Intel CEO: Most People Only Replace A PC After 5-6 Years

Times have just changed. I remember buying a new PC almost yearly (386->486->pentium ... ) then at some point I felt Intel/AMD were just not giving much performance differences so I started increasing the amount of time between upgrades. I am now on a 4-6 year cycle. I mean my last upgrade a Q6600->i7-3770k was like 6 years. I am on Year 4 of the 3770k and I am starting to want something new. I wanted a Broadwell-E but honestly I am not that impressed by it so I am probably going to wait another year and hope Skylake-E will be better (10 core 4.5Ghz stock as the entry level $$350 chip yeah I know, but I can dream ;) )
 
Yeah far too many IT Guys are stuck thinking its 1999 when you needed all the ram and CPU you could lay your hands on. That hasn't been the case for many many years.

The only reason I upgraded from my current 2008 machine was that I wanted some of the newer storage/USB tech available. Nothing to do with CPU or ram performance even though the old box was running 16GB DDR2 ECC. I had run out of PCI-e slots to add cards in, so time to move on.

That's the only reason to upgrade a machine for me.


If I wasn't doing so much IT work I'd just clear out all the tech junk and buy a Pixel. Bliss.
 
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i7-2600K @ 4GHz for me... no reason to upgrade unless there's a MASSIVE performance boost (which there isn't enough of going from Sandy to Skylake). Probably wait until 10th gen or something like that. It was totally worth going from C2D to Sandy (more cores and IPC % increase). Skylake isn't 75% faster IPC than Sandy unlike going from C2D to Sandy.
 
Girlfriend and I are both on 5 year PC hardware cycles. The only exceptions are the video card which sometimes has to be upgraded sooner, and adding more memory down the line. Im still rocking a 560ti in my PC but it is showing its age a little with recent games. Probably going to upgrade that within the next 5 months.
 
I usually upgrade one major part in my gaming rig every 2 years. Ever since me and my best friend had a competition to build the best gaming rig for the least amount of money I've been addicted to this style of building. I hunt around for amazing deals on hardware that seems broken, but the owners are either too ignorant or lazy to fix. My last upgrade was GPU's last year, I picked up 2 radeon 7950's with broken fans for $40 each. My general rule is no part should cost more than $100 unless you absolutely must have an i7. I got my current i5 ivy bridge and mobo by trading a speaker set that I upgraded by swapping out the factory drivers.

I promised myself I would continue this until AMD releases a good CPU. Doesn't have to be better than an i7, just has to compete with an i5. Hopefully that time will be the end of this year or early next year.

I really want to build a new rig with 128GB of DDR4 so I can load my OS and a game into a RAM disk. Getting a native Windows to load into a RAM disk will be a serious challenge I can't wait to tackle.
 
cyclone3d said:
I feel sorry for those business customers... Unless all they are doing is browsing web sites and not even using Office, they could see a pretty huge increase in speed with a newer system.

Where I work, we do replacements every 5 years now.

The oldest machines we have are 2nd gen i5/i7 machines. I could have went another year or so on most of them but was told if I don't spend the money, then they won't budget for it next year.

Once you get into Word documents that are several hundred pages and really huge Excel files, the old crap such as you are recommending doesn't cut it. And 4GB is just absolutely horrible. I upgraded some machines that had 4GB to 8GB and some to 16GB because stuff was running way too slow (Word and Excel x64). Stuff that was taking minutes to do immediately only took a couple seconds.
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I have an E7300 Core2 4GB as my primary office PC for basic stuff like emails word processing and such. After slapping an old 256GB Samsung 830SSD into it for the OS drive, The difference is barely noticeable to the newer i7-4770 ones with 8GB Ram. But if I want to run something CPU intensive I use my second workstation with the I7-980X and 24GB ram. But EXCEL with normal sized documents I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the two.
 
I'm still rocking my 3770k at stock. Haven't run into any games that need anything more.
 
MrValentine said:
I wish we replaced that often at work. But we have a 10 year turn around on our desktops at best.

As for my personal desktop at home...... I'm still rocking a socket 1366. So maybe I'm not much better.
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Unless your office use case changes then there's little reason to replace sooner than 10 years.

We are selling off our PCs bought after May 2011.

All old PCs are being standardised to 8GB RAM & 240GB SSD. If there's an extra bay then the SSD becomes C: while the HDD becomes D: or E:

So long as the total cost of repair is less than 20% of a $600 ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 Ryzen 3 4000 chip then do preventive maintenance.

If not then sell as is and buy that $600 Thinkpad.

We are standardising to as few SKUs as possible so it's easier to maintain & manage over 100 PCs.
 
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I built a friend a PC back in 2008, C2D E8400 and 8600GTS I believe, and they used it daily till last year when I built them a Ryzen 2700X with a 2060 Super.

