How long do you typically wait between major upgrades to your gaming PC hardware?

I usually upgrade my GPU to the second or third highest tier every two years (GTX660-->GTX970-->GTX1070). I only upgrade my CPU when there's a major shift in the market. I was using a 3570K for about four years, then I upgraded to a Ryzen 1700 because I wanted more cores. It all really depends on what you want to do though. If I was still playing at 1080p, I'd probably still be fine with my 970, but I got a 1440p monitor for other stuff and wanted my games to run at native resolution.

I don't upgrade unless something breaks. I just play whatever my computer can handle, which has been a lot in the past ten years due to the popularity of indie games.

Usually the GPU every two years although I did go back to back from a 980ti to a 1080ti given that it was a significant jump, and as i sold that PC I may be getting the next xx80ti when I build a new PC.

as for the CPU I usually go a few years, or until there's some new need I have. I went from a 3770k to a 7700k and I'm planning on an i9 for my new PC for non gaming tasks. That usually means I upgrade mobo and memory at the same time out of necessity. PSU I just buy high end and replace it when it breaks. Storage I just keep collecting as I run out of SSD capacity.

GPU is fine to change out whenever I need an FPS boost, usually 3 years. Everything else is more serious and I haven't changed in about 6 years or so.

I'm typically 4-5 years on CPU and 2-3 years on GPU

1999 P3 500

2000 ATI 7500

2003 ATI 9600

2005 Athlon 64

2005 ATI 1600

2009 9600GT

2009 Phenom 2 965

2010 AMD 5850

2013 8350

2014 AMD 7970ghz

2017 380x

2017 Ryzen 1800x

2018 will be getting Vega if prices stop being shitty

I generally wait between 2-3 years for a new GPU and 4-5 for a whole system rebuild, although it generally always happens at the same time. My current system (i5-6600k & 1070) should be good for a while unless I find a awesome deal on a bigger badder ultra-wide monitor, then I will go looking for a 1080ti.

When I can finally afford it :) Sometimes 1 year, sometimes, 3, sometimes a decade. Really depends on how consoles are looking, my financial outlook, and the type of games worth upgrading for. So far nothing has really caught my eye so it will probably be some time.

Let's see... I bought a 7770 in 2012, when I first built my PC. That thing could run everything at the time, but I was running Far Cry 3 on low settings at 720p so I knew I needed something better soon. I saved up and got a 7870, which actually worked pretty damn well until I bought a 970 in 2015 and got The Witcher 3 with it for free. Still using a 970, and it's still in the same PC. I am still able to run pretty much everything reasonably well, but both are getting pretty long in the tooth so I hope to get a new build going this year. I was going to build one last year, but some things (that are now taken care of) popped up that sucked away my spending money. Before I build, though, I want to wait for this whole Spectre/Meltdown vulnerability mess to play out so I can see how badly performance will be affected.

Jumped from a GTX 460 to a 780. I'd like to jump another three gens, from this three-year-old 780 to a 2000 series. But most of the new games don't appeal to me anyway. For now, I can run every game fine.

At least two years is a good feeling gap. Although I usually go for as long as something works in most cases. My first motherboard died after about 2 years I think. (2013 to 2015) My Cpu has been trucking along for 5 years now (I-7 4770), so unless that poops out I plan to keep using it; I reapplied the thermal paste when I had to replace the MB. When I first did a build I got a Gtx 770, eventually going to a 970 right before the motherboard died (2015). 3 years onto now in 2018 and I'll probably go for a new gpu; looking at the 1070 Ti. Everything else has been great since 2013.

Generally, when I have a need or feel that newly available hardware is a big enough leap over my current gear that it'll make a noticeable difference.

CPU updates have been pretty modest the last few years. I can't find much of a reason to replace my i7-4790K.

Honestly I haven't upgraded my PC once since I built it in 2012. I better change that soon.

I was going to upgrade GPU, RAM etc this year after about 4 years but Bitcoin madness has made GPUs pricey

Used to be 2 years, but I forced myself to go 3ish with incremental upgrades in the middle.

When i can afford it lol.

My PC history is (not counting the early, early stuff):

• 2002
• 2008
• 2013
• 2017

Before 2017, I had new PCs from HP and Dell. With 2017, I built my own. I went overboard with some stuff, so I don't really have to worry about any bottlenecks or performance issues for a long time. At this point, I'm honestly not sure how long it will be until I upgrade a component / just build a new PC and use this system as a backup or miscellaneous test system.

