Blogs How old is your hardware?

Laptop:
Dell XPS 15Z
15 Inch 1080p Screen WLED
2nd Gen i7 2640 - 2.8GHz turbo to 3.5
8GB DDR3 RAM 1333Mhz
2GB Nvidia GT 525M
256GB Samsung SSD (came with pc think 830 Series)
Intel Wifi N + Bluetooth

Desktop:
i7 2600K 3.4GHz
16GB DDR3 RAM Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz
Nvidia GTX 570 1.28GB Triple Slot (ASUS)
Dual Philips 21.5" LED TFTs
2 x Seagate 500GB SATA
120GB Samsung SSD with TRIM PB22 Series
Alienware TactX Mouse & Keyboard
Silverstone Case . Corsair 700W PSU, Corsair H60
3D Connexion Mouse
Self Build

Desktop is quick but crashed far too often i think SSD is on the way out!

Laptop is epic, Battery Can Last for 2/3 Films when on low settings, and when doing 3D rendering stuff about 1and a half hours!
Anybody want to swap / part exchange my desktop graphics card for a workstation card?

 

I'm still running some pretty ancient stuff. All my old kit filter downs through roles:

Current Rig (Looking to upgrade soon, thankfully my lower res monitor has kept the 9800gtx punching above its weight):
Q6600 @ 3.4ghz
Asus P5n32-e Sli
4gb Corsair Dominator DDR2 @ 900mhz
9800GTX BFG OCX Version.
2 x 500gb Seagate HD Drives

HTPC:
Athlon 64 x2
2gb Cosair Ram @ 800MHZ
Onboard 8600GT (i think)
250gb IDE hard drive stolen from a broken external hard drive enclosure from 2006.

Server:
Celeron D
2gb Ram @533mhz
OS installed on an old 40gb Maxtor hard drive from 2001.
Onboard ATI1900
3x 1.5tb Drives
1x 1TB Drive
2x 500gb Drives

Office PC (only used for word and excel, was a printer server briefly):
Pentium 2 @ 1.9ghz
1gb DDR Ram (Recently installed as was two painful with 119mb)
119mb DDR Ram
250 IDE Hard Drive (another one from same broken enclosure.)
The CPU is cooled by the PSU in this old PC.

Laptops:
Philips Freevents X54 (This laptop never died CPU hit over 110c a couple of times, dropped many a time, transported across the country, ran four different OS's and was still an absolute champ at running windows 7. The only thing to ever fail was the dvd drive and that was only after burning way too many dvds for a laptop drive. Sadly it was stolen couple of months back)
Intel centrino duo core 1.6ghz
2gb RAM @667mhz
100gb Hard Drive
Nvidia Mobile 7300

Dell Inspiron 9400 (Brought at a similar time to the X54 this bit of kit was hated despite costing 20% more. Was stolen as well but unluckily for whoever nicked it its running the windows 8 consumer preview. Used this as my demo machine for trying out new OS's as i disliked it too much for it to have any permanent roles)
Intel Centrion Duo 1.8ghz
1gb Ram @667
120gb Hard Drive
ATI 1900 mobile

 

You don't have to go mental these days, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. Ever since I got into the industry I was always spending money on the latest graphics cards.

I remember replacing my 9800 Pro with the X800 Pro and just how much better CS:Source ran.

Or even further back, playing Max Payne on the Geforce 3 Ti500 after trying to play through half of it on my Geforce 2 GTS. I still maintain that the best video card ever made was the Geforce 4 Ti4600. But is that just through rose tinted glasses?



These days you can spend just over £100 and settle for reasonable graphics at 1080.

 

Jumped from a geForce 2 Mx to a geForce 4 Ti 4600, so I agree with you. The was the biggest jow dropping I ever had when upgrading (maybe in paar with the 3DFX). Kept it for years and still running on an old Athlon 64 rig.

 

While processors and graphics cards go out of date quickly, some bits of hardware will last for years. I can't see anything wrong with a 5 year old case or power supply or DVD drive. And the speakers I have my desktop hooked up to are 12 years old and working fine.

 

I really HATE spending money Mainly because I don't have much of it. But it's just that the games I enjoy the most, really need a decent PC. Stuff like Arma2, if you have good hardware it's a total joy to play and looks amazing, and because there are so few games that I enjoy these days, I have to try to make the most of the few that I do like.

