How often do you upgrade your PC?

Haven't upgraded for about 3 years now. To be fair, I don't play games much anymore, which used to drive the upgrades. Wife uses the machine for her work (graphic/web design) and it flies along no problem - it's a 3.2GHz i3 with 4GB RAM - even when running pretty much the whole Adobe CS :)
 
panyan said:
I normally upgrade when there is a big enough of a performance jump
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About the same

Been thinking about doing an upgrade for a while but I don't see the point right now.

Any graphic card worth upgrading for me is just stupidly expensive. Same goes for my CPU/mobo/ram.

My last 'proper' upgrade was for BF3 back in Oct 11

Of course since then I've added little bits like a SSD and got a second hand card to go SLI. I look at the 'this week only deals' every week and I just don't need anything.

When Intel and Nvidia up their game (probably after new consoles come out) will I upgrade again or if a component fails.

I'd like to see a price cap on graphics cards too. Flagship cards should be £450 at most on release imo.
 
Currently running sandybridge and probably will upgrade with ivy-e.
Graphics card is good for another year or two and unless i get bored with it this case should last another few years after that.
 
I've just upgraded to Z87/i7 4770K from an P55/i5 750. I wouldn't have bothered if :

1) I didn't want sata 3 on an intel controller and usb 3.0
2) My mum didn't want a new PC.

My GF's work computer (which I bought and upgraded, maintain for her) is an old dual core IBM thing. It's great. It needed some extra ram but runs Win 7@1920*1080/office etc perfectly well. It cost just under £100 all in and came with a 90 warranty. Bargain. It's not skipped a beat for 2 years or so.
 
adambro47 said:
i had to sell my desktop and buy a laptop cos i was upgrading at a very stupid rate.
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I did this, I lasted a year before i built a desktop pc!

I prefer sitting at a desk and the laptop dock just was not doing it for me.
I then decided i wanted a pc for gaming.

My last desktop lasted a few years, i hope this one (in sig) will.
However i can see me upgrading the graphics card in the next year and my 30gb ssd could o with replacing. After that hopefully i will leave it alone.
 
Im actually quite happy with the performance of my Q6600/6870/4GB Ram pc up until just recently, where its beginning to show its definciencies in games such as Arma 3 (yeah its unoptimised, but my pc struggles in games like planetside 2 aswell).

My last "upgrade" was to buy a second identical monitor...then I decided I would prefer having 1 large monitor as 2 monitors is clearly not ideal for a gamer. So I'm probably going to buy a 27 inch monitor as my next upgrade.

I will then upgrade my cpu, motherboard and ram probably around christmas time.
 
Don't upgrade anywhere near as often as I used too ... but I'm not a gamer.

If I came into some money then I'd probably get some new machines but everything I have at the moment seems to do what I need even if it is mostly running Core2duo's of various forms.
 
Roughly every 3 years for me.

1999 - PII 350, crappy 2MB ATI, later upgraded to Voodoo 4
2001 - Thunderbird 1400, Geforce 2 (I know, same as Voodoo 4 really)
2003 - P4 2.8 HT, Geforce FX 5600
2006 - Pentium D 3.4, Geforce 6800, then Geforce 7600 (thought it was an upgrade *facepalm*)
2009 - Phenom II X2 550, HD 4850
2013 - i5-3470T, HD7850M (Samsung Series 7 all-in-one PC)
 
Usually ever 3 years or so. My previous core i7 laptop only lasted 15 months as I moved to a Macbook Pro. I imagine I will have this machine for quite some time.

The only thing I am thinking about upgrading is my NL36 MicroServer as it would be nice to use it for video encoding and transcoding as well as storage.
 
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I only change anything major when it's becomming obvious the machine can't handle modern apps/games the way I want it to, though I'll probably revise one or two components a year.

Even then I tend to just chuck in a slightly newer card / ram.

The current desktop is still running on an unlocked and OC'd phenom II B75 with an HD5830 (again fairly heavily oc'd), 8 gig of xms3 and an MSI 870 AM3 board. I still find it absolutely fine, though to be fair I don't rush to pick up and play the newest games etc.

Currently considering changing the card, but even then I'll probably only spend about £80-100 after selling on the 5830. Just don't see the point in spending hundreds at a time on the desktop these days.
 
I seem to have stopped upgrading still running a dual core Opteron 170 with 2gb RAM, was as addicted as anybody until the real world of work kicked in and then the idea of touching a computer after 9hrs in the office appealed about as much as gouging out my own eyes! I really must get something a bit more modern as the performance is finally starting to grate!
 
I always build from scratch, roughly 2-4 years. Last PC I spent 4k on (last year, incl monitor) and guessing that will last me another year or two. Although I think I will upgrade the graphics cards on this next year so may last longer.
 
Last time I upgraded was 6 or 7 years ago....

Current compooter is
C2D e2160/4gb ram/9800GT graphics

Would be a lot better if I bothered to put an SSD in.

Similarly have a 4 year old laptop bought on this MM but put an SSD in and it flies.
 
I tend to build a new rig every 3-4 years. My i5 750 rig (oc to 3.7ghz only limited by poor cooling, 2gb 6970, 4gb ddr3, 64gb ssd) is still going strong but I now want an itx/matx rig and I'll probably have to change CPU as I can't find any secondhand s1156 itx motherboards. Shame really as my CPU is still fast enough for me and is probably worth bugger all if I sell it.
 
I havn't upgraded much in the last 3-4 years, have an i7 920 processor. Not a big gamer so my 4870x2 seems to be good enough for what I do play. Processors just don't seem to get radically faster anymore, the latest bunch are just more energy efficient. The biggest speed gain was adding an SSD about the same time, couldn't believe the difference. Its currently dying so I have a Samsung 840 ready to replace it. The only other upgrade in that time was going from 6gb to 12gb RAM, mainly because I was getting running out of ram errors. But thats it.

I mean to change to water cooling at some point, been slowly collecting the parts, just need the case now. I'm really bored with the current case. But I've no other plans to change the hardware.
 
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