so never seen that cpu :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: problem now was i had sold the e8400 to buy the q6600 so no cpu happy crimbo to me. so i looked around and though a f**k it sold everything else bar the gpu and psu and current rig is i5-750 asus p7p55d 4gig corsair ram and a hd4830 while i rma my hd5770 love the i5 have to say dont know about the mobo (think i should of went gigabite or msi )but sure we will see (writing this on the good old p4 dell as the asus mobo is randomly freezing and restarting so might be rma time but its all been great fun i have to say. so the next build is going to be a xbox360 htpc but on a budget only getting over the i5 build lol

Solitaire

Does that merely entail hacking the XBox's software or do you literally mean "tear its guts out and put something interesting in there"?

By Gum you have some luck with hardware Makes me look almost fortunate in comparison! :eek:

Kinetic^

First PC in 2000 - Dell

2nd PC in 2005/6 - Compaq

3rd PC in 2007 - Built myself.

Upgraded the CPU to an Q9650 and added another 4GB ram just before christmas. Probably won't change it for another 18-24 months when I'll probably have to build a new one. Also added an ITX system as the media server recently.

swirlser

Usually buy a high end gaming rig every 3 years or so.

Once a new machine is bought the old rig is used as a side/backup rig and I may give it a small upgrade to keep it useful (and the 2 rigs old machine is put down :eek:).

Ive just gone and changed that though, I bought a new rig end of last year and put an E8400 & 4870 into the side rig, but last month I decided to build an i5 machine (i7-860 really) as the side rig. Does open up more multiplayer fun tho.

massy086

Solitaire wrote: »

Does that merely entail hacking the XBox's software or do you literally mean "tear its guts out and put something interesting in there"?

By Gum you have some luck with hardware Makes me look almost fortunate in comparison! :eek:

no im hopimg to build an pc in a xbox360 case im thinking 13 but then i,ll have to put the psu on the outside or i could build a itx and put the psu iniside the case should be fun lol

bobbytables

Following are my home PCs, I worked with older before that...(Actually you could probably guess how old I am from some of my experiences below).

First PC: AST Advantage 6066d (486 DX/2 @ 66MHz, 8MB RAM, 540MB HD, ISA sockets and a VESA Bus, Running DOS 6.22). Myself and a friend used to play Doom via a NULL Modem cable instead of a network, and I loved playing games like Alone in the Dark, Myst, Phantasmagoria, Syndicate, Monkey Island, Star Trek - A Final Unity. I upgraded this beast to 20MB of RAM and added a second Parallel interface (Good 'ol LPT2). I eventually dual booted Red Hat Linux on this and taught myself C & Web Development (using Netscape Navigator, just before IE's time) and before I started college.

Second PC: Toshiba Laptop (P1 @ 133Mhz, 16MB RAM, 1.2GB HD, Reluctantly running Windows '95). I ended up writing a proper boot disk for myself and mates so we could start our machines up in proper DOS mode and free up as much conventional memory for apps as possible using custom boot menus (via autoexec.bat & config.sys). At last I could play Quake, long after many friends were now experts :rolleyes:. To this day I never quite caught up to their gaming level. I use the excuse of being older, wiser and having no time for playing games anymore. (Yes, having "no time", that'll do)

Third PC: Gateway (P3 @ 700MHz, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD, Radeon TNT2 32MB). Finally I had a computer with an internal modem and was one of those lucky sods that managed to fly under the radar and didn't get kicked from IOL "No Limits". Could also run Quake 3, Half Life, Unreal Tournament, etc. Oh I could now watch DVD's in my bedroom too!. At this stage I was now making a living from what I had, and between college and self learning had numerous programming languages under my belt. This PC was kicked about the place in terms of hardware changes and operating systems. I can't actually say what I used to run on this machine because it changed every week or two. I remember doing some electronic music production on this machine and wrote a small Win32 program that sent AT commands to my modem that would route audio from the house land line phone to my PC's sound card. Many a time when my poor mother was on the phone I would be sampling her phone conversations in real time and mixing it over whatever I was playing....much to my younger brother's amusement.

