What's your Upgrade Cycle on your Gaming PC?

I do little bits and parts once in a while and upgrade gradually since I'm a broke ass mofo. I just upgraded to a SSD for my games and added 8 GB to my other 8 Gigs of RAM. So far I can run most games fine on Ultra 2560x1440p so I don't see a need to upgrade my videocard or CPU yet.

Beyond HDD swapping I just replace it all every 5ish years.

Didn't really need to but I wanted a new CPU in July and got a 4790k(had my old CPU for 5 years, used my old ram, watercooled cpu heatsink, case, SSD, HDD's, 2 7970s(over 4 years old. Still kicking ass)

I will probably just upgrade my GPU in a year or 2. Depends what games come out. I don't play much anymore.

I built my second PC last summer after five years. But I went cheap with some parts, so I ordered a new motherboard and RAM today. It just depends on what I'm feeling at the moment. I like to tinker with it every 6 months or so, but little things like new RAM, another SSD, a 144 hz monitor, etc. Processor can go like 5 years or so, GPU every couple of years.

Only reason I ordered a new motherboard is my current motherboard only supports RAM speed up to DDR3 1600, and I was reading that you can get a significant FPS boost in games by going with DDR3 2133.

I'm surprised at some of the responses for how long some parts are kept around, specifically CPU's being 4-5+ years old! Do you find that you don't notice much of a difference over time, or do you not mind turning down settings/framerate over a few years before "topping up" again, so to speak?

I upgrade my GPU once in roughly two years since it's easier to swap that out of the PC than the other main components and I'll usually upgrade the others when a new console generation has started.

Well. I upgraded most parts about three years ago minus hard drives and my faithful 8600gt. It wasn't long before the 8600gt had to go, so I picked up a 550Ti for dirt cheap. Unexpectedly (because I was an idiot) because of the 550Ti, I needed a new PSU. That machine lasted me two years. Then I wanted a new CPU because my 2.4, dual core was frankly, shit. Got a Xeon E3-1230 v2 because it's a great processor and a stick o' 8gb 1333 RAM for the heck of it. Of course I wasn't satisfied with that for long and I bought a 750Ti. Which, it turns out, my mobo was not happy with at all. It started bleeping and whining on start up and took forever. So, I got a new mainboard. My Windows installation survived the transition which blew my mind. Probably partly because I kept the socket type because I wanted to keep using my CPU. That machine is what I'm typing this on; however, just yesterday, inspired by some pretty severe framerate dropping in Dark Souls 3, I ordered a GTX 960 OC 4gb. If that makes my mainboard bleep, I'm going to cry. I do know my PSU will support it anyway.

I kind of wish my upgrade process was as organized as the OP suggests is possible.

@sinusoidal: :0 You sound like a perfect last option then!

@brendan said:

From my perspective, over the life of my last two PCs of 7 years and 5 years, it's only very rarely that I've seen anything end up CPU limited. Most recently Cities Skylines, which is basically all CPU heh.

Those last two PCs have been quite heavy buy-ins on higher end stuff though, and I've probably paid a little more even than that would require buying the last one from a store and this one from a specialist PC builder. But my friends who build their PCs themselves have had no end of trouble and part failures, whereas my ones have chugged along for years with only a new GPU or two.

@zeg Interesting. I'm guessing you would recommend against building your own then? I wonder how many problems people have with PC's are a lack of understanding of what kinds of parts are meant to go together or how much power parts require to run properly, or weird stuff I could never figure out like Austin's weird story from the Beastcast where he said there was some registry problem with his operating system that made no sense? If stuff like that is common then I am doomed :( I feel like a have a pretty good handle on how to properly match up parts to make a workable build but I could be wrong.

I built a "last gen" PC six months ago, knowing full well that I'd have to upgrade CPU, motherboard, and RAM after Skylake has a few iterations under its belt. But I'm expecting about two years total for my 980, and probably one and a half or two for the previously mentioned. So it'll kind of be "Whole System Every Two Years" by chance.

