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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

The upgrade argument of desktop in the 90s was already borderline as an argument. It was really worthy for people switching parts often. For long term it was clearly impossible to upgrade without changing 2/3 of it. And as you said, prices are only low for current mainstream parts. It may be an improvement to a previous era where nothing was swappable.

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If you have, say, a 2011-vintage tower, you can do quite a bit to upgrade it: add more RAM (4GB to 12GB or 16GB); add an SSD to replace the HD; add or upgrade the graphics card; add ports via an expansion card etc.

Each upgrade can make a significant difference, and you don't necessarily waste anything, unless you change the graphics card. (If you go from 4GB to 16GB, you waste 2*2GB sodimms.)

Seems to me this was also true of earlier eras, too, only with smaller numbers.

SSD is an odd case, it is the simplest yet most impacting improvement to a computer.

Graphic card needs fast buses, if your mainboard gets behind you won't have access to the latest. I remember struggling with this long ago (pci -> agp; pcie 2x -> 4x).

It may be less an issue nowadays, so my point was off.

ps: It's funny you consider 2011 vintage, my most recent computer being from 2009 and I find it modern :)

I think the PCIe buses in standard PCs have been several generations ahead of what even high-end graphics cards need for a while now, actually.

It was a few years ago, it's possible I was into m-itx and these boards have limited pcie buses too slow for normal 3d graphics.

PS: I believe he used the noun usage of 'vintage', referring to a desktop manufactured in 2011.

It's funny you consider 2011 vintage, my most recent computer being from 2009 and I find it modern

Well, that's because I bought my i5-2500K desktop in 2011. I just chucked in a new hard drive and it's about to get another 8GB of RAM ;-)

My previous tower lasted 8 years. I'm not a gamer, but that one got a graphics card upgrade as well....

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