What's your upgrade cycle like?

[dpodblood]

Personally I like to upgrade every 2-3 years in order to be able to play all modern games at high-ultra settings. I find after 2.5 years I need to start scaling down from maximum settings and start researching new parts. Once I have a new build I generally like to sell, re-purpose, or give my old stuff to family. Most of the time I will re-use what ever I can (case, HDD's, DVD, etc.)

So what is your cycle like? Every year, every 2 years, every time the next big thing comes out? What do you do with your old stuff? Whats your motivation for upgrading? Gaming performance, or just upgradeitis?

 

[lehtv]

I upgrade components whenever I feel they are too slow or otherwise lack features I need, assuming I can afford the upgrade. That depends on many factors so I can't give you an exact figure, and it's continuous and incremental which means there's no cycle anyway.

 

[FearfulSPARTAN]

I like to upgrade my graphics card every two years if possible, three depending on what card I get. My cpu I plan to keep for three to four years once I buy my i5.

 

[Topweasel]

Generally I would have done three new builds (All new everything including cases). In 12 years. Every 2 years I do major overhauls. New Mobo/CPU/Vid and possibly Memory. I also tend to throw almost at random new HDD's for storage throughout the years regardless of where I am in the cycle.

I have a feeling this build while might have a vid card upgrade will last me till full system rebuild and I might try to push it out to 5 years if I can.

Examples of my system builds have been.
Antec 1040T Athlon 700 Socket A-forgot Mobo. Geforce 2 GTS 512MB Ram. Mid cycle upgrade. A7N2-Deluxe Athlon 2500+ 1GB ram Radeon 9800XT. (This was during my constant tweaking period so I skipped over small changes in CPU/Video)

Antec P160 -Athlon64 X2 4400+ Geforce 7800GTX 2GB Ram A8N SLI Premium. Mid cycle upgrade- Phenom 9950BE- M3A78-T Pro- Radeon 4870 4GB Ram.

Last year current fresh build. Coolermaster HAF X, 3930k, 32GB Ram, Radeon 7950 Intel X79-SI.

 

[TY-1]

I tend to make a new, personal build every 5 years or so with small tweaks to said build around the 2-3 year mark depending upon hardware at the time. The longest I've ever gone with a personal build was 7 years with a few upgrades and ran it up until the day the motherboard and CPU finally gave up the ghost.

 

[Saffron]

I usually do a complete build once every 4-5 years. When I do a full build it's usually with the best GPU available at the time. The processor is a different story, I usually go with a step or two bellow the best and overclock it.

So far I've been able to play all current games at Max setting without issue. Once it gets towards the end of my cycle I have to play current games without any significant AA, which is fine for me.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The last PC game(s) that I played, that I remember, was SWTOR and Skyrim.

I haven't really gamed in over a year. Still own one machine with a GTX460 2GB card, and two machines with HD4850 512MB cards.

I don't have so much as an upgrade cycles, as an upgrade compulsion. Whenever I feel like building a new rig, if I can afford it, I do so. I've been on a kick to build some smaller, more svelte rigs. Almost ordered a Celeron NUC from Newegg today.

The most I do is web browse, Skype, and some distributed computing from time to time.

 

[Termie]

Since 2006, GPU every 18 months, CPU every 18-30 months. With the increasingly slow roll-out of new tech in the desktop world, I'm not sure I'll actually stick to that going forward.

 

[rancherlee]

Every 4-5 for the CPU/Board and about every 2 years for a new 200$ range video card. I recently installed 8gb ram, 7850hd, and an SSD into my 3 year old Phenom II box and am happy with its 1080p performance. Over double the game performance of my 5770hd

 

[fffblackmage]

Upgrade as I see fit.

I've been upgrading my graphics card fairly regularly, from 4830, 4890, 5870, and now to 7870.

I don't upgrade the CPU nearly as often. I went from an Athlon XP 2600+, to a C2D E6320, and then to Phenom II X4. Definitely time for an upgrade.

 

[Zap]

Upgrade as I see fit.

I see fit sometimes once or twice a year. :whiste: Sometimes I find other things to occupy my time and I may go a couple years.

"Sporadic" comes to mind.

 

[Golgatha]

New GPU every year or so. New everything else when it makes sense.

 

[RaistlinZ]

Complete overhaul about every 4-5 years.

 

[mfenn]

My upgrades are strictly need based.