So far I have bought my PCs through retailers like Dell and HP. I have basically ran them into the ground after 5 to 6 years and then buy a completely new system.

I'm looking forward to building my own PC at some point in the future. At that point I will probably upgrade parts maybe every three years or so. (I say that with the assumption that I'm going all in. Not crazy expensive, but if I were to get a graphics card today, it would be a GTX 980ti, so I wouldn't need to upgrade something like that within 1 to 2 years)

When they release something (in the mainstream tier, at this point the affordable rebadged server CPUs are actually the only interesting upgrade Intel seem to think anyone will need if they got a decent desktop chip in the last few years - baring wanting low Wattage for a portable then nothing enticing has come out of the Tick-Tock for gaming) meaningfully better than an overclocked i5-2500K, I'll get one of those. Hell, AMD might even be able to build a competent CPU if the Zen architecture is any good. They have to do something to avoid sinking into obscurity (despite making competent GPUs for a long time, they're not exactly eating into nVidia's dominance; their CPUs have been far behind Intel for so long you barely even remember seeing them talked about outside of budget builds).

For my money, SSDs have been more worth an upgrade cycle than CPUs in recent years (not to say a cheap mainstream SSD from the last few years needs to be replaced today, but if you've got the change then they are continuing to make incredibly fast drives that will continue to make load times for games a thing of the past, even dumping GBs of texture assets to the VRAM).

As for GPUs, you can definitely make 3 year cycles work for you but they do offer significantly more bang for your buck (and for a fixed Wattage) every couple of years so that's pretty good. I'm holding on to a GTX 760 [2013] that's almost 3 years old now. I went a bit cheap as I'd not got a lot of cash to spend at the time and right now am starting to feel the bite of the cut corners (2GB of VRAM actually being one area where settings are hard to poke up without warnings about total RAM load but it's also not an incredibly fast card by modern standards so setting everything to max at 1080p is not an option for new titles). Either Pascal or Polaris should give me a good upgrade path this year so that's a good 3 year cycle out of a cheap (eh, for enthusiast class GPUs, it launched at $250).

Before the 760, I had a workhorse of a GTX 470 (very nice, actually not badly priced, $350 launch) [2010] which was totally solid for the 3 years I used it for. Actually that card had more of an issue with getting clogged up and making the overclock unstable (requiring a proper clean to fix it) rather than actually just finding games were too much for it. I also was doing some compute stuff with it so it was running full speed 24/7 for some months for work which meant it was getting a lot of use.

Before that the legendary 8800 GT 512MB [2007]. What a $200 card. Also lasted me about 3 years. Hell, I was going to upgrade it after 2 years (so in 2009) with a HD 5850 but ended up sending it back as it didn't really give me the boost I was looking for (also ATi/AMD drivers and value-add was pretty iffy back then - this was the start of the era where nVidia dumped serious cash into their software team and started adding engine features to their drivers so ambient occlusion suddenly arrived for HL2 and Fallout 3 and CoD etc but at the time we didn't have SweetFX to inject that shader into every game, it was an nVidia only driver tweak - for the first 2 months of the 5850's lifespan you couldn't even set per-game driver settings because the 3rd party tools hadn't been updated and the official driver didn't do per-game settings at all).

For the most part the only things that end up becoming obsolete pretty quickly are GPUs. RAM can go on for basically ever, and there haven't really been huge benefits from CPUs over the last couple years for desktops. They still generally matter a bit for laptops since they oftentimes run on batteries and have bigger heat concerns. They get faster, but CPU speeds have mostly plateaued for most application use. Storage drives I update somewhat frequently I suppose.