Fourth PC: Medion (P4 @ 2.66Ghz, 256MB RAM, 250GB HD, GeForce4 Ti4200 (i think) 128 MB). Dual booted Windows 2k Pro & Redhat 8 (i think it was 8, defo before Fedora's time anyway). Played Splinter Cell, and wrote much much more code. I owe my Masters degree to this PC. Don't ask how it changed over the years. All I know is that it's a LAMP server now, with at least a gig of RAM and at 2 (if not 3) hard drives.

Fifth PC: Self Build (AMD64x2 @ 2.2Ghz, 2GB RAM, 750GB HDs, Once had a Radeon 1800XT 512MB card but was changed to a Nvidia 8800GTS 512MB (G92 core)). Half Life 2, Portal, eventually Crysis. It's only now that I write about my history of home PCs I realise that I can't really pin down what I do with more recent machines. I look at computers much differently now than I did say 10 - 15 years ago running a handful of apps. My usage patters are much more dynamic and tend to rope in other things from small embedded devices around the house to service oriented components running on clouds. Broadband was a real catalyst for this change. I also find myself rarely using Windows anymore, despite the fact that I do like Windows 7.

Sixth PC: Dell Laptop (Core 2 Duo @ 2.2Ghz, 2GB RAM, some mobile nvidia chip capable of playing nice with Compiz fusion in Ubuntu (currently Karmic), only about 120GB HD). I do not complain, this laptop did not cost me anything. I don't think I have ever played a game on it , but in terms of what I do and need it for, I have yet to find another more suitable laptop based on build quality and the general feeling that everything I use on Linux is nicely fueled.

Seventh PC: Well not technically, they are SBC (Single Board Computers). A collection of WRT routers that I hack about the place with custom Linux firmwares and my own collection of scripts & apps. They are my babies with never ending flashy lights and require so little power to conduct mahem between my house and the Intarwebs. They can't run a Quake client, but probably a basic Quake server.

It's been a journey, and behind every bit of hardware purchased there are so many stories.

youcancallmeal

God even just thinking about my various upgrades over the last 10 years or so gives me a headache. I vaguely remember some POS Dell pentium 2 and then an AMD socket 939 back when they were all the rage. After that there were various failled watercooling attempts. I could go on but I would rather not

Joeface

the worst thing about all the upgrades we have had is your never really sure what you have got is better , Sure you can play the games but was it value for money , By the time it got delievered it was obsolete ha ha
Usually upgrade kinda every 2.5years .fully
1.Celeron 800mhz Packard Bell , came with a desk which i still have(terrible)

2.All self build from here , P4 1.4 , to start all the way to 2.8ghz same board just cpu and GPU upgrades still in use brother has it , 9800pro ATI card I think ...

3.AMD 3700 939 Dfi lan party x800 Ati card , ended with a 4400x2 and Firegl Card still inuse nephew has it .think there were 2 other cpus and X1900xt on the way.\liked AMD system the most . never ever error or crashed that I can remember.

4. see sig , but i want to upgrade again ..........boo mortgage why did I ever buy a house.

bobbytables

youcancallme>al wrote: »

... and then an AMD socket 939 back when they were all the rage.

The 5th machine in my last post still uses a mobo with a 939 socket and is going strong :eek:

bobbytables

Joeface wrote: »

the worst thing about all the upgrades we have had is your never really sure what you have got is better , Sure you can play the games but was it value for money.

