• My PC is getting older. How old is too old?
    27 replies, posted
So my PC is almost 4 years old. The details if it matters: [i]Intel i7-3820 3.60ghz 8gb ram 1 TB drive, 7200 RPM Nvidia GTX 770 Xonar DGX sound card ARC dual push-pull air flow cooling standard power supply[/i] Lots of gaming and video editing. I don't overclock. Dusted and cleaned regularly. Nothing going wrong so far, except for a fan very rarely sounding louder than usual on startup. Fixed by just lowering fan speed and then turning it back up. That being said, [b]I've been increasingly paranoid that something will just die.[/b] What should I look out for in terms of things naturally going wrong with old age? Besides slowly becoming obsolete, how old is too old? And is the best solution just to start upgrading my pc piece by piece for my needs? Thanks in advance.
Upgrade piece by piece. CPU, motherboard, and RAM should be solid as you have a 3rd Gen intel. If you're worried about something failing, I would start by replacing the hard drive. Grab another 1tb and clone everything from the old one, wipe the old one, and use it as a storage drive for stuff you're not super concerned with losing if it shits itself. If by standard power supply you mean stock power supply (what it came with) I'd replace that too. No need to go overkill, you can get a decent one for less than $100. If you find you want to play newer games on higher settings just get a new video card. Doing so will probably require you to get a new power supply anyway. All in all I would expect you to be able to get a few more years out of that. The core (CPU, mobo, RAM) is fine. Really the only time you need to upgrade the CPU is when it's a bottleneck and TBH even 2nd Gen i5s are still incredibly solid for gaming. I get a lot of refurbished desktops in at work with those and 8gb of ram. I threw a 1050ti in one for shits and giggles and to my surprise it could handle DOOM on ultra just fine with 60fps. The only time you'll really need to upgrade the CPU is if some new one hits the shelves that has some feature that you can take advantage of (like some new kind of hyperthreading since you do video editing). With how fast and similar they are now they're really not as important to keep up on like they were 10 years ago. [editline]28th May 2017[/editline] If you want to splurge a bit, get a 250gb SSD and a new 1tb drive. Reinstall windows on the ssd, and use it to store programs and small files. Any huge files or installs can be placed on either of the 1tb drives (games, video files, temp folders for video editing programs, etc). That's how mine has been running for the last 3 or 4 years and it's hot shit. Programs open at the snap of a finger, and with the mechanical drives in tandem I can install tons of games and store a lot of huge files.
I have a computer that i bought in 2010 with a first gen Core i7 and an old Radeon HD 5000 card, everything in the system still works except for the HDD i got back then so no need to worry about most of the hardware just suddenly dying except maybe the HDD.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;52284485]Upgrade piece by piece. CPU, motherboard, and RAM should be solid as you have a 3rd Gen intel. If you're worried about something failing, I would start by replacing the hard drive. Grab another 1tb and clone everything from the old one, wipe the old one, and use it as a storage drive for stuff you're not super concerned with losing if it shits itself. If by standard power supply you mean stock power supply (what it came with) I'd replace that too. No need to go overkill, you can get a decent one for less than $100. If you find you want to play newer games on higher settings just get a new video card. Doing so will probably require you to get a new power supply anyway. All in all I would expect you to be able to get a few more years out of that. The core (CPU, mobo, RAM) is fine. Really the only time you need to upgrade the CPU is when it's a bottleneck and TBH even 2nd Gen i5s are still incredibly solid for gaming. I get a lot of refurbished desktops in at work with those and 8gb of ram. I threw a 1050ti in one for shits and giggles and to my surprise it could handle DOOM on ultra just fine with 60fps. The only time you'll really need to upgrade the CPU is if some new one hits the shelves that has some feature that you can take advantage of (like some new kind of hyperthreading since you do video editing). With how fast and similar they are now they're really not as important to keep up on like they were 10 years ago. [editline]28th May 2017[/editline] If you want to splurge a bit, get a 250gb SSD and a new 1tb drive. Reinstall windows on the ssd, and use it to store programs and small files. Any huge files or installs can be placed on either of the 1tb drives (games, video files, temp folders for video editing programs, etc). That's how mine has been running for the last 3 or 4 years and it's hot shit. Programs open at the snap of a finger, and with the mechanical drives in tandem I can install tons of games and store a lot of huge files.[/QUOTE] the current power supply is what came with it, 600w. if i were to replace the power supply and a better video card, is 600 the appropriate amount? or will i need to go higher?
the capacity of your power supply matters less and less I think, it seems like almost every year companies are halving the amount of power graphics cards and etc take.
[QUOTE=TheJoey;52284552]the current power supply is what came with it, 600w. if i were to replace the power supply and a better video card, is 600 the appropriate amount? or will i need to go higher?[/QUOTE] 600W is pretty standard. I just recommend replacing stock ones because honestly they're pretty shit. Most likely component to fail in any computer is the hard drive. Second most likely is the PSU.
