The 10 year plan computer

[P4-630]

Haven't seen the OP anymore in this 10-year thread...

 

[Vario]

Still amazed my 14 year old computer still works great. Xeon W3680 on Asus P6X58D-E Premium. The once and future Gulftown.

 

[SL2]

Haven't seen the OP anymore in this 10-year thread...

TPU forums is an endless stream of opinions no one asked for, primarily.

Yup, I'm guilty as well.

 

[#22]

Bad thing that OP asked in just his first post about some PSU; RAM or storage and this endless stream of opinions rather missed it. When these are the exact components we can quite realistically talk about futureproofing

 

[ThrashZone]

Haven't seen the OP anymore in this 10-year thread...

Hi,
Tough to believe there is now 8 pages of this stuff 180 posts

 

[Wirko]

To the OP @Desktopstu : can you possibly shorten your planned PC lifetime to 8 years? Seems like a small change but we could have a much more reasonable and productive discussion then. And nothing would stop you from using the PC for two more years if it still fits your needs and expectations (which change over time).

- said a non-gamer who built three desktop PCs and bought one notebook in the last 25 years.

 

[Bones]

Haven't seen the OP anymore in this 10-year thread...

They've been around.
The other day they gave a like to what I had posted back on page one but as you've pointed out, so far no further posts from them.

 

[P4-630]

OP got a bit overwhelmed I guess...

 

[Desktopstu]

OP seems the kind of person who made decision basing on not knowing much and now just doesn't like opinions of people knowing more. Kinda person who believes in what he likes more.

You will for sure go to Heaven. Together with your everlasting mid-range pc. Just tell us your sins what makes them forgiven, so you can keep sinning and give money.

Wow, bit harsh.

I’ve asked for advice on my plan, the components etc not an opinion of the plan itself.
you say I have based my decision on not knowing much, I’m no expert but I have built many PCs over the years. Some built to sell (buyer just tells me what they want to play I then build something that will do that) some built just to mess around with.
this is just a project, just an idea. I was after some thoughts and ideas on the components and some of those responding have indeed offered useful advice which I’ve taken on board.

Sorry I’ve not responded recently, there’s been a bit of a family crisis. My 80 yr old dads been knocked over crossing the road, he has broken hip amongst other issues. In all honesty, it’s most likely he won’t be coming home. I’m devastated to be honest and my head is deffo not in a pc building of 10 year plan space right now.
I do appreciate all the advice given though, I think in general many of you have just taken a look at the plan, seen it as ridiculous and have not moved on from that. That’s fine, advice is advice. What I was after though was advice on the components themselves - which I have received and thanks for that- that’s all I needed.

 

[#22]

Wow, bit harsh.

Harsh, but it's only assumption, so I wouldn't bother if you just feel it's missed

I’ve asked for advice on my plan, the components etc not an opinion of the plan itself.
you say I have based my decision on not knowing much, I’m no expert but I have built many PCs over the years. Some built to sell (buyer just tells me what they want to play I then build something that will do that) some built just to mess around with.
this is just a project, just an idea. I was after some thoughts and ideas on the components and some of those responding have indeed offered useful advice which I’ve taken on board.

In my first post in this thread I gave you such advice. In this relatively short answer I also gave you my opinion about it and supported it with examples. I noticed that you were more about advices than opinions, but this is the kind of plan where giving advice is giving negative opinion about plan, sorry. I also think that a lot of useful things were said in this thread, though.

Sorry I’ve not responded recently, there’s been a bit of a family crisis. My 80 yr old dads been knocked over crossing the road, he has broken hip amongst other issues. In all honesty, it’s most likely he won’t be coming home. I’m devastated to be honest and my head is deffo not in a pc building of 10 year plan space right now.
I do appreciate all the advice given though, I think in general many of you have just taken a look at the plan, seen it as ridiculous and have not moved on from that. That’s fine, advice is advice. What I was after though was advice on the components themselves - which I have received and thanks for that- that’s all I needed.