So with that in mind... the last few years I have basically been buying a whole new PC every couple of years, or upgrading it yearly. Everything I have at the moment is pretty decent and a year old at the most, excluding my screen which is about 4 years old and needs an upgrade too because the seal has broken on it.

 

I love the fact that everyone's 'old' hardware I'd give my left nut to have

 

Pentium Dual-Core G6950 with Arctic Cooling Freezer Rev.2
ASUS P7P55D-LE S1156
8GB HyperX Blu 1333MHz CL9 (kit of 2)
ASUS branded HD5670
WD 80GB SATAII disc

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2383728

 

I just got my new rig (see sig)





now to sell my old one

 

Hmm, my oldest piece of hardware (thats in use) would have to be the Antec900 case that I got in 2006 (I think) I pulled out of the back room, painted the inside and used to build my WC'ed i7-3930k, GTX580 and 32G of Muskin blackline 1600 ram, 160G-ssd and a 1.5T WD blue..

Though the Shuttle system I built for my mom (got it back when I built her a new i3 system) and gutted the case to build a HTPC out of is probibly older.. the little socket 478 - 2.4Ghz P4 still works though, have it setting on a shelf asembled outside the box with Ubuntu 9.x loaded just for kicks..

 

I recently built a brand new PC (2600k, 5770 et cetera) to complement my Penryn based system. Before the Sandy Bridge, I had a Dell Dimension 4100 from which housed a lot of outmoded hardware. I think it was like a single core running at just over 1 GHz with 512MB RAM maxed out. Doing anything other than browsing was a chore and multitasking was veritably masochistic as the system would freeze for minutes on end.

 

The longest computer I had was the one I built in 2000 which was an Athlon 1Ghz with 128Mb RAM (upgraded to 256MB), a G-Force MX2 anda 40GB Quantum HDD. I had that first self-build computer until 2006 when I decided to upgrade to a flat screen TFT.

Unfortunately I need to confess that I went down to the local PC World and bought a lovely LG 19" 1280x1024 TFT which also came with a Packard Bell iExtreme built around a Gigabyte Motherboard (not sure which one), a Pentium Dual Core D920, 1GB DDR2 667Mhz Ram (instantly upgraded to 2GB) and a Radeon X600 running Windows XP Media Centre Edition. I believe I bought a set of 2.1 Logitech Speakers at the same time too.

The Packard Bell computer was actually not bad at all and ran Visual Studio just fine but when Crysis was released it was upgrade time again. My Athlon that I built back in 2000 was still going strong as I donated it to my borther-in-law who was starting to get into computers and gaming...

At the start of 2008 I upgraded to an E6600, 4GB RAM, ATI 2900HD, 2x250GB Hitachi HDD running on a Gigabyte ATX board but I can't remember the model. I later added a xFi Gamer sound card.

This computer lasted me until April 2010 when I upgraded to my latest Core i7 930 cooled by an H50, 5870 1GB, 12GB 1600Mhz Dominator RAM , RoG Rampage II Gene, 1TB Samsung and a Samsung 24" TFT housed in an Antec P180 Mini (a Custom PC article inspired me to buy the case and MB).

The i7 920 is still my main PC although I've since changed the MB over to an RoG Rampage III Gene, added 2 x 256GB M4 SSD and changed to 2 x HP 2210i 1920x1080 TFTs. This computer does everything I throw at it, whether it be playing the latest games, running multiple VM's with Vmware Workstation, developing using Visual Studio 2010 (C#) or running multiple Adobe CS6 Applications.

Therefore as much as I would like too, common sense prevails as I simply can't justify the expense (to myself) of changing over to Sandy/Ivy Bridge when my current computer does everything I could possibly ask it to do.

I normally go through laptop cycles of around three years or so and my latest one is a Dell XPS 15 L502x running a Core i5 2410M, 8GB 1333Mhz RAM, Corasir 120GB SSD, 525M, 1920x1080 TFT etc.

My original Athlon machine dating back to 2000 that I started with finally gave up the ghost last year and my borther-in-law now has a lovely new rig.

 

Well, my sig: The 930 is dated now, but as I use it for gaming it's perfectly fine. It's not stretched and I don't even run it OC'd - it'll happily do 3.8 on the same low volts when I need more grunt.

