How long has your computer lasted?

[DominionSeraph]

The generic PSU and case from my first build back in '99 are still in use on a daily basis. (Until a few months ago it had my original Abit BH6 in it as well, but it started random rebooting so it had to be retired. . So now it's running an even older PII 400 on a Dell mobo.)
I'm on a Dimension E521 from 2006 right now. X2 5200+ and a 9600GT make it a great legacy gaming rig. I'm typing on my Microsoft Natural keyboard from '99 as well.

 

[iCyborg]

Almost 3.5 years, i7 920 + 4870. I plan to buy SSD disk and 7870 soon, other than that I've no plans to replace it in the next 2 years. Maybe buy laptop soon, IVB or more likely Trinity if it's ~$500-$600.
I know many people are complaining about slower pace of advancement lately, but frankly I'm kinda liking that I can keep my rig for years without totally falling behind.

 

[arnoc]

Not sure on the specs, but my mom's Window 2k Computer was running until about 2 years ago. I know it had 2 Maxtor 80 gigabyte hdd's, and my father considered that plenty when he originally built it. So roughly 10 years perhaps?

 

[thelastjuju]

Until they die and its too impractical to replace.

I have a 9 year old Antec PSU powering my HTPC as we speak.

 

[Towermax]

My K6-3 450MHz has been running Windows 98SE on an Asus P55T2P4 motherboard for 15 years now. It's still going strong--did an hour of DOOM on it today.

I've also got a couple of 2006-era 939 systems still running full-time--one as a Windows 7 HTPC and one running Windows Home Server. And up until last fall, I was still using a DFI NF-4 Ultra-D 939 board as my primary system. All of these 939 systems appear to still be in very good shape. They've all been upgraded to dual-core CPUs, max ram, fast drives, and even SSDs over the years.

I've got a variety of other working systems, going back to my original IBM PC model 5150, but none of them, of course, are in daily use.

 

[dkm777]

I used to have a Pentium III 733 that I gradually maxed out over the years. It served me trouble-free for 7 years finally dying of bad caps. Then I bought a Mac Mini. Used that for ~3 years and then got back into building PCs again. My current main rig is over 1 year old and I hope it serves me for 7 years too. And it better - I carefully chose some of the most reliable components on the market.

 

[DarkRogue]

My usual upgrade cycle is about 4-5 years or so.

Rig in my sig built 2008, still currently typing on this as my main for another week or two until IVB comes out.. Honestly, with the SSD upgrade (only thing besides the PSU I've changed since 2008, lol) I could go on for a while longer without upgrading, if only I didn't use Lightroom and Photoshop.

 

[Leyawiin]

My 2005 PC (Athlon 64 3700+ with an AGP 7800 GS) still sits at a desk in the dining room and gets used daily. Its perfectly fine for browsing the internet and is a real workhorse. This is after playing Oblivion for hundreds of hours with it back in the day.

My current gaming PC is almost three years old (well, the motherboard, hard drive and RAM are - the CPU and GPU were both upgrades). Currently has a Phenom II X4 980 paired with a GTX 460 1GB. Should get another year out of it - maybe more with another GPU upgrade this summer.

 

[OS]

lol all my computers are pretty much immortal, there are too many spare parts floating around the house, and keeping them running simply becomes a matter of time and effort.

most of the good machines i ever had, my parents now use for casual websurfing.
Lots of socket A stuff, all around 10 years old.

Quite frankly, i hate spending anything but throwaway money on even new computers now. All this computer stuff depreciates at insane rates and I never get full use out of even mid range products.

 

[Dinkydau]

My intel q6700 4-core 2,67 GHz had been working 24/7 almost non-stop for almost 4 years now, temperatures often get a little over 70°C, still working with no problems at all.

 

[nenforcer]

From 1996 - 2002 I did upgrades / system builds every other year.

However, since 2002 I have only done 2 upgrades, one big one in 2007 after 5 years (E6600, 8800 GTX) and another small one 4 years later last fall 2011 (E8400, GTX 460 768MB).

Blame it on the console generations.

The PC in my sig was the 2002 build I did.

 

[Magic Carpet]

So now I am starting to wonder how long does a computer actually last before kicking the bucket? what are your experiences on this?

A properly looked-after computer could last years and years. Question is, would you still be actively using one?

We need a study and data on this.

 

[powruser]

I'm still running a Core 2 Duo E6400, P5B Deluxe, 4GB DDR2 rig, and that came out in what... 2006? So 6 years now, wow.

 

[meloz]

I used an old Pentium 3 based desktop for almost 9 years. For sure it was not suitable for running heavy programs like photoshop (let alone gaming), but for general browsing and as an 'internet terminal' it was tolerable. Not all that worse than Atom netbooks that were all the rage a couple years ago.

My current Sandy Bridge, I can see using it for another 5 years or more, easily. Somewhere down the line I will get an SSD as that is the only weak link in this system.