Sorry to hear about your father. You don't need to explain your absence here to anybody and you shouldn't bother in such time. As always discussion can wait and I just wish you and your father best!

 

[Desktopstu]

Ok, an update.

First things first, my father is still with us, just about. He has a snapped hip, that is the upper thigh bone going into the socket has snapped. Because of his age and overall health condition they cannot operate so he is looking at selling up his house, selling off all his old workshop gear (thats going to be hard!) and getting a place we can adapt to allow him to have the best quality of life he can. He wont walk again under his own steam.

Secondly, this incident has made me rethink a few life choices. Like retirement for one. I hit 55 next year and have decided that I want to take partial retirement then and spend more time with the family, especially my father. I get a pretty hefty payout at 55 so i plan to ressurect my fun little 10 year plan then with a bigger budget than I currently have, im thinking i will allocate maybe around £2500 - £3000 to it and see if i can stretch the pc out to 10 years. My current pc is undergoing a few upgrades to hold me out till then. Recently aquired a very cheap A770 16gb (£170) and thats really improved the pcs capabilities overe the old GTX 970. There will be a few other upgrades no doubt.

Someone here mentioned that I should just get a ten year old pc and use that if i want to see an old pc try to keep up with modern games, i do actually have a pc here probably older than 10 years. Its a FX6300 with 8gb DDR3, R9 7970 3gb, Its one of the many pcs here. It can run world of tanks at medium settings and gets used now and then. its useable but i think it would self combust if I tried to play cyberpunk on it.

I still stand by the fact that a pc can be quite capable 10 years on, if you start out with a decent spec. And that was my biggest mistake, i didnt aim high enough at the outset. a top end pc from 2014 might have looked like this:

i7 5820K 6 core cpu
X99 motherboard
16gb DDR4
GTX 980 4gb

Now... such a pc would indeed be quite capable today and would most likley just about run AAA titles such as cyberpunk (no RT of course) at somewhat playable levels i believe. But the cpu i was intending to use being old 11th gen is setting the bar too low, as was the graphics card I originally suggested (7900 Rabbit) so my 2014 pc would have likley looked a bit more like this:

i7 3770K
1155 motherboard
16gb DDR3
R9 290 4gb

or something like that. Now, using something like that in 2024 to run something like cyberpunk for example would likely be... not the most enjoyable experience. Hence the rethink. So I will see you all back here for the revised 10 year plan in 2025

 

[dgianstefani]

Ok, an update.

First things first, my father is still with us, just about. He has a snapped hip, that is the upper thigh bone going into the socket has snapped. Because of his age and overall health condition they cannot operate so he is looking at selling up his house, selling off all his old workshop gear (thats going to be hard!) and getting a place we can adapt to allow him to have the best quality of life he can. He wont walk again under his own steam.

Secondly, this incident has made me rethink a few life choices. Like retirement for one. I hit 55 next year and have decided that I want to take partial retirement then and spend more time with the family, especially my father. I get a pretty hefty payout at 55 so i plan to ressurect my fun little 10 year plan then with a bigger budget than I currently have, im thinking i will allocate maybe around £2500 - £3000 to it and see if i can stretch the pc out to 10 years. My current pc is undergoing a few upgrades to hold me out till then. Recently aquired a very cheap A770 16gb (£170) and thats really improved the pcs capabilities overe the old GTX 970. There will be a few other upgrades no doubt.

Someone here mentioned that I should just get a ten year old pc and use that if i want to see an old pc try to keep up with modern games, i do actually have a pc here probably older than 10 years. Its a FX6300 with 8gb DDR3, R9 7970 3gb, Its one of the many pcs here. It can run world of tanks at medium settings and gets used now and then. its useable but i think it would self combust if I tried to play cyberpunk on it.