I've had my PC for nearly a decade (2009). I replaced the video card and HD when they broke. Still works great for what I use it for!

I should get on a cloud backup solution soon...

I try to do a full rebuild (just keep case, HDD/SSD and power supply) every 4 years approximately. Buying the newest Nvidia x80 and the newest i5 and as much RAM as I can reasonably afford seems to work for me.

My first gaming PC is 12 months old now and I have been wondering at what point I would be getting the need to upgrade. After six months, my Nvidia driver was letting me know how much my CPU was throttling the computer - cue looking at part picker every day to see what I could upgrade to. Then it became clear that unless I want to run every new game on ultra I was absolutely fine and as high end, AAA, new games are such a rare part of my gaming I was just being a numpty. It easy to get caught up in upgrade fever though, so until the fever hits again, I'm now firmly in the 'until it catches fire' group.

Every four years, with everything new. New case, new psu...no recycling.

I used to upgrade every 2 years but now I am broke homeowner who hasn't upgraded in 6 years :( Ever since the PS4 came out my PC is now just my HTPC so until I ecnounter video codecs my CPU can't handle I probably won't be upgrading for awhile.

I try to upgrade individual components, to mid-level, when I need to in order to play a particular game (or if something breaks, of course).

Most recently I upgraded my CPU/mobo to play Guild Wars 2 in 2012. My GPU died so I upgraded it in 2015. No game has forced me to upgrade since then, but I anticipate upgrading whenever Star Citizen releases or gets to a state worth playing (2037?)

Depends really. I got lucky and my fiance bought me a 1070 for christmas (was using a 780 or over 3 years) but I was planning on using it for at least another year. My new urge is to get a m.2 drive for my OS....

I've been on a 1 year rotation cycle so far for the past three years. Granted not everything is getting replaced but major items are being swapped out as newer stuff becomes available and or if there's a sale on. Last big round update I ended up swapping out the CPU/Mobo from an intel 6700K to a Ryzen 1800x. I decided to chunk some extra moolah into it and purchase new ram and a new NVME drive so I can have my old 6700K PC up and running on it's own as a full system.

I have a feeling if Volta is released this year I'll probably be swapping the GPU out for one of those, but if it's just a slight performance boost with a new number I'll probably hold off.

I've usually done some sort of upgrade every four years. I've built a lot of machines over the years but about 2.5 years ago I needed to do a full upgrade and I found a Acer Predator box on super sale for about $900 (fully loaded at the time). I also wasn't in the mood to build my own at the time. I am regretting it so hardcore. The box is great, and it was a great deal for high-end components, but when they say its not "that" upgradeable, they really mean it. Its so, so stupid that everything is locked in place with ridiculous bracketing, you can't even remove the hard drive without destroying the whole thing.

A large regret on my side as I need to install more hard drives but I now don't have the ability to. So I am looking at doing a full new build soon which would be a bit earlier than I would for a full build as its a bit unnecessary from a performance side but I'll probably be close to the "every 2-3 year" category right now because of it.

About every console cycle? I game a lot on my PC, I need it to run whatever games are being released for it. Typically the cycle goes. "Buy the most expensive computer in Best Buy" followed by "Replace the graphics card 5 years after that" followed by "Repeat in 3-5 years after that".

Yeah, I realize "But but you could make your own PC! Money wasted my god!" But I've never been good at hardware. I can replace a graphics card..cause its unplug one plug in another, and typically the computer I buy are bottle-necked by that, and not the CPU/Memory.

That said, since the last PC I bought was in 2010, and I am coming up on buying a new one in the next few years. At which point I will repeat the thing I do every time. "Where can I find the highest quality already built PC with minimal/no risk of it being broken when I get it." To wit, the answer to that from 1998 onward has been 'big box store, ask for most $$$ model, shell out the cash, walk out with computer". But maybe, in 2019-2020 there will be a website that will build a custom PC with free shipping and money-back guarantee if it ships broken and a 3+ year warranty on parts/labor etc.

Or maybe at that point I might as well just pay another 5-10% for the certainty of mind to walk into a store and walk out with a factory made/sealed ready to go model from bestbuy or etc, like everyone screams on forums like these to never do.

I built my first PC the week the 360 came out ( $800ish ). I tried a 360 and went through 4 RROD before I gave up.

That PC lasted me with no changes until the Witcher 2 launch. Suddenly I couldn't play a game on High Settings anymore, and bigger games were starting to take over a minute to load in.