 

[jstern01]

Running Athlon XP 2500+ as my firewall server (circa 2001-2002) so about 10 years so far. I will probably continue to use it, as my firewall is a linux distro so it works just fine.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

My rig is a Pentium D (65 nm), 512mb x2 + 256 x1 RAM, 250 HDD (7200RPM), Dell POS PSU, x1300 GPU, in a dell case

 

[KompuKare]

Still running my Pentium E5300 overclocked to 3.5GHz. My usual budget is £50ish for a CPU and £35-£50 for a mobo and that's been fairly constant since my 300A, but my other criteria is that I don't upgrade until I can get twice the performance.

For £50 there's either something like the AMD A4-3400 or the Intel Pentium G630T. Neither of which are twice as fast as my E5300 (mainly because the G630T cannot be overclocked) so I'm staying put.

 

[KAZANI]

My PII Celeron 500MHz machine from 2000 still gets its ocassional use. I am amazed at how resilient it's cheapo PSU has proved over the years, never damaged any component even after blowing its fuse in more than one instances. My current Athlon X2 3800 PC is 6 years old (anxiously waiting to weigh Trinity against Ivy Bridge for upgrade options).

 

[DigitalWolf]

So now I am starting to wonder how long does a computer actually last before kicking the bucket? what are your experiences on this?

To the general question of how long can a computer last... my original Commodore 64 and 1541 disk drive that I bought in 1982 still work... They are in a storage room but I still play a few games now and then. I have a C128D back there and a couple of Amiga's as well that work. Along with the CMD Ram Link I bought maybe mid 1980's and that still works too.


I don't think any of my personal computers has ever actually died before I totally upgraded. Obviously electronics like hard drives can fail at any time. So it depends on if you count that but I'd simply replace those. I have had friends that bought pre-builts where as far as I was concerned they were dead.. due to using proprietary parts I didn't feel like trying to find.


I had a much higher failure rate on electronics when I lived in Oregon (Hillsboro) than I ever had on the east coast. To me the power grid seemed like crap. /shrug So I do believe that where you live can affect component failure.

 

[rbk123]

Q6600 OC'd to 3.6G on an Abit P35-E that just turned 4 this week. Once I added the SSD a year or so ago, I don't see me upgrading until the MB dies on me.

 

[DigDog]

E6600 on gigabyte DS3, still going strong. bought it on launch.

broke the pushpins on my ACPro 7, my viewsonic 2235 died, and my asus 8800gts artefacted and never got fixed. everything else is still original - hard disks, ram, case fans, psu, dvdr, even the floppy reader (lol).

 

[Edgemeal]

My very first PC was an Atari 130XE (1985) and I used it for around 6 years.
2nd PC was an i486-25MHz, after that I was upgrading about every 12-18 months until I built a s939 AMD 4200+ X2 in mid 2005, I used that just shy of 4 years and is still going as my HTPC.

Current main sys is AMD X4 @ 3.4GHz and less then 3 years old, should last me another 1.5 - 2 years.

 

[JonBlack]

I usually build myself a PC about every 24 months.

Here are the PC's I've built for myself over the past years. Any PC that was kept about 1 year usually meant that a family member needed a PC and just bought mine from me. I would then take the funds and build a new system.

Fall 1993 - 386-DX40
1997 - Cyrix 6x86MX PR200
1998 - AMD K6-2 350mhz
1999 - AMD K6-3 450mhz
2001 - Intel Pentium 4 Williamette 2.0ghz
2005 - AMD Athlon 64 3700+ s757 Clawhammer
2007 - Intel Core2Duo e6750
2009 - Intel Core2Duo e8600 (just swapped CPU's out on the 2007 build)
2010 - AMD 1090t
2012 - Intel i7-2600k
2013 - HASWELL or BUST!

Each CPU/build has a story to tell. Damn I can't believe I had that P4 for 4 years!!! I hated that PC after about a year and wanted a new Athlon so badly.

 

[Snapshot1]

Dell 8400 (P4 3GHz, RDRAM, XP) purchased January 2005, primary home desktop with various upgrades (video, monitor, optical and HD drives) through January 2012 when I finally built a replacement.

The 8400 is still in use as a secondary machine and for testing applications under XP.

Looking back I am glad I missed some of the Vista headaches but seven years is too long, even with intermediate updates. I am enjoying considerable improvement in performance especially in 64 bit applications like Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3.

 

[Makaveli]

The sockets that have lasted me the longest so far is socket 939 which was about 3 years.

And i'm almost at 3 years now on 1366 but I can easily see this rig lasting me another 2 years for a total of 5 years which would be a first for me. Depends on what games come out in the next 2 years it may see one more videocard upgrade but that would be it.

I just went 920 to 970 to give the system alittle bit more life and for encoding and vm's.

I'm not sure what I will do with the current rig when its time to retire her it will be far too powerful for an HTPC so I may convert it into some kinda home server.

Next machine will be haswell based.