106 PCWorld NOVEMBER 2020HERE’S HOW WHEN SHOULD YOU REPLACE A PC?
falls, and the age of its components, in that
order. Depending on how much you invest in
your initial build, its shelf life can vary.
Case in point: The oldest active PC
among our staff is nine years old. At its heart is
a Core i5-2500K, which has withstood the
ravages of time exceptionally well. Its owner
(me) has been able to switch to an SSD as a
boot drive, drop in additional RAM, and
upgrade the GPU to keep it in fighting shape.
Only in the last year have I thought about
overclocking the CPU as a final small boost to
the system’s performance.
The groundwork was laid at the time of
purchase for milking the heck out of this PC:
overclockable CPU, motherboard with four
RAM slots, power supply capable of
supporting midrange GPUs. I have paid
relatively very little for upkeep, thanks to
well-timed sales and the fact that I don’t mind
that I’m not on the bleeding edge of PCgaming.
In contrast, our staff has also helped
friends replace systems newer than that
2500K, because the hardware was too
budget to have a long-term lifespan—or the
user’s needs outgrew the hardware by such
large leaps and bounds that there was no
bridging the gap. (Content-creation dreams
matched with a Celeron processor doesn’t
work for very long.)
Of course, this discussion about hardware
upgrades versus a system replacement
assumes that you’re trying to decide between
the two because of the research you’ve done
on your performance issue(s). If you’re instead
just running into a broad issue of your
computer running slow during everyday use,
such as web browsing or document editing,
you may be suffering from software issues.
(Driver conflicts, programs that hog system
resources, etc.) We suggest resolving that
first, either through
investigative work or by
backing up all your files
and then doing a full
wipe and reinstall of
your operating system
and the programs you
use most, and then
seeing how your system
feels. You may find you
don’t need to change
up your components
at all.