As a general rule on the performance side, you should do an incremental upgrade of something (storage, RAM, graphics, or CPU if possible) every 2 years. So basically budget for upgrading two of those things if you're still running on original equipment. I would suggest storage and RAM (but also probably want to replace your PSU as well - see below). In terms of reliability, 10 years is the absolute max for any single component, with a few limited exceptions (old RAM can be used in lightweight home servers, for example). [QUOTE=TheJoey;52284385] [i]Intel i7-3820 3.60ghz Xonar DGX sound card ARC dual push-pull air flow cooling[/i][/QUOTE] These are all fine and would be expensive to replace with not much benefit. I would maybe overclock the CPU, it sounds like it is very easily and safely overclocked to over 4.0GHz. Not going to see a huge performance boost with that, though - there's a reason CPUs have been hovering in the 3.0 range for quite a while now. If you're concerned about reliability, I wouldn't bother. But if you're noticing that your CPU is getting hot, I'd just reapply the thermal paste and blast the thing out with compressed air. [QUOTE=TheJoey;52284385] [i]1 TB drive, 7200 RPM standard power supply[/i][/QUOTE] These will probably fail first. I would seriously consider upgrading to at least an SSD/HDD combo (SSD boot drive, HDD game drive). You could splurge and get a 1TB SSD (about $280 right now, or $360 for high-end) and run everything off of that, which would be arguably the easiest, fastest, and most reliable solution. If cost is a serious concern, go out and buy a 256GB SSD ($100) [i]and[/i] a new 1TB local HDD ($50) - it's cheaper and will cover your bases while giving you a big performance boost. If you are really pinching pennies, just replace the HDD, although you won't get any performance benefit and will probably have to replace it again in another couple of years. Also, do not bother with a "hybrid" drive. I always suggest looking into a NAS with redundancy for storage if you do video editing seriously (any consumer-level NAS hardware will support at least the typical RAID formats - RAID 5 ideally - but some manufacturers like Synology have [URL="https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID_SHR"]their own fancy RAID systems[/URL]). Synology has its own incremental versioned backup built in that I push to unlimited Amazon Drive for extra redundancy. But keep in mind that this is expensive - for a 2-bay NAS, you'll be shelling out $100/1TB for storage costs alone, and for a 4-bay, around $66/1TB (since you'll only be using 1/4 of the drives for redundancy instead of 1/2), plus the cost of the NAS itself, which goes for $200-500. (You can also DIY with FreeNAS, but you'd have to buy enclosures anyway, and you'd need a spare computer.) Alternatively, you can forego all of this and just get an external drive, but that's no fun since you can only use it locally or keep your computer running 24/7 for network sharing. I've also personally had terrible experiences with external drives - I've owned I think 6, and 5 have failed so far for a variety of reasons, most due to failed controllers. As for the PSU, it depends, since you weren't too specific... a budget PSU will probably die soon, while a high-end one will easily last another 4 years at least. PSUs are also dicey because when they fail, they usually fail-safe, but sometimes decide to blow out the mobo along with it (I had a Dell die entirely after only 2 years because the PSU failed-deadly...) In any event, PSUs are pretty cheap. Grab yourself a Corsair or Seasonic with at least 600W, it will be well under $100 and will last around 10 years. Don't get too fussy over modularity and things like that - it makes replacement easier, but you'll probably gut the thing and get a new case by the time it dies. [QUOTE=TheJoey;52284385] [i]8gb ram Nvidia GTX 770[/i][/QUOTE] I would consider upgrading the RAM. 8GB will do it for most things but some data-heavy games (Cities Skylines, etc.) really eat up all the RAM they can get. More RAM also generally helps with multitasking and video editing. Depending on how your slots are laid out now, you may be able to just buy an 8GB stick/kit to add in ($50-60), or you may have to pull your current sticks out to free up slots for a 16GB kit ($100-120). Make sure you get the right type (DDR3/DDR4). But either way, RAM is not something that typically fails for quite a long time - this would just be for the performance boost. The graphics card is kind of a mixed bag, a 770 is perfectly fine for most games and probably won't fail. If you want more FPS in games (or faster video rendering) you could upgrade, but graphics cards are pricey. The most cost-effective upgrade would be to a 1070, but you'd be paying around $400 for the privilege. I wouldn't expect the card to fail anytime soon either.
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Too old is when it ceases to be able to do the tasks you ask it to do. If it still plays games at acceptable settings and framerates, still stays running, boots reliably? Keep right on using it.
PSU and SSD should be your first priority - honestly can't understand you haven't got an SSD yet, shit's like night and day.