I built a PC back in 2008. It was a Celeron Core 2 Duo E8600 - thing overclocked like a champ. Think I started with an ATI 900 series. Over the course of the next 7 years I upgraded video card (nvidia 9800, memory, storage, video card (Nvidia 460?). I built another in 2013 - i7 3700 (not a K series, I wanted to overclock) with 16GB memory and dual 670's. Then when 2015 came around I just built an entirely new PC with 64GB DDR4 (need the memory for virtual machines), an i7-5820k (woo 6 cores) and "limped" along with one of the 670's until the MSI 980ti was available. I don't know what this means for my upgrade cycle.

@brendan: I picked the 2nd to last option, but it is still too aggressive. I used the same CPU, an Intel q6600 from 2007 until last year. I have owned 3 low-mid range video cards in that time.

My Intel q6600 served me well for many years, probably due to an increase in multi-core support over the years I used it. I have also limited myself to 1366x768 the entire time. Going up to 1080 would require significant upgrades to achieve the same performance.

Its cost vs (perceived) value. Given the other limits of my system, putting Putting down $350 on a new intel CPU was not worth it. Spending $500-$700 would remove more bottlenecks, enough to warrant a mid to high end video card, but then I would be in for $850-$1000 (full rebuild due to power, case, etc). And what would I get for that? Max settings on (then) current games? Or the ability to move up to 1080 at high settings for a couple of years, which would also require a new 1080p TV for another $1000?

No, not worth it.

*hovers mouse over add to cart for gtx 980ti*

*eye twitches involuntarily*

Curse you thread

Building is fine. The people I know who have problems with their builds have lacked fundamental knowledge about computers. There are general skills and knowledge that support effective trouble shooting of technology. You'll notice that you hear those stories from Austin and Jeff (both brilliant writers), but not Vinny (who once blind telneted into a router via the serial port). Ain't nothing wrong with that, I don't fix my own car, I don't expect everyone to fix their own computers.

Edit: I gotta walk back what I wrote about Vinny and tech horror stories. I forgot about the GBeast computer building fiasco (they bought a weird CPU). And there are endless issues with the video equipment, which is all digital. But my point still stands (more or less), Vinny worked through those issues, it wasn't so bad.

Generally my philosophy has been to upgrade computer components once some game has come out that I really really want to play, but it runs choppy due to some shortcoming. Thanks to games not really advancing a ton in the last few years though, I haven't needed to touch anything in my PC in about 3 years now.

I tend to wait until a few generations of hardware has passed. Basically I upgrade my entire PC top to bottom every 6-7 years. Current system is a bit late on its upgrade because I'm to busy being unemployed to afford the parts.

Build awesome PC, Run it into the ground over the course of many many years, Build new PC that's at least two times as powerful, but hopefully three or four times more powerful. Recycle old PC and repeat the cycle.

I guess I'm generally on about a 7-8 year cycle, though I've been particularly unlucky with bad GPU's recently and have had to change them every year after having them last at least 5 years in previous generations. For the most part the last poll option is closest to my approach too, while I do change out motherboard and CPU around every 7 years or so, I switch out bits and pieces, as well as keep ones from older machines as I upgrade. My current main PC still has a 1988 PS/2 keyboard, though that's the only really old part right now. The PC I had from 2003 to 2009 still had parts from the mid 90's in it, I stuck with an early Soundblaster Live! card for a long time since it had the OPL2 synthesizer chip on it, instead of relying on emulation like everything from around 1997 and onwards did, and I stand by the 1998 Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse as possibly being the best mouse ever made (and thankfully I managed to track down a new one of those recently, as my 1998 one got a bit unreliable a few years back). I also used a TNT2 card for almost 10 years in one of my Linux boxes.

I have to say, I'm surprised so far with what I've read in regards to how long in the tooth some computer parts are. Given what I've read about benchmarks for parts as they age against newer and newer games I have to assume that the general consensus is that most will wait until framerates are halved or more before getting new stuff? I was hoping to do it in a way as to be relatively consistent (I have a decent paying job but am not rich) but maybe that's less achievable than I thought. It sounds like it might be sensible to spend a bunch on high quality parts to last me 4-5 years but stick to a mid range GPU and update it every few years or so to remain current.

