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Comment by sitharus | Hacker News Reader

Four years ago I bought a desktop gaming PC (I'm normally a Mac user) with the idea that I could upgrade it over the years to keep it current but avoid replacing the whole thing.

Turns out in practice technology changes enough over that time to only leave the case, and perhaps the PSU. The motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card are all obsolete now. The SSD can be reused but newer technology is much faster.

I don't know what gets saved by upgrading parts rather than the machine. The same amount of electronics are disposed of (or sold on the second hand market)

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> all obsolete now

What is it used for?

If you buy Intel, you know beforehand you won't be able to upgrade the CPU, since the socket is changed (intentionally, of course) every generation. But the CPU isn't the issue for e.g. gaming, and upgrading every generation or every other generation largely doesn't make any sense at all with Intel parts for the last eight years or so.

Since you're saying obsolete, you probably bought into 1150/Haswell. It was known this was the last pure DDR3 platform, but you can still get DDR3 memory new, if you need more. So that's not a problem, really. (And it's actually cheaper than DDR4 memory)

Graphics cards can keep up for years nowadays. I've used a midrange-highend card for five years before upgrading; I could still play new games at mid-to-high settings. Graphics cards can always be upgraded in any computer (if the PSU has enough power, which is rarely an issue).

> If you buy Intel, you know beforehand you won't be able to upgrade the CPU, since the socket is changed (intentionally, of course) every generation. But the CPU isn't the issue for e.g. gaming, and upgrading every generation or every other generation largely doesn't make any sense at all with Intel parts for the last eight years or so.

Is it really true that the socket changes every generation? My impression was that sockets changed every 2-3 generations, not every one. Not that that entirely defeats the point, but it expands the window.

Yes. You get one generation (one tick-tock, so for example, Nehalem+Westmere, Sandy+Ivy Bridge, Haswell+Broadwell, though differences between tick and tock are generally not worth it). 1151/H4 deviates a bit here, because Intel fubar'd their roadmap and weren't able to deliver even single-digit advances per revision any more. So H4 now has three generations of chipsets, two of which don't support CFL (Coffee lake).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_socket

Intel seems to change desktop sockets every 2 years now. That includes multiple generations, but 2 years of CPU improvements is not significant in almost all cases. A new motherboard with each new CPU is the likely situation. AMD has supported sockets for longer, and that seems to be continuing.

I got the top-end i7 about 5 years ago, it's still fast. I have tried to justify upgrading it many times but I just can't see the benefit in replacing it with something that's just a bit quicker.

I can at least upgrade the SSD and GPU without throwing the whole damn thing out, but even then it's hard to justify.

Well any GPU you upgrade can be used in our next system. That said there hasn't been much movement there in the last 2 years or so since the rx480 came out.

I agree with the ssd, tho. The newer PCIe based ones in the m.2 formfactor areso much faster it feels a bit like a waste to buy a sata SSD.

> That said there hasn't been much movement there in the last 2 years or so since the rx480 came out.

Aren't the Vegas quicker, and the NVIDIA offering has been improving quite a bit over the last 2 years? I might not be paying enough attention, but I'm pretty sure the 1080 ti and 1070 ti's came out only recently.

Not really. I use my 4 year old CPU, power supply, memory and motherboard with a brand new geforce 1080. I could also upgrade the memory if I wanted to.

If you upgrade the CPU, you usually have to upgrade the motherboard. That's about it.

Agreed. Built a PC almost 5 years ago and the only modifications I've made have been adding more disk drives. GPU's starting to drag but I hardly game anymore so still works like a charm.

> The motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card are all obsolete now

How is that at all possible unless it was under powered in the first place? Maybe it can't play some of the latest titles at max settings but a 4 year old machine should be able to run just about everything decently.

What's stopping you from upgrading the graphics card? Looks like plenty of high end cards have PCIe3 support. RAM can always be upgraded, though few games will makes use of the 8GB that was pretty standard in gaming PC's nearly a decade ago. A new CPU won't gain you much gaming wise.

Most games target PS4 level specs anyway, which is now a 5 year old machine.

> The motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card are all obsolete now. The SSD can be reused but newer technology is much faster.

Unless you got a bulldozer CPU, I don't believe you. I bet that upgrading just the graphics card would give you 90% of the effect of upgrading everything.

I have a Vishera CPU and it is definitely NOT obsolete. If anything it ages much better that Intels due to better multicore support in modern apps.

It is not easy now but you can plan for upgrade of PC and then do it successfully. E.g. If you bought AM4 platform in 2017 you would be able to upgrade. If you bought AM3 platform in Phenom era you could upgrade to vishera/zambezi.

You can upgrade your storage independently, you can upgrade you GPU out of step from other components, you can upgrade GPU more often than CPU without compromising too much. And so on. You can for example keep your soundcard since 10 years ago with some fiddling with drivers. One of my SSDs is 6 years old and while not ideal case it is still much faster than modern HDD and I use it constantly.

What you also mention - case and PSU - those alone cost ~100-200$ each, so worthy saving for upgrade. My seasonic PSU will work for a decade at least, or more.

It is not easy, yes. But possible.

Just upgrade the GPU. Most of your problems are solved.

Upgrade the RAM at the start of a new spec and you'll be fine. CPU/mobo go hand in hand, but you're rarely going to need to upgrade that anyway.

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