I still stand by the fact that a pc can be quite capable 10 years on, if you start out with a decent spec. And that was my biggest mistake, i didnt aim high enough at the outset. a top end pc from 2014 might have looked like this:

i7 5820K 6 core cpu
X99 motherboard
16gb DDR4
GTX 980 4gb

Now... such a pc would indeed be quite capable today and would most likley just about run AAA titles such as cyberpunk (no RT of course) at somewhat playable levels i believe. But the cpu i was intending to use being old 11th gen is setting the bar too low, as was the graphics card I originally suggested (7900 Rabbit) so my 2014 pc would have likley looked a bit more like this:

i7 3770K
1155 motherboard
16gb DDR3
R9 290 4gb

or something like that. Now, using something like that in 2024 to run something like cyberpunk for example would likely be... not the most enjoyable experience. Hence the rethink. So I will see you all back here for the revised 10 year plan in 2025

Nice. Will be in time for Arrow Lake/Zen 5 and RTX 50xx.

£2-2.5K PC and a £500-£1K monitor will be a decent build that stands a good chance of lasting ten years. You can also do something like a 4K build and then later down the line run games in 1080P for 4:1 pixel scaling, or use DLSS.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

... i plan to ressurect my fun little 10 year plan then with a bigger budget than I currently have, im thinking i will allocate maybe around £2500 - £3000 to it and see if i can stretch the pc out to 10 years.

I am afraid that the only practical result of increasing the budget will be losing more money, not increasing longevity of the computer. You received a plethora of arguments why this might be the case in this thread already.

One thing is certain: the value of the computer will be nearly 0 after 10 years. Nobody will want it. On the other hand, if you planned to use 3 computers in this time, each computer after its service would still have some value and would be resellable.

Your idea is the same silly as if you wanted to conserve food with some exotic expensive space age technology for 10 years, instead of using normal conserving technique for usual time periods. After 5 years you would find that your space technology failed anyway and the food is spoilt. Money wasted.

 

[dgianstefani]

I am afraid that the only practical result of increasing the budget will be losing more money, not increasing longevity of the computer. You received a plethora of arguments why this might be the case in this thread already.

One thing is certain: the value of the computer will be nearly 0 after 10 years. Nobody will want it. On the other hand, if you planned to use 3 computers in this time, each computer after its service would still have some value and would be resellable.

Your idea is the same silly as if you wanted to conserve food with some exotic space age technology for 10 years, instead of using normal conserving technique for usual time periods. After 5 years you would find that you space technology failed anyway and the food is spoilt. Money wasted.

Heard of canning?

 

[BoggledBeagle]

Heard of canning?

Yeah, I was thinking about canning as the "normal conserving technique".

 

[:D:D]

IMO depends on whether technology stagnates or not. Seems however fast HW is some newer software can make it slow enough to still have time to make coffee and if tech has accelerated by a lot then it may be difficult to run that old HW.

 

[Chrispy_]

IMO depends on whether technology stagnates or not. Seems however fast HW is some newer software can make it slow enough to still have time to make coffee and if tech has accelerated by a lot then it may be difficult to run that old HW.

The only reason Sandy Bridge chips were viable for 10-12 years at all, was because the consumer CPU market basically stalled for 5 years whilst AMD misfired and Intel sat back doing very little. Yes, Kaby Lake was faster than Sandy Bridge, but it was still basically the same quad-core formula with minor, incremental improvements that did very little gen-on-gen - There were many instances where Kaby Lake was only 1.x the performance of a 6-year old Sandy Bridge CPU and meant that chips like the i7-2600K were still very competitive with the new chips even after all that time.

It wasn't until Zen came along that Intel was forced to react, at which point we got Coffee Lake which was the first significant upgrade Intel had given consumers in at least 6 years since Sandy Bridge, and it was arguably a bigger bump than the jump from Core2 to Nehalem in 2008.

