Fixing your PC Follow

Buy or build a good base system and you can upgrade for years to come. I'm probably going to get about 5 years out of my current box before I get the urge to upgrade again.

I built mine in 2009 and would like to do a new one "soon" but the one I have still plays everything so far. We'll see how it does when Witcher 3 releases.

Also, I upgraded my processor in it (i3-530 to i7-860) while leaving the original motherboard, something Gbaji once told me no one ever does

SpoilerI tease, Gbaji. No need to write fifty paragraphs about it

Edited, Mar 24th 2015 3:10pm by Jophiel

I recommend the Voodoo3

Have you seen how it handles Half-Life?

Some what related... Ever purchase insurance? I always see it as a waste of money. There were two times where I purchased something where I needed to use the warranty, but it was instantly found and resolved. Everything happened after the first few weeks were years later outside of any extended insurance.

Yea. That's my take on it as well.

Lol. Tease or not, I still stand by my advice that if you're going to buy a new cpu, you may as well buy a new mb to go with it. Avoid the hassle of swapping out a cpu, and ensure that you get a board that actually makes use of all the capabilities of the new cpu (and whatever features the newer/better board has as well).

I guess to me, it kinda ties into something Smash said earlier. At one point in my life, I did do repairs on my own car. But that's because I owned an early 70s model junker that had easily replaceable parts (and which often needed to be replaced) and my income was low enough that it was well worth the time to do those repairs myself. Today, I pay my mechanic to change the oil and filters, and do whatever repairs are required. And if something sufficiently expensive is broken, then it's time to get a new car. Part of that is because modern cars are far less end user repairable than they used to be. You need custom tools for a lot of jobs, plus computer diagnostics equipment (which can be pricey). A basic took kit and a Chilton's repair book just doesn't cut it any more. The other party is income. My time is worth more to me today than it was when I was in my 20s (and I've got more money to pay that price).

While computers have some similarities, the big difference is relative cost. They've gotten a lot less expensive. So while the effort to repair my own car relative to the cost to have someone else do it factors into that side of the equation, the cost to replace the car entirely affects the base decision to repair it in the first place. For a computer, the cost to replace is so much cheaper that it makes spending money for a repair job questionable. It makes sense to pay a few hundred bucks to repair a car that will cost 10s of thousands to replace. It makes far less sense to spend a few hundred bucks repairing something you could replace for maybe 2-3 times that cost. Add in the fact that the difference feature wise between your old car and a new replacement isn't that significant, while computers get faster/better every year, and it leads more to attempting whatever cheap/easy repairs you can do at home to fix your computer first, and then just replacing it if those don't work.

Lol. Tease or not, I still stand by my advice that if you're going to buy a new cpu, you may as well buy a new mb to go with it. Avoid the hassle of swapping out a cpu

I understand you don't want to be bothered, but the "hassle" is usually un-clipping a fan and moving a lever twice. Thermal paste spreading, I guess, if you are one of those people who takes an hour to cover every sq millimeter in identically thin layers might take more than a few minutes.

Edited, Mar 25th 2015 8:36pm by Smasharoo

lolwut?

Jesus. I knew when I wrote that that the two of you would jump on that one point and ignore everything else I wrote. I suppose I should have said "may require removing the mb anyway and/or as much effort and time as would be required to replace the mb instead". I forget sometimes that I have to be absurdly cautious not to write anything that might be incorrect in any way, because that'll be the only thing you guys respond to.

It's about relative hassle compared to relative benefit. And IMO, in most cases, it's not worth replacing a cpu. For all the reasons I provided in the portion of my post you guys didn't bother to reply to.

Because half your argument is about the "hassle" of replacing the CPU versus the return for your effort. If you have some asinine perception of how to change out a CPU that's fifty times more labor intensive than it should be then, yeah, that's worth addressing and not "jumping on it".

You also way overstate the value of a new motherboard within generations of CPUs. Unless you need a change like USB 2.0 to 3.0 (and I assume any motherboard from the last several years is 3.0 anyway) or you originally bought a $30 board, changing out the motherboard is probably the most minor of an "upgrade" you can make. There's rarely any reason to drop an extra $100+ on a new motherboard unless you're changing socket types. Put that $100 into your new CPU or into a new GPU for a much better return. Or spend it on tacos and still have a better return.

Edited, Mar 25th 2015 11:09pm by Jophiel

I bet now in hindsight you feel pretty foolish for writing this.

Right, the only time I've bought a new board because I'm getting a new processor is because the sockets were no longer compatible.

If Intel came out with an amazing processor that still fit in the 1150 socket, I might consider upgrading.... next fall or so. I don't think I'd have to rip the whole box apart, though. Maybe pull out the video card to give myself a little extra hand room, since I'm in smallish ATX case that my video card barely fits in.