Original Agility 128GB -> Crucial M4 256GB because the Agility was starting to randomly lock up

i7 860 + P55 board -> i5 3570K + Z77 board because there was a bad DIMM slot which meant that the system would fail to boot 2/3rd of the time

However, my definition of "need" is kind of loose when it comes to games. I'm gonna upgrade if I can't play a game that I want all maxed with decent FPS (>30 usually). :awe:

GTX 260 -> 6950 2GB because I couldn't play Shogun 2 all maxed
8800 GTS -> GTX 260 because I couldn't play Fallout 3 all maxed

 

[Paperlantern]

Upgrade? Whats that.

THe last upgrade I actually had budget to go out and BUY parts with was 2004. I bought a AMD Athlon 2600+, a board, memory and a video card, it cost about $400 total. Everything else I had.

Everything else I have used since have been everyone else's leftovers and handmedowns. I have a 1.8GHz AMD quad core right now that stopped working for my Parents. It turned out to be the on board video so i slapped a video card in it and I have been using it ever since. That upgraded me from a Pentium D 3.2GHz dual core system that i pieced together, quite literally from parts that ended up in the recycle pile at work. Everytime someone would drop something in that pile id see what it was and if it was even remotely recent equipment (within the last 5 years), Id snag it. Eventually I had enough to upgrade from the Pentium 4 box I was using at that time.

The system i have now with an SSD in it does pretty well. Im old school, and still play games from about 6 - 12 years ago (Guild Wars, Enemy Territory, Quake II), so even as old as the equipment that I use is, it still does fine for me.

So upgrading for me is usually getting a hold of a machine at no cost, or parts at no cost that happens to be a year or two newer than the 6 year old stuff i currently have. Heh.

 

[Cerb]

Almost N/A. I've been sitting on my old stuff for awhile, and want to make sure whatever I get is good enough to do the same with, with minimal additions or parts replacements, save for GPU, over its life cycle.

The gains v. effort for overclocking aren't what they used to be, and quiet cooling is easy, today, so I really want a bunch of exposed connectors on the front and back, the ability to have an internal USB 3.0 card reader, and then to leave it alone.

Haswell may do it, though I am still seeing precious few boards with enough USBs on them (I may give in, but I really want 2 headers on a MicroATX board--why they are on several full-size, but not Micro, I do not understand, but at least that's a step in the right direction).

 

[skipsneeky2]

So upgrading for me is usually getting a hold of a machine at no cost, or parts at no cost that happens to be a year or two newer than the 6 year old stuff i currently have. Heh.

I am a efficient upgrader,my old parts go to those in my family who need them like when my best friends sister got my x2 550,4gb memory and 8800gts to upgrade her pentium 4 with a 9700 pro which went to her brother,then when i upgraded again i made her give those parts to my uncle who rocked a celeron 420 and onboard so the old parts being a i5 2500k and gtx560 ti went to my friends sister so all 3 of us got upgrades.

 

[Torn Mind]

Upgraded to 1155 only this past fall(Celeron G550) from a Pentium 4 and a Pentium M based system. Then I built a high-end mini-ITX box with a 3770k(Microcenter CPU discount).

Essentially, I completely missed the LGA 775 era. I probably might upgrade to a Haswell Celeron or APU once I figure out what is causing the subtle video issue on my Asrock H77M(OS, bent pins, connector?).

Might set up a Sempron server and that might get upgraded in the future if the tasks it does becomes more demanding, but I'd probably upgrade storage on all of the boxes more than any other part.

 

[escrow4]

I'm on a 6 month upgrade cycle currently. I first sprang for a locked i5 last year, thinking it would be sufficient for a grunty GPU (I was wrong, OC helps, a lot), I then traded it up for i7, then realised a 3930K would be better, so I'm sitting on that now.

For my work system, I went from an i3 box to a mac mini (never again) to my current i5 box. I think both these will last longer than 6 months, although I might as well drop in IB-E come Christmas, assuming Intel doesn't flip out and make it X80 or some other demented decision.

 

[vbuggy]

Notebooks are where I have the most frequent upgrade cycles. I start the model-refresh year by buying everything I'm interested in within each category (e.g. mobile workstation - I bought the Elitebook 8770W & 8750W, Precision M6700 & M4700, Lenovo W530), then tossing out what I don't like. I keep the pass candidates for a year at most, or until something more interesting in the same category comes along. I see the trial step as an inevitable part of me finding what's best for me, but it takes time to evaluate each machine properly - and allied to a yearly refresh cycle, it can be pretty time consuming overall if you don't have your own IT. I do, but I've scaled it down a lot and they're now mostly concerned with running my private cloud.

