Features - QOTW: How often do you upgrade your PC?

[Saracen]

I upgrade when :-

- the current machine won't do something I need from it, or
- something comes out I want to try, or
- something dies and needs to be replaced.

It does depend a bit on the definition of "upgrade the machine". If that means the entire machine, it's rare, and likely to be quite a few years. If it means add more memory or storage space, it's as and when needed.

So, there's no set timetable.

[Andrew McP]

I used to upgrade whenever I *thought* the money would buy me a noticeable boost in software I wanted to run faster. I wasted a lot of money in between the really useful upgrades involving a big jump in MHz.

I now only upgrade when I'm certain, which is much less often. The GHz race is over, and multiple cores rarely yield multiple benefits.

[jim]

It's been 18 months now since I got this machine, and I haven't changed even a single thing - not even removed and reinserted a cable, internally.

What am I going to upgrade next? No idea. Frankly, unless something dies, the only sensible change would be to beef up the graphics - but even 18 months down the line, no game has even been close to pushing it beyond the limits, so there's no huge incentive. Could easily be another year or more, and even then I doubt it'll be major.

[unilever20]

Rare.

[EzioAs]

Usually twice a year and every time I upgrade it's 2-3 parts so around 6 parts a year.

[bobharvey]

Over the years I have built all my household desktop machines. My basic rule was not to tinker with what I had, build new when I could afford a 3-fold enhancement. Usually 3x better cpus, hard disks ram all came along at about the same time. In the late 90's my new-build rate had slowed from twice a year to 18 month intervals. I built again in 2001 , 2004 and 2009. That machine is fine, as is XP, and I have no plans to replace it.

In 2008 I bought the wife a laptop, and she replaced it a month or so ago with a win8 one which she likes, apart from the stupid software. I don't think she has yet worked out that she has to pay for office annually.

I bought an HP netbook with suse linux in 2009, and replaced it with this Dell mini-10 with ubuntu about 18 months later. I will replace it when I can get something similar for a similar price (Dell expect me to pay 4x the price for a winRT thing with no keyboard!)

Biggest urge to upgrade - or is that sidegrade? - is for the printer

[clovy]

i upgrade every 3 years. But my GPU upgrade every 2 years.

[DanceswithUnix]

I have a wife and 2 kids, we all have PCs, so they all get rolling upgrades when required and a fair bit of hand-me-down happening. My machine has a 3 year old CPU & motherboard and 2 year old GPU, so looking at a possible processor update next.

[Noxvayl]

My priorities match Saracen's. Upgrade as and when needed, but for me I need a new part when that part of the machine is the bottleneck reducing the settings I am able to game at. I tend to go from max settings down to high before I do an upgrade which in the past meant a new GPU every 2 years but my current HD6950 is more than 2 years old now and still providing me with max settings on the games I play so I'm saving some money now which is welcomed. CPU's tended to last me more than 2 years with my E6550 and then Q9550 before getting the i5 3570K last year. I suspect that my processor will last longer this time just like my graphics card has.

I have been guilty in recent years of spending stupid amounts of money on my case and cooling, I managed to waste £100 on fans, heatsinks and acoustic mats for my old machine when I spent only £50 on a case and turned my nose up at more expensive ones. The case turned out to be brilliant (Coolermaster 690) but I've now stopped myself from spending on silly optimisations that I don't need.

As I have learnt over the years I've improved my spending habits and I am spending significantly less on my computer hardware allowing me to purchase more games which I am enjoying.

[Namor]

My upgrades used to always be games driven but since 2009 there has been no real need to upgrade anything else but the GPU and install an SSD, my C2Q 9650 is still going strong.

[EasterEEL]

I used to upgrade every eighteen months or so. But my current i7 930 (@3.8GHz 1.2vcore),12GB DDR3 is still going strong after three years and I was surprised to realise the last upgrade was an Samsung SSD 830 18 months ago and before that a GTC 580 in 2010.

[Dutchjonsey]

Every couple of years for me, either graphics when a game I want cant be run at anything other than low/medium, or the mobo/cpu when somethings died. Only on my third rig, so I havnt really had time for habits to form yet Ive tended to go for stuff that can take a fair amount of abuse, seeing the first motherboard melt due to a cheap psu combined with a massive overclock has taught me that

[Andi-C]

I get bored & like upgrading, I'd say every 6-12 months I get something new to boost my PC performace or looks !

I'm thinking of down grading my PC size to mATX as its just to big for what I need but upgrading the Mobo...Help I can stop !

[mark22]

I really have no intention of upgrading again, and I have spent a lot on doing so in the past. The next bit of kit I'm considering is the Samsung homesync, this could well end my need for a pc if it's done right. Otherwise I'll start to look at some of the more advanced nas boxes. Basically I want torrent capability, media serving and hdmi output and if it can be within the android environment that I already use on phone and tablet, why not? I have bought a lot of apps and games and the connectivity should be good. I fully expect in the future to be using a dockable tablet/phone in place of my desktop and only use it now as it's easy to type on, is connected to my hdtv and it downloads for me. Homesync/qnap nas plus a dockable tablet seems to be a better solution for serving the whole household to me.

[Doherz]

When the money is available and it makes sense for the performance increase.

So at the moment I'm more than good for CPU, mobo, ram, SSD, storage, case and PSU, my 6850 is beginning to struggle handling the eye candy, but not so much that I'm upgrading this gen. Probably looking at an 8950 or whatever AMD call it when that drops, or the NV equivalent if they price it right.

My last upgrade was actually a xonar DX on sale as my onboard wasn't particularly good.

[Onkston]

Not very often for me. Since I built my PC about 6 years ago the only things I upgraded out of choice was ram and added hard drives. Unfortunately a few things have died or been killed, and now I think about it there isn't much of the original still left. My motherboard, psu and graphics card all died and have been replaced. Luckily it didn't happen all at the same time, it's been about 1 per year. I'm hoping I can get a couple more years and the next thing I do will be a completely new build