Honestly for upgrading (or building a new PC) it seems like the trickiest thing to get right is the Power Supply. Basic knowledge suggests that you don't want to go way overkill on a PSU, and most pro websites building new PC's that have an i5, maybe a 970 that isn't overcooked at all, will only have a high efficiency 450w or so. Then you go and read reviews and it sounds like people have problems with trying to get close but learning that the PSU has multiple rails, and that one doesn't have enough amps on the rail or something... it's all kind of confusing. Of course those reviews also include people trying to use R9 290's or something which are extremely power hungry so maybe it isn't as hard as I think it is.

Well, my personal benchmark is that if I can't run a game at least at 60 FPS on max settings at 1080p, it's time for an upgrade. I know opinions on this will vary, but if I was content with playing games at 30 FPS I'd buy a console.

GPU every 2-3 years depending on how the current card is running in recent games, new system every 3-4 years. Especially now that we aren't seeing much improvement with processors over stuff that came out a few years ago, a new system build isn't that big of a deal. That being said, I'm still running a 2500K Sandybridge and I think it's about time to upgrade. My motherboard drivers aren't officially supported by Microsoft anymore so I'm running on legacy drivers on Windows 10, and while the CPU and RAM are doing okay speed-wise for gaming, there is enough of a bump with the most recent generation (DDR4, M.2 support, native USB3 and USB Type C support, XMP and automatic overclocking) that it's worth an upgrade soon, especially now that the new Pascal cards are on the horizon.

It's not like the old days where you needed to drop $3,000 every 18 months to have a decent system. Parts are fairly cheap and fast as hell even with the lower-end components. With games on PC being mostly console ports these days, there isn't much demand for super high-end hardware unless you are running 4K monitors or some other cutting edge tech that requires it. It's still not as cheap a console, but it's getting less and less expensive as time goes on, and the fact that even a modest PC build is last an easy 3-4 years now with little or no upgrades is really making the console folks think twice and jump ship. As a rule, a new GPU every 18-24 months will handle pretty much anything you can throw at it within reason, and the rest of the system will really only see improvement when there is a large jump in performance (such as going from DDR3 memory to DDR4, significant amounts of die shrinking on the CPU every new generation...) The kind of good (or bad) news depending on what you're doing is that Intel is essentially abandoning the Tick-Tok cycle they've been using forever, so while the newer CPUs won't be getting much faster, it will be getting more power efficient and such, so it looks like we've started to reach the peak of what he can do processor-wise. That means for us games, CPU upgrades aren't really a thing but RAM and interface speed will be much more important to close the gap.

/tech rant

For one GPU anything over 550w or so is overkill. For 2 or more anything less than 1Kw is probably pushing it. The more power efficient the better, generally speaking. Shoot for at least 80Plus Bronze if not Silver, Gold, or Platinum. Stick to reputable companies and OEMs - Seasonic, Corsair, Thermaltake, Coolermaster, Fractal design.... Regardless of the wattage or efficiency, you need to know how many amps are on the 12V rail which is probably the most important thing about PSU's these days. Read this thread and you'll find the answers to your questions. It's not as complicated as people make it out to be :p

Where's the option for "only if my current PC breaks/gets so old it can't play anything anymore"?

This really isn't the case. I'm running two 980s on a 750 W Corsair and it's rock solid stable. Before that, I was running two 780s on a 650 W and it was completely fine. Load for this configuration is something like 475 W for everything when both GPUs and CPU are at 100%. The efficiency of my PSU is at around 90% at that wattage, which is as good as it gets. Of course, this was a very expensive PSU so if you have a garbage PSU that may be a different story.

Graphics card manufacturers severely overstate the required wattage for GPUs, especially in SLI or Crossfire configurations.