Desktop wise it's not so bad since I usually stick to HP and Dell's flagship workstations - and I do the bulk of my real work on them. They're updated every time there's a model refresh, though it's on a rolling basis among all the machines I use. I'd say 18 months - two years is typical.

I also use OS X so I'll buy whatever piece of crap that Apple has for sale, and I'll always update it because they need it (I don't understand how anyone thought the 2011 iMac was any good for example - housewife-grade computer at it's worst). That means I've ended up having practically every single refresh of every single variant of the Macbook Pro and Air since introduction for example - and that practice has only recently been cut as I've standardised my entire stash of Apple notebooks on the 15" Retina.

Now I've started to sling a lot of my stuff up in my own cloud, I expect part of the byproduct to be increased life from my front-end computers. I'm still waiting to be able to buy the Lenovo Helix for example, but I plan to use that - and the other systems I'm buying now - for 2 years at least.

Given the track record, the Apple stuff will still have to be updated on a more regular basis though. I love how the Apple-on-the-brain types go on about Macs being more affordable if you do the sums - I need twice as many to have the same uptime as e.g. a decent HP of the (nominally) same class which doesn't cost that much more.

 

[TidusZ]

Same as OP but I always keep my 2 fastest PCs and sell the third... Need 2 PCs

With processors hardly getting any faster since 2011 though I may not build a whole new system for a long time now. Maybe just a new videocard

Upgrade? Whats that.

So upgrading for me is usually getting a hold of a machine at no cost, or parts at no cost that happens to be a year or two newer than the 6 year old stuff i currently have. Heh.

I call those computers warcraft 3 PCs.

 

[Lagittaja]

Well for me the major overhauls usually are 2-3 years apart.
My HTPC just got an upgrade earlier this month. I originally built it 2010 december and it got some minor upgrades along the way.
My own rig though I upgrade when I feel like there's an upgrade needed on some parts.
New PSU's will arrive on next friday for both my rigs.
I'll list my rigs just for the hell of it. HTPC will get the Seasonic 400w fanless (V2) and my own rig will get the 660w XP2 by Seasonic as well.
HTPC

Intel Pentium G2120 CPU + Noctua NH-U12P passive
Intel DH77EB mATX MB
Kingston 2x4GB 1600Mhz CL9 1.35v
Gigabyte HD5670 + Accelero S1 rev2 passive
Samsung 830 64gb OS drive
WD1001FALS 1TB storage drive
Seasonic S12II-330w
Lian Li PC-A05NB + 120mm Slip Stream PWM @300rpm + 1450rpm Gentle Typhoon @600rpm

Work

Intel Core i7-3770K@4.5Ghz + Thermalright True Spirit w/ Gentle Typhoon 1850rpm
Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z
Samsung 2x4GB 2000Mhz CL10 1.35v
XFX HD5750
Intel 520 60gb OS drive
WD30EFRX 3TB storage drive
Samsung F1/F3 2x1TB RAID0 short stroked to 621GB
XFX Core Edition Pro 550w
Lian Li PC-A05NB + 120mm Slip Stream PWM + 120mm Slip Stream PWM + X-Silent 140mm

I'm going to sell my HD5750 as well. Will be using the IGP for a while. I don't use this rig for gaming so don't need it. For the HTPC I'm yearning for some more madVR perf and lower idle consumption as well haha. So when I've sold that HD5750 and the current PSU's I'll probably look into grabbing some HD7750 or GTX650 for the HTPC and toss that passive 5670 to my own rig if I feel like it.

And that Samsung raid is bugging me a bit as well. Since with that Samsung raid setup I'm getting about the same speeds as you'd get with a single WD10EZEX... So will probably order couple of those at some point, I need the speed for encoding and editing stuff. Then I'll probably toss that Samsung F3 to my HTPC and use it for backups or something. I don't know.

But for now I'm pretty much set with my computers. Don't probably need to touch that HTPC for the next three or four years. The same applies for my main rig though. Will probably be looking at the next major overhaul with Skylake and/or Skymont. Though at that point AMD's APU will probably (more like hopefully..) be more of a contender.