By contrast, Zen1 launched in 2017 and just five years later we had the 7950X with twice the core count and something like a 5-6x performance uplift, not a1.x after 6 years. More importantly, that first-gen Ryzen 7 1800X has been a poor choice for gaming for a while now. Any new GPU will have been bottlenecked by its relatively low IPC and clocks for a few years now, Even a lowly Ryzen 5 5600 can push frames to a GPU with enough improvement than anyone upgrading a GPU on an 1800X would be wise to consider reducing their GPU budget by the cost of a new CPU as that would likely produce better results for the same cost.

I guess even 5-year-builds are far from optimal these days. Yes, a 5 year build will likely still be perfectly viable but it won't be flagship for long and the hole in your wallet a flagship build creates is easily enough to buy multiple, more effective upgrades with change to spare....

 

[Desktopstu]

I am afraid that the only practical result of increasing the budget will be losing more money, not increasing longevity of the computer. You received a plethora of arguments why this might be the case in this thread already.

One thing is certain: the value of the computer will be nearly 0 after 10 years. Nobody will want it. On the other hand, if you planned to use 3 computers in this time, each computer after its service would still have some value and would be resellable.

Your idea is the same silly as if you wanted to conserve food with some exotic expensive space age technology for 10 years, instead of using normal conserving technique for usual time periods. After 5 years you would find that your space technology failed anyway and the food is spoilt. Money wasted.

Tell that to the smug GTX 1080ti users still using the same graphics card for 7 years.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

... Zen1 launched in 2017 and just five years later we had the 7950X with twice the core count and something like a 5-6x performance uplift, not a1.x after 6 years. More importantly, that first-gen Ryzen 7 1800X has been a poor choice for gaming for a while now ... Even a lowly Ryzen 5 5600 can push frames to a GPU with enough improvement than anyone upgrading a GPU on an 1800X would be wise to consider reducing their GPU budget by the cost of a new CPU as that would likely produce better results for the same cost.

I guess even 5-year-builds are far from optimal these days. Yes, a 5 year build will likely still be perfectly viable ...

Viable for some limited usage scenarios, but woefully weak in comparison with the new stuff. I think we are looking at the period of very quick development and large year to year improvements.

 

[Desktopstu]

The only reason Sandy Bridge chips were viable for 10-12 years at all, was because the consumer CPU market basically stalled for 5 years whilst AMD misfired and Intel sat back doing very little. Yes, Kaby Lake was faster than Sandy Bridge, but it was still basically the same quad-core formula with minor, incremental improvements that did very little gen-on-gen - There were many instances where Kaby Lake was only 1.x the performance of a 6-year old Sandy Bridge CPU and meant that chips like the i7-2600K were still very competitive with the new chips even after all that time.

It wasn't until Zen came along that Intel was forced to react, at which point we got Coffee Lake which was the first significant upgrade Intel had given consumers in at least 6 years since Sandy Bridge, and it was arguably a bigger bump than the jump from Core2 to Nehalem in 2008.

By contrast, Zen1 launched in 2017 and just five years later we had the 7950X with twice the core count and something like a 5-6x performance uplift, not a1.x after 6 years. More importantly, that first-gen Ryzen 7 1800X has been a poor choice for gaming for a while now. Any new GPU will have been bottlenecked by its relatively low IPC and clocks for a few years now, Even a lowly Ryzen 5 5600 can push frames to a GPU with enough improvement than anyone upgrading a GPU on an 1800X would be wise to consider reducing their GPU budget by the cost of a new CPU as that would likely produce better results for the same cost.

I guess even 5-year-builds are far from optimal these days. Yes, a 5 year build will likely still be perfectly viable but it won't be flagship for long and the hole in your wallet a flagship build creates is easily enough to buy multiple, more effective upgrades with change to spare....

No computer can remain flagship for long, all I’m saying is that buying high end can lead to the pc remaining relevant and useable for a good while. GTX 1080ti being a case point, still very useable today 7 years on,

I’m sure I could build something mid range and replace it every three or four years but I’m interested see how well something pretty high end would last. That’s all. Nothing more nothing less.