My current PC, which I've had for over 5 years, is worse than what you got yet it still can get the job done pretty okay. I myself refuse to upgrade mainly because I am just like this (same thing happens to me with phones), but if you are going to do so I'd say get more RAM and one of the latest graphics card, as videogames are demanding more and more each day of those two. But like this is anything that hasn't be said already anyway.
[QUOTE=Lolkork;52284554]Seems pretty good. you should get 8 more gb of ram and an ssd. What's your mb and cooler?[/QUOTE] ASRock X79 Extreme4-M ARC Dual Silent High Performance Fan Upgrade (Push-Pull Airflow) taking a look at my old receipt it says it's asetek 550lc liquid cooling (socket-2011) but it's definitely not. i switched that out for the "fan upgrade." thanks for all the info. [editline]30th May 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Snowmew;52284989]These will probably fail first. I would seriously consider upgrading to at least an SSD/HDD combo (SSD boot drive, HDD game drive). [/QUOTE] q about this: do you mean the hdd being a storage device for the programs themselves? and just putting boot priority on the ssd? i'm also currently shopping around for the PSU and new ssd. thanks for all of your answers.
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;52290655]PSU and SSD should be your first priority - honestly can't understand you haven't got an SSD yet, shit's like night and day.[/QUOTE] Probably the same reason I don't have one: They're still costly. It's a lot better than it used to be, but platter drives are damn near at a penny per gigabyte these days, whereas decently high quality SSDs of practical capacity are still around a quarter a gig. [editline]30th May 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=TheJoey;52293182] q about this: do you mean the hdd being a storage device for the programs themselves? and just putting boot priority on the ssd? [/QUOTE] That is the generally given advice, though I find it a bit wasteful. It's an unpopular opinion but I believe SSD space should be reserved first and foremost for those huge open world games...GTA V, Witcher 3, Mass Effect, Fallout, etc....that load assets on the fly as you play. They are the games most crippled by hard drive read speed and will noticeably benefit from being on an SSD. I find Windows runs well enough off a platter drive that it doesn't need first dibs on the SSD.
Best thing to do is buy a SSD for the OS like I did, maybe 240gb and keep it clean of anything that isn't 100% vital/heavily used, then have a HDD as a 2ndary for the serious but not quite as important shit. Best thing about this is you can pretty much reformat the SSD and keep the HDD I have 2 SSD's, one for OS, another for games (A Samsung and an Intel), and HDD for everything else, including programs. A SSD is an immediate boost. An even better thing to do is buy an external HDD bay and use the old one as a backup drive for junk files.
[QUOTE=TheJoey;52293182]q about this: do you mean the hdd being a storage device for the programs themselves? and just putting boot priority on the ssd?[/QUOTE] Yes, the OS should be installed on the SSD, along with any heavily-used programs (mainly stuff that runs on startup). You can also maybe install a game if you have enough free space. But you should keep 10-20% of the SSD space free or its performance degrades and its lifespan is shortened a little. [QUOTE=TestECull;52293401]That is the generally given advice, though I find it a bit wasteful. It's an unpopular opinion but I believe SSD space should be reserved first and foremost for those huge open world games...GTA V, Witcher 3, Mass Effect, Fallout, etc....that load assets on the fly as you play. They are the games most crippled by hard drive read speed and will noticeably benefit from being on an SSD. I find Windows runs well enough off a platter drive that it doesn't need first dibs on the SSD.[/QUOTE] Windows does a lot more background file operations (reads and writes) than you think. It's not just for boot speeds.
[QUOTE=TestECull;52293401]Probably the same reason I don't have one: They're still costly. It's a lot better than it used to be, but platter drives are damn near at a penny per gigabyte these days, whereas decently high quality SSDs of practical capacity are still around a quarter a gig. [editline]30th May 2017[/editline] That is the generally given advice, though I find it a bit wasteful. It's an unpopular opinion but I believe SSD space should be reserved first and foremost for those huge open world games...GTA V, Witcher 3, Mass Effect, Fallout, etc....that load assets on the fly as you play. They are the games most crippled by hard drive read speed and will noticeably benefit from being on an SSD. I find Windows runs well enough off a platter drive that it doesn't need first dibs on the SSD.[/QUOTE] Have you ever actually used an SSD as a boot drive?
