Querying whether it’s worth building fresh

Posted by Demoneyes1945@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 14 comments

Hi guys, It struck me this morning that my PC is now verging on 6 years old and from experience over past computers, it’s around this age onward that components start to fail or issues begin to arise. I started playing with the idea of going for a completely new build but wanted to know if people thought it was worth it, or just to upgrade some SSDs and wait until the black screen of death eventually occurs. I use the computer for work as well as games, so for the former, I wouldn’t really wish to wait until doomsday. At the moment, it has a 500GB SSD, 3TB HDD (which seems defunct with modern games) Other specs currently - GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8192mb GDDR6, Corsair DDR4 16GB, Intel Core i9-9900@ 3.6GHZ processor and gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro Intel DDR4 ATX motherboard. She still runs well enough on the desktop but loading screens in games are beginning to really stretch out. Thanks in advance :)

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14 Comments

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DividedBy_00@reddit

There is no reason to expect anything to just die - most likely, all of these components will last another 5+ years without issue. If loading time is the primary issue, you could consider a faster SSD (ideally NVMe drive, if your mobo supports). Especially if you have the games on the 3TB... that would be extremely slow. Your SSD, maybe faster than the HDD, but depending how old it is - it might be pretty slow overall too. If games, once loaded, are still running slow - it could be time for a bigger upgrade, but it sort of depends where your bottleneck is if you want to try to address individual components.

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Demoneyes1945@reddit (OP)

I actually removed a lot of junk from the SSD and stuck one game on that a play a lot of there, the difference is night and day. I may just wait until the computer does die and go from there, I haven’t really been buying too many modern games to worry too much about it; I think Red Dead 2 was probably the main reason on deciding for the last upgrade - if only then I had gone for a second SSD drive, I’d probably not be contemplating things too much now!

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DividedBy_00@reddit

Were the games before on the HDD? If yes, that is a big culprit for slow loading. Either way, though, glad you got it working better!

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Demoneyes1945@reddit (OP)

They all were/are; I only moved one game over as with the OS, there’s real limited space on the SSD at 500gb. But with wow being the go-to and new expansion out shortly, I kind of figure I won’t be playing other games for a while :) it’s not graphic hungry but you definitely could tell something was up with loading screens and in-game items loading if you were moving quickly through areas.

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Defiant_Ad5381@reddit

I wouldn’t worry about part failure that much. You’re entering the upper boundary of lifespan for a typical rig but there’s no reason to think you won’t get a good 10 years out of it from a functional perspective. Whether the rig meets your performance preferences is another thing entirely. If you’re building you should probably do everything. You can keep your current case but everything else will need an upgrade. You can chunk it though if budget is a problem. I’d recommend doing CPU, PSU, Mobo, Ram, and SSD in one go, GPU later if you can’t do it all at once.

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Demoneyes1945@reddit (OP)

Yeah, going by the advice from everyone, I think I’ll just wait it out for a while. If I ever do get into gaming properly again with new titles, I may consider it then. For the moment, my go-to is WoW which isn’t a huge drain on resources but after an SSD clear out yesterday, I made enough space for the OS and moving that game over from the HD which has maybe sated my desires for a wee while longer. But it is tempting to go for a rebuild! Lol.

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Tortenkopf@reddit

Not an answer to your question but I was wondering which components are wearing out or are causing BSODs in your experience? Beyond PSUs no critical parts experience wear as far as I can think of and I have never had any non-recoverable failure in my 33 years of using PCs.

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VoraciousGorak@reddit

> and I have never had any non-recoverable failure in my 33 years of using PCs. The bathtub curve comes for them all. Even etched silicon has a wear level. Frankly if you've not had an in-service failure in 33 years then you haven't used a whole lot of computers - that isn't a slight against you, but an observation from someone who has used arguably *too many* computers in that timeframe.

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Tortenkopf@reddit

>Frankly if you've not had an in-service failure in 33 years then you haven't used a whole lot of computers 'A whole lot' may mean different things and I do usually update my main machines every couple of years, so those don't get in the long tail where failures are more common. Nevertheless I feel I have enough experience that I really don't believe critical hardware failures are unavoidable after 10-or-so years. I run a server that's on 24/7 in various configurations for 10+ years. The current motherboard will turn 8 years old this year. The only silicon I've broken was due to overclocking, which I have steered clear of ever since :P In addition I work on a laptop for at least 6 hours per day 5 days per week for the last 20 years. Like I said I've never had critical hardware failures beyond a PSU popping and HDDs failing, but HDDs are mechanical and should not be critical components in modern build. I have some oldies for nostalgia which I don't regularly turn on, but which still work fine. Think MSX2, Commodore 64 and Amiga 500, in addition to a bunch of gaming consoles.

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jaffster123@reddit

If you decide to upgrade you will inevitably end up replacing most of your components anyway. New CPU would mean new mobo and new memory. New GPU would want the latest PCI-e generation so you would want a new mobo, might as well just keep your case and replace everything if you can afford it.

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Demoneyes1945@reddit (OP)

That’s kind of my thought as you say with some pieces relying on new replacements - amusingly, the old OLD computer with the maxi gamer phoenix voodoo 2 I found in the garage the other day and it booted up fine and dandy, 20 something years later. Probably couldn’t even run windows solitaire now though 😂

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drowsycow@reddit

still gudddddd but if u need to compile shaders yes it will take some timeeeeeee

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Demoneyes1945@reddit (OP)

Oh I noticed the pain in that third instalment of cod2019! Lol

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SundownKid@reddit

If you have a low budget, you can get away with upgrading your GPU and slapping in a faster bigger SSD so you can fit games on it. If you have more money to spend, I'd recommend building from scratch still, there is no sign part prices will go down for the foreseeable future, making it rolling the dice to wait for AI bubble to pop.