 

[DaemonForce]

The actual pecking order of this stuff is pretty good once you have it down.
I pick a feature loaded or flagship board.
Entry or high value CPU.
A cheap memory kit if the generation is terrible or max dimms if it's good.
A GPU that satisfies game framerate AND compute job.

5-9 years later:
Max dimms
Capstone GPU
Capstone CPU
Curate thermal solution

I don't justify buying every flagship item out there but I get it. It's important to have at least one compass that isn't constantly spinning and go with that or you will actually be completely lost by the time you need new hardware. Half of my hardware doesn't really have a proper home and is one of the reasons I'm prone to having a LAIN room after some time. I don't do this by building something with any extended use period in mind. My FX-8370 is old in everyone's eyes but I still rely on it to do some serious lifting and that's okay. It has a purpose in this environment and more importantly, I know its strengths, weaknesses and can trust it not to change. My R5 3600 is old to a lot of people but still very new to the people coming to these forums lately. There's nothing particularly wrong with it but I really should be looking at a 5900X or 5800X3D by now. If I had something like a 10 or 11 series and consider upgrading that badly, first of all the socket is done and there's nothing new that is going to trickle down to it. You look at any high end CPU chart and it's littered with Threadripper and EPYC chips that cost damn near five figures and bench six. Every single one of these are going to get bodied by the first wave of chips that arrive with backside power delivery design next year and that's going to be an interesting ride for ordinary users and overclockers.

No computer can remain flagship for long, all I’m saying is that buying high end can lead to the pc remaining relevant and useable for a good while.

The technology milestones matter more than binned batches of silicon. Get in at the wrong time and you end up paying through the nose just to have a miserable experience with others.

 

[Vario]

I'd recommend buying a lesser pc twice over the same time frame. Resell the first as you build the second. If you keep all the old boxes and everything looks good you can usually resell the CPU, motherboard, and ram for at least half of the original purchase price. I have done this several times and been amazed at how much I can recoup. People will pay a lot for a "new looking" old stock motherboard (I plainly state to buyer it is used, good condition) and i7s keep their value really well.

It is also a lower risk bet in case something kills your entire machine, the replacement cost will be lower.

 

[Desktopstu]

I'd recommend buying a lesser pc twice over the same time frame. Resell the first as you build the second. If you keep all the old boxes and everything looks good you can usually resell the CPU, motherboard, and ram for at least half of the original purchase price. I have done this several times and been amazed at how much I can recoup. People will pay a lot for a "new looking" old stock motherboard (I plainly state to buyer it is used, good condition) and i7s keep their value really well.

It is also a lower risk bet in case something kills your entire machine, the replacement cost will be lower.

That is what I’ve always done. I’ve even made money on occasions. This is just a pet project of mine, there are a lot of computers in my house of varying age and use, these are generally upgraded or replaced (or sometimes relegated) as time goes by.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

It is very hard to plan 10 years ahead, beside personal problems, global problems as disasters, supply chain disruptions, wars, the computer related stuff can be impacted by some new safety vulnerabilities, science and technology development cannot be predicted by definition, etc.

Your plan for a 10 year computer is like planning a sand castle on the beach.

 

[reggie_fils_aime]

The only reasonable hopes of having a computer platform for 10 years are to either build something so unfathomably powerful that it makes every other machine look bad, or to invest in a platform that could realistically see new parts for a decent portion of that time. So, you could either build Ryzen 7000, or some form of workstation-class monster.

My advice would be to sell that 10400 (they go for 100 USD on ebay), and put your funds towards a build on AM5. Start with a 6-core, buy Ryzen 9k/10k when you're ready, and keep on trucking. I know plenty of people who bought into AM4 in 2017, just upgraded this year, and plan to have their computer last another half-decade.