@mcfart: I suppose that would be "Whole system every 3+ years" good sir!

@stonyman65: Thanks for the resource! Here's the kind of PSU I would look at: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438049&_ga=1.10001213.94105510.1459861559

It seems like a pretty safe bet. I'm not sure if I understand the math right but it seems if I add up the amps it comes to 87.5, and the 12v is 45 of that, so about 51% of total power can be put to 12v parts... right? So I would have to know that all 12v parts aren't taking up more than 250-280 watts?

Edit: Never mind I had it all wrong, on the product page it says the 12v rail can do 540W, so basically I'm completely comfortable with a PSU like that. (Well, over 400w when factoring in efficiency)

I'm still running a Nehalem i7 from 2009 when I built this thing. It's been through two GPU upgrades (2011, 2014), a RAM replacement (2011), and an SSD/HDD/cooler upgrade (2014). This is definitely the year I build a new PC from scratch though, I've pushed this poor old motherboard as far as it'll go.

I only upgrade when it's absolutely necessary. I built my PC at the end of 2011 and only upgraded the GPU a few months ago since I couldn't run any new games anymore. Aside from that I had to buy a few replacement parts (1 RAM stick and a new PSU) as things had broken. I'm still really happy with this PC but I guess I would consider upgrading my CPU next but it's not a priority.

Whole system every 5ish years or so.

I know I should probably at least spread some of that stuff out like starting with a lower end GPU and upgrading every 2 years or so but I haven't been all that successful at doing so quite yet. I bought my current PC in 2011, added another GPU and new CPU cooler two to three years later but running CrossfireX resulted in a whole lot of issues and on top of that the second, newer GPU started giving me severe problems and possibly died so I'm back to the original 2011 spec.

The main reason that I don't upgrade more frequently is that I simply cannot afford it.
The secondary reason is that I generally believe a balanced system is the best way to go (not mixing parts that are far apart in age/quality/power).

I'm kind of at a loss on how to proceed at the moment. I'm looking at the market and the industry and I really don't feel like this is a good time to upgrade or build a new PC. On one hand we have general progress slowing down, especially on a desktop level, and on the other hand we're close to the announcement of new designs and the possibility of VR adding another push to hardware development. Then there is the general lack of competition between the major PC hardware developers like Intel and AMD keeping the prices high and the performance low.

I've been thinking about buying a stopgap GPU to tide me over until the technological developments and general price/performance of PC hardware becomes more interesting but even there I'm running into the obstacle of GPU prices not coming down at all even years after release.

It also feels like monitor technology is too far ahead of the hardware to run games on them right now. I really hoped I would be able to skip 1440p and go straight from 1080p to 4K since it's looking like 4K will become the new standard but GPU technology to actually run games at that resolution at acceptable framerates is simply not there. More and more monitors with unusual resolutions and aspect ratios are appearing as well and I'm not sure how the situation will evolve.

I get a pretty reliable 1080p 60fps out of my 970 and two and a half year old otherwise system. It was pretty middle of the road back then even. Only part I ever needed to upgrade was the video card.

And anow aftermarket heatsink because Vermintide runs hot as balls

I'm not sure how to answer this poll. I built my first PC about a year ago and haven't done any upgrading as of yet. That being said, I'll be severely disappointed if I have to upgrade in less than 5 years. One of the reasons I decided to jump into PC gaming is that the hardware arms race and two-year upgrade cycles were a thing of the past.

Every 2-3 years, the whole thing. I selected every 2 years, cause that's what I've done for the past 2 cycles.

So far I just do a full rebuild every 4 years, keeping the case, PSU and HDDs. I'm still able to play everything on high at the end because I go for whatever the top of the line NVidia card is at the time, and it seems to last.