I only switched to that last year from a AMD 940BE/4GB/4870.

The 570 is the latest addition around 6 months ago, the SSD before that - I only feel the need to upgrade if I need it. So in the forseeable future it'll only be the GPU and maybe a larger SSD as the CPU and 6GB RAM isn't stretched in the slightest at the mo.

My 2nd rig again does what is required, AM3 quad core, oboard GPU and 4GB RAM - no need to change.

The downstairs PC that the GF uses, mainly for word and internet, now that's the oldest rocking an AMD x2 5000BE on an Abit AX78 with an AMD x800 and an F1 750Gb HDD

Now the latter is the one that is starting to show its age a bit but saying that it's not slow. The GF doesn't want it upgrading at the mo though.

Now I can see myself creating the need to upgrade - a larger monitor and thus a beefier GPU would then be essential.

 

Looks at sig...hangs head in shame.
In my defense...I wanted to upgrade last year, didn't get to it, and this year I'm pretty much not at home the entire year.

Actually having a relatively fast single core isn't that bad...at the time it was faster than the dual cores when gaming.
The newest game I ran was Prototype though.

 

You win... I think my Nokia is faster than that Atleast it can run HD video Now is a good time to jump to ivy bridge dude

 

My email server is an Intel 915 chipset mobo, PIII equiv 1.2Ghz, 512MB, 80GB from 2000 or 2001.

My just replaced main rig (will be my wifes new rig) is a DFI 790FX, 5000+ BE, 4GB Corsair XMS2DHX and an ATi 3850, its 4 years old this week.

My new main rig is a Gigabyte 990FXA, FX6100, 16GB Corsair Vengeance, and twin Sapphire 4890 OC Editions.

I still have my Voodoo 3 that i used with the onboard gfx from the first rig.

 

Running a 2500k with two 460's, only built last year, but reading this site every day makes it feel old already.........

 

It does play Full-HD video...heck my netbook plays 720-HD. ;-)
I'll be traveling till december. But you're right, an upgrade is long overdue

 

6 years old;

P4 3.2Ghz
X1900XTX 512MB
2GB

I had the money to upgrade to a 920 when it came out but decided against it. For one thing, there weren't any/enough games to get a new PC for (and PC gaming was a mostly grim, somber and depressing landscape of sequels, blockbusters, bad multiplatform ports, and Bobby Koticks, there were times I actually thought money had killed PC gaming). Now that PC games are entering a new golden age, it's FINALLY worth upgrading for me.

Another factor is that I honestly believe you should make your PC last, not buy a new one at the slightest hint of having to turn the detail down a bit. This philosophy has been very helpful, up to a point. I should've upgraded sometime last year but held off due to lack of good games. The only time I really regretted not having upgraded sooner was at Portal 2 launch, and Amnesia. It's bad enough people are fully indulging themselves in a throw-away culture of buying new smartphones every 6-12 months (hello DR Congo civil war!) and crappy middling laptops which are outdated when they come out. If I can balance that out even in the slightest I'm happy to work with outdated hardware. Silicon may be plentiful on planet earth but everything else that goes into electronics and computers ISN'T, and these things have consequences, a fact no one really wants to accept.

Now the time has come to upgrade though. Some good games are coming, Max Payne 3 (hopefully good), Dishonored, BioShock Infinite, HL3, Hitman 5, Alan Wake just came out (don't know if it's good but we'll see) and probably more importantly is the boom in independent developers putting out excellent games and even easily outdoing the AAA-developers here and there. I also have yet to play Mafia 2, Dear Esther and the STALKER sequels, possibly GTA4 (as well as aforementioned Portal 2 and Amnesia).

If I were rich I might get a new system every 3-4 years, but I think 6 years is a better replacement cycle (or at least it ought to be), with perhaps an upgrade or two in the middle.

It's a shame I picked a terrible time to upgrade (budget wise, not game-wise) since both Intel and AMD&nVidia seem to have decided there is no financial crises and people ARE made of money, and priced their hardware accordingly, but otherwise I can't wait to get my hands on it and play some great games both new and from the backlog. (and incidentally also start to learn game development myself, but that's another story).

 

Well, My PC is seven year old. A simple duel core and it is working very fine.