I don't think they ever cleaned it,

IMG_5420.JPG IMG_5418.JPG

After I cleaned it,

IMG_5487.JPG
 
Ha! This is probably even more correct now than it was in 2016. For all of the chatter over AMD being better than Intel and what not, basically everything since this original post opens Chrome at the same speed. You can run most of the most popular 10 PC games on a potato, too. CPU's are only a small part of what = performance at the moment.
Phones aren't much different. 5G is still a whole lot of nothing, Facebook/Messenger can only open so fast, and most people simply want a point+shoot camera.

The real conundrum is that a lot of people are at the end of that 5-6 year cycle and getting a GPU right now is quite the battle.
 
We keep machines for a long ass time. I just now replaced an x79 ivy-E with a 5800x as my primary.
 
Zepher said:
I built a friend a PC back in 2008, C2D E8400 and 8600GTS I believe, and they used it daily till last year when I built them a Ryzen 2700X with a 2060 Super.

I don't think they ever cleaned it,

View attachment 354089 View attachment 354092

After I cleaned it,

View attachment 354091
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That is more like your average PC user. My company only replaces computer when they break. Even then they are a pain in the ass to get new ones. Until a couple years ago I had to share a computer with other guy in my office. That computer started dying a slow death for 6 months before they finally replaced it and gave both of us new laptops.
 
This varies wildly depending on if we are talking about desktops or laptops. With laptops there is a huge potential that it will physically wear out before the hardware actually becomes obsolete. I mean where someone spills something on the keyboard, or cracks the screen, or the battery won't hold a charge anymore, or there is heat damage due to inadequate or compromised cooling, etc. With desktops you have the ability to milk them along for a long time. Even a 15 year old Q6600 is still fine for modern office duty. If the power supply died/dies, replace it. Upgrade the HDD to an SSD. Upgrade the RAM. Replace dead/noisy fans. Install current version of Windows 10. Done.

Even a 2500K is over 10 years old at this point, yet can still game just fine in a pinch.
 
Looks at the AMD 8150 I use as my office PC. Nahhhh people replace these things way fast lol
 
Krazy925 said:
Looks at the AMD 8150 I use as my office PC. Nahhhh people replace these things way fast lol
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Really depends on your use case. Sure for office PC you can get by with a damn core 2 duo as long as it has a SSD. Gaming depends on how satisfied you are with the performance.
 
vegeta535 said:
Really depends on your use case. Sure for office PC you can get by with a damn core 2 duo as long as it has a SSD. Gaming depends on how satisfied you are with the performance.
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Funny enough that’s the only upgrade I had done to this. Bigger SSD. Not even sure how we ended up with this rig but whatever.
 
I'm still using a 5 year old XPS 13 I bought for $800 on Dell outlet as my main mobile/travel machine and really have no need to upgrade it. That's with a 6th gen Intel dual core.
 
Krazy925 said:
Funny enough that’s the only upgrade I had done to this. Bigger SSD. Not even sure how we ended up with this rig but whatever.
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Yeah, my old job we had a bunch of Core i5 machines with 2 cores 4 threads and 8GB of ram and were about 4 years old. PC Tech that was responsible for making new purchases insisted they needed new PC's (for web browsing, and Office, no rendering). Waste of money.
 
For the planet it's only a good thing that people upgrade lesser often but from a PC enthusiast point of view it's kind of disappointing how slowly it's progressing, if they could produce say 15-20% performance improvements (not including core count increase) per every release for example I would definitely upgrade at the very least every 2nd new generation / 1½ - 2 years.
 
I built my current X99 PC in Sept-Oct 2014. I can see myself lingering another couple years or so on it. I have a friend who is still using an X58 system I built for him in early 2009. He was ready for a whole new PC this year, but then the PC market went crazy, so he's holding off for now. Another friend got a Sandy Bridge/Z68 system in early 2012, and he replaced it in 2020 with a Zen 2/X570 system (nothing to do during lockdown so he started upgrading his equipment and built himself a new PC). On the whole I been seeing friends and family using their PCs for more and more years. Before my current system, I was building new PCs for myself about every 4 years or so. Haven't felt the need to do so with my current machine.
 
I have a bunch of customers that used to be on 12-14 year old Core 2 machines and were fine with them on Windows 10 until the CPU vulnerability patches started hitting and running them into the ground. Even with an SSD, the machines were so painfully slow that they had to upgrade to something slightly more modern.

As for myself, I've only really upgraded when the machine falls apart. Since most of my machines are running 24/7/365, they generally last about 4-5 years before something fails.
 
DarkStar02 said:
I thought the same thing until I finally upgraded to a 6700k. Big, big difference using the same video card.
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Same here. People tend to only look at average frame rates for benchmarks and see something like a 10% difference and think it won't matter.