[QUOTE=TestECull;52293401]Probably the same reason I don't have one: They're still costly. It's a lot better than it used to be, but platter drives are damn near at a penny per gigabyte these days, whereas decently high quality SSDs of practical capacity are still around a quarter a gig. [editline]30th May 2017[/editline] That is the generally given advice, though I find it a bit wasteful. It's an unpopular opinion but I believe SSD space should be reserved first and foremost for those huge open world games...GTA V, Witcher 3, Mass Effect, Fallout, etc....that load assets on the fly as you play. They are the games most crippled by hard drive read speed and will noticeably benefit from being on an SSD. I find Windows runs well enough off a platter drive that it doesn't need first dibs on the SSD.[/QUOTE] SSD as a boot drive is incredible. You save tons of time whether it seems like a marginal improvement or not. I press the power button and within less than 10 seconds, my computer is on, Steam, Discord, and various other startup programs open instantly, and I don't have to wait to actually start using it. After using an SSD for years I can't stand using a standard mechanical drive as a boot drive. I work on computers all the time and it's gotten to the point where I start thinking a hard drive is dying just because it's so god damn slow. I've actually found less of a use for putting games on an SSD over your OS. Most games are still bottlenecked simply by how quickly their engines can pull, load, and cache necessary files. Games like GTA5 and BF4 still took ages to load into even on an SSD in my experience. At best it probably shaved 30 seconds off, which in that regard is not noticeable because you load the game once and you never need to load it again in that session. Compared to the OS, which is loading and reading and writing shit constantly. [editline]31st May 2017[/editline] A 240gb drive is around $80. That's more than enough space for Windows, programs, and user documents like game saves or large projects. For $80 you get the benefit of a massive increase in speed. Out of box Windows uses around 30gb, so you have around 100gb of free space to use. Coupled with a mechanical drive for large storage, you have a really good combination of speed and data storage. When I do hard drive replacements for customers, provided the computer has a decent processor and RAM, I throw 240gb SSDs in. It's 100% worth it. It can really breathe new life into older machines. Plus, mechanical drives are thousands of times more likely to fail than an SSD. I've been installing SSDs for 4 years now and only had 3 come back because of failures. I've installed thousands of them. Compared to mechanical drives, which I replace for failing all the time.
There are still people getting by on AMD Phenom/Athlon IIs, Core 2 Quads, plus first gen Core i*, they're the only ones that really need to be getting replaced around now. Buy an SSD, biggest one you can afford, and install windows to it. Your computer will run faster than when it was new, 1TBs can be had for 250-300. Then use your HDD for bulk storage, or ditch it. If it passes S.M.A.R.T. tests you're fine, and even if it's got a lot of hours you are probably still fine, see my 1TB below. [t]https://puu.sh/w6Wlr/eaa100a590.png[/t]
If you are wondering how long can electronics last, well, it is all down to luck. I'm posting this from a PC temporary using a hard disk from 2004, it was originally used on my old PC that I used from 2005 to 2014. Never had a single issue, played a ton of games on it during the years, older ones obviously. On my new PC I already replaced two PSUs that broke, and those weren't cheap ones, one was a gold rated 850W Corsair other one was Antec 750W.
My feeling is you should upgrade when your system no longer does what you need it to, whatever that may be. I used to constantly upgrade my PC simply because it was "outdated" and bought more than I needed to. I've since went back on that and have been using my same PC that I built in 2012, the only time I've had to do anything to it since is when my CPU water cooler died and corsair sent a replacement. Ill most likely build a new system next year, which would be 6 years on one system which I'd be very happy with.
The 770 is old in terms of what it can play on ultra and high settings, but it can still play things alright and i was still happy with mine, Till it died without warning a little over 2 weeks ago just shy of being 3 years old. Yours might last another 4 years but i'd just be ready for it to die regardless. If you just want a card that does the same as the 770, the 1050ti is for you. It's price is not great but the card itself is really really nice, it's a modern 770 that only used 70watts. Incredible really. If you want an upgrade though, the 6gb 1060 or the 4gb 470. Is where you should start looking from. Thats what i'll be getting pending my RMA result.
Just for precaution, I would SMART test your 1TB HDD now just to see how it is now, 4 years is alright for a disk but I would check your disk using something like CrystalDiskInfo now and just see what kind of status it is in now.
I also have a 5 years old computer, and the part with worst condition is the HDD, and also VGA card (it maybe because I always use it to play games)
[QUOTE=zeromancer;52304575]Just for precaution, I would SMART test your 1TB HDD now just to see how it is now, 4 years is alright for a disk but I would check your disk using something like CrystalDiskInfo now and just see what kind of status it is in now.[/QUOTE] Crystal Disk Info is telling me it's in GOOD status.
[QUOTE=Slade Xanthas;52310147]Do hard drives really kick it as often as people seem to let on? I still occasionally employ ones that are upwards of 13-16 years old just because I have nothing else on hand. Your computer is fine. Most you could worry about right now is (previously mentioned) getting an SSD, because they're super reliable and fast and getting another 8GB of RAM. I still get by playing DOOM on (mostly) high settings with my GTX 670 and i7-3770K.[/QUOTE] Keep backups of everything, test that those actually work, check SMART stats from time to time depending on how comfortable you are, and you'll be fine. HDDs are mechanical devices that do suffer from wear and tear. It's pretty bad if they've been moved a lot like in a laptop, but if they've just been working in a stable position they can last a long time. That being said, back up your shit.
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