I was wondering when people consider themselves to have a new PC. Technically I’ve had the same PC for close to 20 years now, but every part’s been upgraded several times over.
I figure everyone’s got a different mind about it. For me, I’d have to say when all of the big three—CPU, GPU, mobo—have completed a phase, my brain thinks of the previous setup as “the old PC”.
Definitely when I upgrade the mainboard + CPU, which usually also means new RAM. It’s pretty expensive, you have to change several parts in one go and it’s much more noticable in general usage than the GPU.
To me thats the line. Unless you are like, a very active enthusiast, most people, once they get their CPU installed cooler installed, etc… you probably aren’t’ swapping that out. Its pretty much a computer at that point.
Yeah, you pretty much need to be some kind of early adopter for your CPU socket to seriously consider upgrading just your CPU. Otherwise, there’s just no point. I actually looked it up for my last mainboard, thinking the socket is so old that maybe you can get a somewhat better CPU (i.e. Intel i7 or i9 instead of i5) for really cheap. But the parts market doesn’t seem to work like that, looks like they’d much rather trash their leftover CPUs than make an attractive price.