Good point!. It is for this reason I rarely invest in the latest / most expensive components. More often than not what you will be happy with in terms of UX will still cost far less than what you can get at the top end of the scale. My 5th PC in my last post has had the same processor and RAM for 4 years (this April) and I've never had a need to upgrade them. The graphics card on the other hand got swapped because I got sick of mucking about with ATI closed drivers on Linux at the time. /jesus I remember the looks my girlfriend used to give me while I mucked about with xorg.conf with half assed results on the 1800XT. She bought me the 8800GTS...../ah the penny drops :rolleyes:

Skerries

i usually upgrade the main pc every 3 years with a new gfx every 2 years and ram if it is needed
but the last machine is nearly 3 1/2 years old now and nothing wrong with it so will bring it to the 4 year mark and replace

slave1

Every 2/3 years completely new main PC although if a bargain comes along the gap could be smaller, have had 9 computers since 2000 (4 at present)

Anti

Usually for me its 2 or maybe 3 new builds a year, and in between upgrading certain components like GPU and CPU. I only build my last i7 build in December, yet i'm looking to upgrade the CPU and GPU next month, as well as upgrade to a set of 3 27" monitors.

Joeface

yes Anti you are the kind of person other ppl hate .........What in gods name can't you do with 3 x 27inch screens ...........thats is just greed , Gekko ish .

Jealous much = yes

Mr. Presentable

1st Compaq P1 233 in 1996 (?)

2nd Gateway P3 500 in 1999

3rd Self build Athlon 2700xp in 2002-ish

Current self build AMD 4400+ dual core 2005

Each of the self builds has had bits from previous machines (HDDs, Optical drives etc)

The current one is still doing everything I need, Left4Dead 2 etc, so although I am itching to build again (this time with all new), I have no justification and will wait.

Therefore, a three year cycle until current, which looks like 5-6 year.

There have been other little projects in between, two of which are in the attic (one a Win 95 P1 built for playing Duke Nukem and all the add-ons).

Anti

Joeface wrote: »

yes Anti you are the kind of person other ppl hate .........What in gods name can't you do with 3 x 27inch screens ...........thats is just greed , Gekko ish .

Jealous much = yes

Greed, yes. Too much money, yes ! I would upgrade to 3 x 30's but i dont like the idea of dropping 4k on monitors.

But once you have 3 monitors infront of you, you will wonder how you did anything with just one or two. Especially for gaming, eyefinity has to be the best technological leap in the last decade!

bobbytables

@Anti 3 x 27"...Nice! /tips hat, if you have photos of your setup I'd love to see them. The 3 big monitors I'd do myself in a heartbeat and can completely see a use for them, but as for 3 builds a year, I don't think I'd need to stretch to that. What motivates you to build so often? Are you selling them on?

@nipplenuts Are you sure that P1 in 1996 had a clock speed of 233MHz?, that seems very high for a P1. I thought 233 & 266 were the launch speeds for the P2. However if I recall correctly, I remember watching Brian Dobson reporting on the Intel P2 launch on RTE News in Jan'97 and my poxy childhood neighbours with more money than sense getting one and me wanting to hurt them (because I still couldn't play Quake on my 486). It's the important things that count.

Justice was served, because user stupidity and the first edition of Windows'98 gave them the beating they deserved not long after. Muwhahahahaha.

Anti

bobbytables wrote: »

@Anti 3 x 27"...Nice! /tips hat, if you have photos of your setup I'd love to see them. The 3 big monitors I'd do myself in a heartbeat and can completely see a use for them, but as for 3 builds a year, I don't think I'd need to stretch to that. What motivates you to build so often? Are you selling them on?

@nipplenuts Are you sure that P1 in 1996 had a clock speed of 233MHz?, that seems very high for a P1. I thought 233 & 266 were the launch speeds for the P2. However if I recall correctly, I remember watching Brian Dobson reporting on the Intel P2 launch on RTE News in Jan'97 and my poxy childhood neighbours with more money than sense getting one and me wanting to hurt them (because I still couldn't play Quake on my 486). It's the important things that count.

Justice was served, because user stupidity and the first edition of Windows'98 gave them the beating they deserved not long after. Muwhahahahaha.

Yeah i always sell my builds on usually over on adverts.ie or to friends. There is no need to build as much as i do, but its a hobby

And here is a sneek peak



Oh, and i think there were the mmx pentiums at 233/266mhz.

Joeface

your killing me Anti , Only just got my 24inch and it looks small and lonely compared to that.

bobbytables

Anti that is absolutely legend, fair play.

