Gregory's ServerI'm still using a PC I bought in 2015, I only ever replaced the graphics card and installed extra RAM and I'm not really running into any performance bottlenecks. My biggest issue is the small SSD that Windows came pre-installed on; I'm constantly living on 1GB free disk space. Think it would be fun to build a PC from parts one day though.
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 @Gargron I still use a MacBook from 2013, replaced the battery and power cable but otherwise still perfectly fine. @Gargron You should see some of the Green Ham Gaming videos, with some simple upgrades (mainly GPU and RAM), older desktops are really worth their bang-for-buck - even if the Coronavirus has slightly messed up pricing of them! My favourite is "The Incredible i5 Dell" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-GxfU9Yem0 I only updated my desktop this year, because I tried to buy a desktop as a server and they couldn't fulfil the order. I'm planning on keeping my current one for at least six years.  I'm still using a MacBook from 2012 but I did upgrade the SSD at one point. Though now that AMD Zen3 is a thing, I'm thinking that maybe I want to build a ridiculously powerful hackintosh. @Gargron Gotta second the pcpartpicker.com recommendations. I hadn't built a PC in decades, but they helped me put together a decent mid-tier gaming rig. I saved about 30% on the price of a pre-built, and they ensure all the parts you get are compatible. Had it up and running in just one day, with minimal instructions. The result is performant. There's also a lot to be said for sticking with current hardware as long as you can, though. Moore's Law is dead. @Gargron unless its gaming, most people could use a 5 year old computer as a daily driver perfectly fine. Not to mention mobile and tablet devices are almost just as powerful.  @Gargron I have a computer from 2010-2011 that still works fine, even on some newer games. I'd love to build one myself too. Perhaps next year will be the year? @Gargron Cloning an SSD onto a larger SSD should be fairly simple - I do it all the time, on Ubuntu and Windows systems. Can just "ddrescue" and then expand partition sizes, etc. Looks like expanding LVM and XFS is also simple. I would just get a cheap SSD from Microcenter, for example, along with a suitable USB adapter, and Jump to a larger disk. cheers @Gargron I built a sweet system back in 2009, till a few weeks ago it stopped. I narrowed it down to something obscure in Windows not identifying any devices properly. I backed up, partition-wiped, and reinstalled Windows - both 64 bit and 32 bit - still the same issue. Out of desperation I booted off a flash drive running Ubuntu, and I'll be fucking damned if it didn't see everything correctly. So now my workstation (i7-920/24GB/4TB) runs Linux full time!   @Gargron I'm using this computer I built from parts in 2016. i5 rather than i7, but still no performance issue. 16GB RAM, a small 128GB SSD for / (currently only 13.7GB used), and a 1TB spinning disk for /home, as well as swap and /var (to limit SSD wear from swap and logging). Just the mainboard integrated intel graphics card. https://steinar.bang.priv.no/2016/02/06/debian-jessie-on-intel-skylake/  |
@Gargron Well, I've been building my own PCs for like 15 years and can confirm it IS pretty fun. Though in my case, it always takes a long time speccing "just the right stuff", planing the watercooling, seeing what I can grab second-hand, etc...
But yeah, for sure, build your own next time, super fun