At that point I decided to do a full new build, because my old PC wasn't built with much knowledge and had a lot of mistakes in it. It would have been hard to rebuild. So 5 years for first PC no changes.

New build was $800ish in 2011. At the release of Dying Light ( 2015 ) I bought a new GPU in the form of a 970. So 4 years.

I'm now finally thinking of getting a new GPU as I'm still using a i5 3700k. Which'll be 7 years.

Once I have that, I'll probably stick with my current build for another 3-4 years before I have to get another GPU?

So 2005/2011 for full builds, 2015/2017 for replacements. Not bad I'd say.

@bladededge: So a friend of mine about 4 years ago went with DigitalStorm and did one of their relatively custom builds. Its still going really strong and he's really happy with it. I helped him decide at the time and while it was a bit more expensive, it definitely felt like you were getting a much better system than just walking into a big box store and getting something off the shelf. If you don't want to build your own and want a great system and can swing a little extra cash at the time, something like that I would think is probably the way to do it.

Also if I remember right, they did have a return period of some sort and a parts and labor warranty.

I bought a PC kit from Tiger Direct in 2010 and have been upgrading parts since then. The motherboard can't handle anymore at this point, so I am waiting for the specs and release of Cyberpunk 2077, before I build a new computer.

I'd say on average 3 years.

@maxszy: I have heard in the time since Fall of 2010, when I last bought the computer I am working with for 2k (and given I've since spent only 400$ for a 960 4 gig Graphics card and it runs every single game that is released at 'minimum (which is all I require) its been a good investment)..I've heard of websites like that.

When the time comes for me to get a new PC, and I have the 1200-2000$ set aside to purchase it, I'm going too go looking again. I'll likely put up a post in the PC section of this very forum, which has provided good advice to me before. I've found so long as I preface such requests as "Look I know building it myself is better, I prefer to eat the cost of having someone else do that however" At which point I am gonna play the "So what websites that provide pre-built computers have people heard good things/had good experiences with?

Believe me if I could get a state of the art water-cooled dual-titan 32 memory next-level CPU, uber monitor 'insert everything that you would need to build 'the best possible PC at this time'..and have someone else put it all together, guarantee the work and shipping safety. Well then, I'd happily pay a premium for that.

That said, I absolutely know I can get "Mid-High tier" pre-builts for around 2k. Which, while they are never designed specifically for gaming, do tend to come with the CPU and Memory power that is going to meet the 'minimum requirements' of every PC game released for the next 5-7 years. And, truth be told, my current PC's CPU is under-rated for most new games..but it runs them all the same.

So yah. I am sure when the time comes I will look into websites exactly like what you said. I don't expect that to happen however until we get announcements for the PS5/XBOX..2? and so on in a few years, on account of most PC games having to run at the 'console minimum". Meaning so long as my PC can keep up with current gen consoles (in this case the base level Xbox or PS4) I know I'm not going to run into 'welp, I have to buy a console if I wanna play this game cause my PC won't run it" issues.

I keep thinking about upgrading but it really isn't worth the money for the performance boost as of right now. I built my computer in early 2015 and don't really have a problem playing almost any game. I was playing they are billions a couple days ago and got to the last wave. My framerate tanked to the 20's. Not sure if it's because the game is in early access or by GPU needs an upgrade. If anything I will get the new cards that are released this year. And hopefully at msrp price.

@bladededge: That makes absolute sense. Sounds like with your upgrades you've definitely got a great value out of the machine you're running! I always say if it "works for you" then that is good enough. No reason to want/need to run everything on Ultra if it doesn't matter to you. Its just what you want out of it and whatever that is, is fine.

Yeah you definitely can get those pre-builts around that $$ amount. Not sure what else you do on your machine but if you do creative stuff at all or programming class stuff, the nice thing about Gaming built machines is they often work very well for those types of configurations as well so you can kind of get multiple great birds with one stone so to speak.

Also that's a good point on the consoles. And as we've seen, it'll be a couple years I'm guessing before we see that next console hit the shelves that really requires that next leap if someone doesn't want to take it.

I can't say this for sure, but They Are Billions looks way more CPU-bound than GPU-bound - meaning, if your framerate tanked when a lot was going on, it was probably because your CPU was having trouble rather than your GPU. And yeah, optimization is probably an issue there.

Interestingly enough, I just ordered new computer parts this week. My graphics card is a Radeon R9-290X at around three years old (that I've already had to RMA once, and it's still giving me grief). My CPU is an overclocked i5-2500k I bought back in '11, and it's done its time in the trenches and about had enough. Prior to that, I did a full Core 2 Quad build in '09. For me, I tend to order new gear when I can get double the performance in the same price bracket I bought before, or when parts start going out.