But what actually matters are the minimum frame rates in games which upgrades often make significant differences in.
 
haha nice 5 year old thread bump. I'm still on my 6700k which I got within a couple of months of release. I'd like to build a new 12 core 5xxx Zen rig, but with what I do with it now, I likely wouldn't notice much of a difference. Hopefully in another year or 2 more games will have optimized ray tracing as the video card is always the biggest expense in a build.
 
Necro, but probably even more true today than 5 yrs ago. I have a 7700K, 1080 Ti, 1440p 144Hz monitor and an NVME ssd, but to upgrade this now to anything worthwhile would cost silly money, and for not enough gain in my eyes. YMMV of course but for my usage in games, I just dial back some of the graphics detail and get perfectly reasonable fps (100+). I stopped chasing those last few fps since RTX 2xxx prices went mental....
 
My main machine I first built 7 years ago (2014). Still using the same case and drives, but I've upgraded the GPU a few times and did one refresh with a new mobo/CPU/RAM in 2018.

Prior to that, my last big new PC was in 2008 and I rocked that for a long time, with only minor upgrades (usually the GPU). So yeah, I would agree with the premise of this thread.
 
I thought I needed to upgrade this year and I’ve been advised to hold off for the DDR5 systems. And I don’t know if it was a stealth sales pitch but the team at Dell putting together my new Citrix server really recommends I hold off until I can see the Intel offerings for their GPU’s they said and I quote “I might be pleasantly surprised”
Asside:
Not for the Citrix server that’s getting a stack of RTX6000’s so I can have the proper vGPU licenses.
I was joking with them that at this servers price they should toss me a complementary 3080.
 
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What games can't a 6700K, 16GB ram, and a 1080 vanilla built in 2016 not play decently well today? Games don't push hardware like they once did. There are no "but can it run Crysis?" memes anymore. You might blame consoles for that somewhat I suppose. Devs do tend to program for the lowest common denominator.
 
Was thinking 5-6 years was my norm:

Code: 
/dev/sda    Power_On_Hours             75447 hours / 3143 days / 8.61 years
/dev/sda    Wear_Leveling_Count        97 (% health)
/dev/sda    Airflow_Temperature_Cel    27
/dev/sda    Total_LBAs_Written         29537357882  / 14422538 mb / 14084.5 gb / 13.754 tb
/dev/sda    mean writes per hour:      191.16

OS Drive on my main server.

Most of my laptops only last 4-5 years before the display hinge gives out.
 
If you don't game or do graphics/video editing/CAD intense stuff why you would you need to upgrade for at least 10 years (if the drives would be supported that long)?

The industry ups the gaming graphics so folks go out and buy a faster GPU and CPU then they up the gaming graphics so folks go out and buy a faster GPU and CPU and motherboard and then they up the gaming graphics so folks go out and buy a faster GPU and CPU and motherboard and PS and then thy up the gaming graphics so folks go out and buy a faster GPU and CPU ...
 
I try to upgrade every 5 years. The expense is tough to swallow but component failures are far more rare and mucho less annoying to deal with.
 
Camberwell said:
Necro, but probably even more true today than 5 yrs ago. I have a 7700K, 1080 Ti, 1440p 144Hz monitor and an NVME ssd, but to upgrade this now to anything worthwhile would cost silly money, and for not enough gain in my eyes. YMMV of course but for my usage in games, I just dial back some of the graphics detail and get perfectly reasonable fps (100+). I stopped chasing those last few fps since RTX 2xxx prices went mental....
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That's console talk! 😝
 
My 2011-built 4.6 Ghz Sandy Bridge system is still going strong - albeit with an RTX 3080 upgrade (and a GTX 1070 upgrade before that).

I would have upgraded the CPU and mobo along the way, but impressive gains were never offered by Intel or AMD until recently. Zen 4 will be my next upgrade.
 
Delicieuxz said:
My 2011-built 4.6 Ghz Sandy Bridge system is still going strong - albeit with an RTX 3080 upgrade (and a GTX 1070 upgrade before that).

I would have upgraded the CPU and mobo along the way, but impressive gains were never offered by Intel or AMD until recently. Zen 4 will be my next upgrade.
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2600K is legendary, but it can’t drive modern high end GPUs anymore. You’ll get a big increase in performance when you upgrade. Considering a 5600X is much faster than a 2600k, I think you’ll love Zen 4.





 
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learners permit said:
I try to upgrade every 5 years. The expense is tough to swallow but component failures are far more rare and mucho less annoying to deal with.
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I used to do that, but now I just do it constantly. I’ll get a new SSD, then a few months later more RAM. Then a different GPU. Then a new CPU. Ended being easier on the wallet than a single big bill.

Ship of Theseus style...
 
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