MMX that's it and it was that, that Brian Dobson was talking about and my neighbours had, not a P2. I knew there was something. Hyper Threading was what kept popping in to my head but I knew that wasn't it. Anyone remember that report on RTE at the time. They were showing off a 3D animated model of a human skeleton in some educational software.

PogMoThoin

I've been building the same pc for years, not finished yet

youcancallmeal

Anti that is ridonkulous!

TerrorFirmer

I went through a ridiculous few years of building and upgrading completely unnecessarily. I've gone through countless processors and video cards in the past 12-16 months, all because I convinced myself of the merits of each....E2140 overclocked for value, Q6600 for multitasking, E8600 for games, E5200 going back to that OC value mindset.....I've become far more rational these days, sticking with another E8600 for quite awhile now and absolutely no plans whatsoever to upgrade now, or the near future - the only thing I really do is play games, so an E8600 is good for a long time yet - heck, even my old E2140 overclocked would be fine for that purpose for quite some time yet. Video Cards, in the past 12 months...8800GTS Sli (g80), 8800GTS Sli (g92), 8800GS Sli - again with my 'value' mindset, who was I fooling, within months upgrading to dual GTX260 (192), then down to HD4650 once I started playing the X360 more, now back at a 4890 Vapor-X and again, with my new found rationality, am sticking with that for the near future, no plans to upgrade. I swapped my 24" monitor for a 32" TV, so now I'm playing at 1366x768 with the AA/AF piled on - going to be a long time before the games I play tax my 4890 at those settings.

New build is the same components - E8600, 4GB Ram, 4890 Vapor-X - in a HTPC case with water cooling.

Pains me to think of all that wasted money from years past.

CrazyRabbit

I upgrade whenever I find a game that I can't run at high settings.

Right now I've 3 desktops and 2 laptops in my bedroom, although one of the laptops is from work. The 2nd PC is a media server and the 3rd is a test machine.

Longest I've gone without upgrading a component is about 6 months. Just bought a new €90 mouse & 23" display, and I'll probably buy a new graphics card shortly.

Grim.

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I've been building the same pc for years, not finished yet

^^This

uberpixie

For me: anywhere between 2-4 years depending on how the PC is performing in games.

Doom 3 decided my upgrade from a 2400XP, 512mb ram rig with a radeon 9800 to a shuttle based rig 3500+ amd with the same 9800 and 1 gig of ram.
(change in CPU to an AMD64 made a huge difference to games)

Updated from the 9800 to a X800XT PE for Battlefield 2. Pretty much the best singleslot card I could get at the time and in the long run proved to age much better than the 6800s of the same era even with the lack of shader 3!

Changed back to a full sized rig when the shuttle got a little long in the tooth, Supreme Commander decided that I would be upgrading!

Went to a Q6600, 4gig ram and a 8800GTS 320mb. Ditched the 8800GTS 320mb due to numerous blue screens due to crap Nvidia drivers. Sold it to a mate who had much better luck with it. Got a 4870 512mb which I'm still on.

See no point in upgrading atm. A Q6600 @ stock with a 4870 is more than enough to drive any game going atm on a 22". If I was on a 24" or large I would be on the waiting list for a 5870 or 5850 :-)


Once I find a game that the rig can't handle I will start to plan and upgrade a few months later. It will be another year or thereabouts though I would say...

AMD are playing catch up and Intel are just sitting back: they really got it right with the core2duo era and they will only be incrementing performance slightly over the next while.

BadCharlie

The last year and 3 months i been doing lots of computer builds.
In that time i have built 5 with the one in my sig been used the most. The others i have sold on or most of the parts.

Im always adding new bits from month to month which never stops. As soon as i sell something i can then go and afford something else.

Looking at my sig its outdated again Will update after this post.

alexlyons

lmimmfn wrote: »

Have the same case and main harddrive for 5 years

seriously dude, its time to swap out that drive! Maybe not get rid of it, but get a new everyday drive and maybe keep that as an off site backup!