Though this time I'm replacing it with a Ryzen 5 1600X and a Geforce 1080 in a Node 202. My friend's got me trying out the 'console sized' mini-ITX build thing. Damn those crypto miners, though. I wanted to go all Team Red, but there were just no Vega cards to be found, whatsoever.

Usually right after it catches fire.

Which is about where I find myself right now.

Right in between a burned out computer, and being able to afford a new one.

I built my computer around 4 years ago and the only part I've upgraded is the video card (first to a 970, then later to a 1080ti). Games still run on it at very high settings, but there's definitely some chugginess here and there that can probably be attributed to slow and/or insufficient RAM or something.

I should really get around to replacing all the other parts sometime this year. I really don't like the act of actually putting the whole thing together though, which I guess is part of why I haven't done it yet.

Until it breaks. Although I like the idea of giving this a boost for streaming but my main gaming's done on console.

Usually sell my gpu when the new one comes out every year and use that money to buy the newer one......I have a problem... Cpu and mobo and such probably every 2-3 years or so..

My upgrade paths are for more out of sequence than they used to with modern platform stagnation. I still do the GPU every cycle but the base machine basically lives of for 4-5 years with the odd tweak here and there with regards to storage.

Right now I have a i5- 4670 and 16 gb ram . That has been at least two years. I plan to go another 2, but when the next NVidia cards come out, I plan to retire my Titan black for a decent card. We will see what's happening when.

So probably every 4-5 years, but it is staggered between Graphics card and most everything else, within those 4 to 5 years.

4+ years I'm not made of money lmao

3 to 5 years I guess.

CPU: 386 -> 486 -> Pentium MMX 200 mhz -> Pentium3 500 mhz -> Pentium4 1ghz -> E6600 -> Phenom II x4 955 -> i7 4790k

GPU: 3dfx voodoo -> 3dfx voodoo2 sli -> Geforce DDR -> Geforce2 -> ati 7200 -> ati 9600pro -> nvdia 7900gto -> ati hd3870 -> hd6850 -> 270x -> Fury

I just updated some hardware on my PC, but now I'm going to start getting in to a routine of doing about 5 to 6 year replacements with maybe a video card update every 3 years. If you figure, a good high end PC is about $2000 you can save that in shot 5 years at about $1 a day (a little more then that, but close enough).

So that's about $365 a year. Seems reasonable. I didn't always have this plan, so I had to eat the cost of new parts. But in about 5 years I'll have enough money to get a pretty sweet new rig.

Think I wait about 2 years for GPU's and 4 years for CPU+Mobo.

Seems like that's what most people are doing, replace GPU twice as much as CPU

My current PC is from 2011 (and really needs to be replaced).

Current build: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/user/Fnrslvr/saved/gDsLkL

Built most of the rig itself at the end of 2016 before RAM and GPU prices shot up, which was pretty lucky in hindsight. Picked up the HDD, monitor, keyboard (I started with a Microsoft Wired KB&M combo, still have the mouse because I haven't felt any point to getting a better one), headphones, and speakers throughout 2017. It's an awesome 1080p rig that runs pretty much anything I throw at it in its sleep without much or any calibration beyond dialing the settings up to ultra (unless the game's a technical mess, e.g. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided), so I suspect it'll last me for as long as I stick to 1080p.

So I imagine I'll be sticking with this rig until 4K -- that is, viable, robust open standards-driven 4K with HDR and an open adaptive sync standard and whatnot -- becomes comfortably doable. I won't count something like ASUS's PG27UQ with Nvidia's next high-end card because that'll be propped up by Nvidia's proprietary G-sync racket, and I've already fallen into that trap once. (Also that'll be ridiculously expensive.) So I'm probably sticking with my 1080p setup until 2019 at the earliest, very possibly 2020.

I have eyed CPU and motherboard upgrades lately. Mostly for extra board features, and because I could use the CPU/board I'm currently using as a basis for an upgrade for my parents' PC. But RAM prices are deterring me from upgrading my parents' PC for now.

Upgraded a GPU (RX 580) and a monitor. The parts in around these parts are unbelievably expensive, especially the GPU and DDR4 RAM, offset somewhat by the small depreciation in CPU costs. The rest of the system was retooled here and there over five years, and still chugging along. The biggest difference maker during those years in terms of performance upgrade was the SSD upgrade.