A new rule I follow when upgrading

[Hagar]

My last upgrade began when a SATA II drive I bought did not work on my motherboard, I was also limited to two SATA ports without an additional card.
My last build had lasted nearly three years and was still quite competent. Athlon 3800+ dual with 3Gb PC3200 DDR.

I spent £400 on CPU, mobo, HDD and DDR3. I then bought a 24" samsung monitor, I was still using a 17" CRT. I then replaced windows XP retail with Windows 7 retail.

I incrementally upgrade with Ram and HDD occasionally. I buy stuff second hand like cases and coolers

I major upgrade about every three years, 1990, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2007 were significant going from a 12.5MHz 286 to the present day.

I will see what AMD offer in 2013.

 

[xtremedetailz]

Yet if you wait till you see that big a performance jump, the new chip costs the same, but the old chip is next to worthless. Buy a Q6600 for £190 maybe on launch, then buy a £170 sandybridge, how much is the Q6600 that uses more power but is half the speed worth, £50 maybe.

Buy a penryn for £200 though inbetween and sell the Q6600 for £140, then buy an i5 750 for £170 and sell the older chip for £100-120, then buy a 2500k for £170 and sell the 750 for £120.

It ends up costing you marginally more, and I really do mean marginally, for always having the fastest computer around and not being stuck with a half speed power sucking chip for 4 years inbetween.


Big upgrading once in a while is the LEAST economic way to buy computer parts. Not only has the chip become almost worthless, so has the memory(well maybe not actually, got a great price on my ddr2 mem maybe 6-8 months ago, I'd get half as much now), the mobo will be worth almost nothing, etc, etc.

Depreciating of old parts means selling when they are all but obsolete gets you very very little. With upgrading it can be a juggling act and getting lucky with a great offer, getting memory at the exact right time, selling older memory at the right time.

We had 4gb ddr2 packs for £35 a couple years ago, ddr3 was maybe £55, then it went up and was £80-100 for a 4gb pack, and we're back down to £40 a pack.

The best value chips hold their value the best, a Q6600 was for intel insanely well priced, didn't see another as good value chip from Intel till the i5 750. If you got a QX6800 you'd have seen 60-70% of its value wiped out in a couple years, a Q6600 kept its value far better. Same goes for mobo's, buy the fancy daft £180-250 mobo, 2-3 years later its worth £40 while the cheap £100 mobo you could have bought is now worth £35.

Buy the ultimate "value" parts, depreciating hits you less hard, upgrading maybe once a year becomes a very small cost.


Essentially the choice is £50-100 total cost to upgrade after selling old parts, once a year for three years while constantly having the latest cpu and gpu, or wait and spend £300-500 in one go 3-4 years later, with no value from your old kit, and spend 50% of that timeframe with a fairly slow and power hungry computer....... similar cost but far better value from the consistantly upgrading route.

Wow DM no offence intended but that is defo not the usual 3 page drivel.
I enjoyed reading that and you are sooo right and have put it very well.
In fact i think that single post should be stickied

 

[Brumboy]

I normally buy a new computer system every 3-4 years. I bought a refurbished Q6600 computer from PC World for £500 about 4 years ago. Now I've bought a i5 2500k custom built for around £700 total. But that includes a new graphics card.

I'll be honest, I can't really tell a HUGE difference in speed compared to my Q6600, for some reason the Q6600 seems to be a very fast CPU in every day tasks.

According to benchmarks the i5 2500k is almost twice as fast as a Q6600 along with overclocking it's a damn good CPU, I just can't tell a huge difference in the tasks I do.

That being said, I didn't have much of a choice, I wanted a computer to play the latest games on as my old graphics card was a very poor 8400 GS lol. So if I wanted to buy a new graphics card I would have had to buy a new power supply and possibly a new case. So I thought I might aswell buy some new components and build a decent computer instead of slowly upgrading components which can be a hassle.

Now I have a decent computer just sitting in the cupboard which I'm looking to sell for about £250.

The only thing I can see myself upgrading is the graphics card to a 6950 and flashing it to 6970.

I just hope my computer will last me another 3/4 years but at the rate these new games come out with improved engines and graphics I'm not too sure!

Am I silly for thinking my computer will be out dated very fast?

 

[Uhtred]

I tend to upgrade RAM and HDD more frequently than 'main' parts

For m/b and CPU and GPU i run them into the ground, my current 6300 and 8800GT is 4/3 years old and I expect it to last another 6 months before i can justify the upgrade.

At the moment I can play starcraft 2 with high details just fine and any new games like cyrsis 2 are perfectly playable. I can convert clips to mp4 phone format in 20-30 minutes and even running 3-4 virtual machines is no problem at all.

Quad core, 8gb of RAM, SSD, USB3, SATA3 and a new GPU are all things I look forward to but don't need right now for the things I use my computer for.

 

[C64]

I upgrade while my current stuff is still worth something. That way the upgrade cost is minimal. Take my current rig for example. I sold my Q9550, P5Q Pro Turbo and 4GB G.Skill PC2-8500 for £275 leaving me £25 to pay for my current cpu/mobo/ram.

Yes but let us say you sell at £50 now to buy something for £150 and had you waited your £50 thing may have been only worth £30 but the thing you paid £150 for would also only cost you £130 by then too.

You cant win.

 

[stevogums]

Why twice as fast specifically?

I'll upgrade when the cost vs benefit ratio is right.

I hear that

 

[SpiritOfTheAge]

Recently updraded the GPU and got on average double the performance, but im so itching to jump on an i5 bundle to replace my cpu, which is currently a q9650, so i know it doesnt make much sense, but to have a shiny new cpu/motherboard and ram to go with my new graphics card just keeps nagging away at me.

 

[TerryH]

My old 2GB corsair Ballistix 800Mhz sticks are holding their price very well, even after 4 years