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

[MrBozack]

Continually! There's always at least one PC that needs something upgraded in my house. We have several users, several PC. The trouble is; I have to fit it all!

So monthly new storage or peripheral. Every couple of years they all get new MB/CPU/RAM...

[hwarda]

Only when its broken.

There was a time when I got crazy upgrading. It was almost everyday life with new hardware that I was actually able building 8 complete PCs with them. Crazy.

Life is simpler from now on..

[Bazz]

Used to be every 6 months, then the way I use my PC, and the fact I don't spend hours playing online, I upgraded early last year to a 2500K from a Q6600 that I got in 2008, not expecting to update anything within the next 3 to 4 years or even more!

[alpha channel]

Generally the machine I build on day one generally lasts a good four or five years (I buy the best I can afford at the time) with a graphics cards every other year... maybe, if the developments are sufficient (and my GPU hasn't gone nipples skywards in the interim, as happened with my 5850 ).

Did a RAM upgrade about two months after finishing my current build simply because of the sale savings on offer (£20 saving per 16GB kit, I couldn't resist and maxed out my motherboard ).

This should see me happy for the next five years or so (storage not withstanding) like my Q6600/XP Pro 64bit system did (which is now plugging away running various virtual machines).

[Obscurity]

I've upgraded twice in the last 8 years
Once from a 2001 semi OK build, I bumped up to a better AMD CPU, a fair amount more RAM, and new motherboard in about 2007. Just this year (january) I stepped it up to a very nice build (If i do say so myself) that fits all my purposes. The only thing I could ask for better of, is my GPU.
The main limiting factor for me, is the cash upgrading costs, and being a student, it isn't exactly abundant.

[wolfurine]

Replace the pc about every 4 years with bits upgraded in betweeen

[technodean]

For me, it seems to be every other month, sadly most of the time it turn's out to be a down grade or no notice, even now thinking of getting an arctic I30 and changing the fan for the new corsair pwm fan when it gets released.

[CampGareth]

Had a change in budget so went from having a PC that cost £600 back in 2007 or 8 to a couple of laptops (university), one with a pair of GPUs that come in about 10% faster than a GTX 680 with the intention that that'll last a few years, and a light laptop with a quad core and so on that should last as long if I weren't replacing it for model with a smaller screen and a beefy GPU come Haswell

[GeorgeStorm]

Varies massively, and depends on a wide range of variables.

I bought some RAM last week, purely because it was a good deal, but apart from than I haven't upgraded the actual PC for almost a year probably.

But I have spent money on peripherals etc.

[mozzer51]

Depends how well the drivers are behaving.
I replaced my x1950Pro because it blue-screened in games
Audigy 4 because it blue-screened
Xonar DX because the driver crashed Bad company 2
X-fi titanium because it decided to randomly disable my speaker output.
Last major rebuild was 1 1/2 years ago when I overclocked my i5 750 in a foxconn socket and torched some of the contacts on the power control section of the processor...

[killer7xx]

I'll only upgrade if a part is extremely outdated to the point where there is very little support, or if it breaks.

[SciFi]

For the last god knows how long i do a full refresh every year of the tower. I run off the idea that if I sell, add some cash and buy new I can keep at the top of the curve for almost a subscription like arrangement.

[WritersBlock]

I've been close to I think, five years now since I changed MB, and processor; I was an early adopter of the i7, and have been planning on upgrading since sandybridge E; ivybridge looks like a definite upgrade though.

I heard rumours of an eight core consumer cpu, so waiting to see if that is anything but vapourware

[ET3D]

TechSpot had this question of the week just recently.

I upgrade when I feel the need or the desire. This year will mark the first time I replaced my PC (almost) completely without buying a semi-complete new PC. I used to always move the GPU and disks from one PC to the next, but they were still new PC's. This PC I bought 4 years ago, I upgraded the Radeon 3870 pretty quickly (when the Radeon 5750 came out) and added a disk. I replaced the Phenom II X3 710 with an X6 1090T because I was working from home and doing lots of single threaded heavy simulations which used 100% of cores, so I figured more cores would be better (and then the company I worked for closed). I just replaced my case with a Corsair Carbide 200R (first time I buy a brand name case). I'm going to replace my motherboard in a couple of months once I get the 16GB DDR3 I won (I currently have 4GB DDR2, after my some RAM went bad). I also bought a blu-ray burner and an SSD during this time, and upgraded from Vista to Windows 7. All that will be left from the old PC is the PSU, DVD drive (which I keep alongside the blu-ray) and the old disks.

[darrensen]

I normally stick to a cycle of 3 years with GPU upgrades every 18-24 months.

[tenshin111]

Every 6 - 12 months. But the scope of those upgrades varies - sometimes it is just a new, faster and bigger HDD/SSD, sometimes a new (and better!) VGA and roughly every 2 - 3 years it's a completely new build.