I've had my i5-4670k, GTX 780 and 8 GB of RAM for almost two years and I'm not planning to upgrade anytime soon. There aren't games that look worth it or they just don't need it.

i seem to be doing roughly 7 years between cpu/mobo/gpu upgrades. other stuff (hard drives, power supplies, etc) just get replaced when they kick the bucket.

@villainy yep- i7 930 here...i think this is the year.

As I need to basically, I just hit a point where I want to do something that requires more juice, and then I buy more juice. The timing has varied heavily over time, my current GPU for example is closing in on 4 years now (Sapphire 7970 3GB), which would've been ludicrous back in the day where I probably got a new card bi-annually. CPU/Mobo upgrades have been a little more consistent at around 4-5 years, I threw in an i5 4690k last year hoping that's gonna last me a while. That's one of the few "unneccessary" upgrades I've done, since my older build worked fine for mostly any game, but I reeeeeally wanted to play around with emulating games in playable framerate. I haven't done a clean new build since 2005, but that computer has gotten upgraded piecemeal to the point where none of the original hardware remains. I even swapped out the chassi because the old one was so tacky and noisy.

I used to upgrade a component (either RAM, HDD, CPU/Mobo, GPU/PSU) a year when I had my 'bang for the buck' blinkers on, but once I decided to move towards the upper end of the market that's all gone out the window.

My GPU *should* last me another couple of years at least until it can't run most things at 1080p/60+ on Ultra and my CPU's not showing any signs of bottlenecking yet. When I add in the fact that RAM's cheap and SSDs are falling all the time in price my old regimented upgrade system is in tatters.

4670K, 16GB RAM, 980ti, SSD

My next upgrade will probably be a couple of 4TB drives for a NAS, and that's not fun or sexy. ;)

@brendan: Don't get overly stressed about how difficult building your own PC might seem at first. I have a B.S. degree in Computer Science, and zero of my knowledge of building PCs or tech support on PC problems has ever come from something I learned in college. All of the PC technicians here basically got their start either as workstudies on the help desk or something similar. Most of "tech support' comes down to knowing how to Google the problem. :) Obscure registry issues can be a chore for sure, but even if you hit something like that, you're bound to have someone in your area who can fix the issue for you (and not the freakin' Geek Squad or whatever).

So I used to go the upgrade every three years route, but that hasn't made sense recently due to what components have been the bottleneck on the system at any given time . I've switched to the GPU every two years and other components every four years model as of recent and it has worked very well for me. I mean for reference, I basically built about the PC minus the GPU two years ago that Occulus sent the Dudes a couple weeks ago for demoing purposes. Last Fall, I bought an MSI Radeon R9 390 8 GB card. I typically budget about $250 for a card and wait for one of the $300-$350 MSRP cards to go on sale. I can hit 60 FPS at near max on most games (anti-aliasing being typically the thing I can't max out, and Witcher 3 is the one game that tends to hover in the 50s instead of getting a consistent 60 FPS).

Here are a couple of resources I find invaluable when working on a build:

PCPartPicker: This site lets you put spec out a build and share it with others for advice. It will let you know if your build has any compatibility issues and also will tell you what estimated power consumption the build will have.

JonnyGURU: As you've probably heard from a number of people, power supplies are the silent killer of any computer. This has been the best site I've found for power supply reviews. Sites like Tomshardware and anantech certainly review power supplies, but not as extensively.

I build myself Exceptional to Enthusiast-level gaming machines. On average, I upgrade video cards every two years and the rest of the system every four years. It averages out to about $500 a year on hardware.

I built my current system in March 2013, and then upgraded the video card and monitor in November 2014. This system still crushes games, and I can see it lasting until March 2017 (the four year mark), or even longer, pretty easily.

Is something broken or not working right? Replace it all!

I built my current pc in sept/Oct of 2012. I been waiting for the next gen cards to come out this year to upgrade the gpu, currently 7950x2, and maybe more ram.

Also, I could never get the steam link to work in my house, so ordered a custom pc for the living room, should be here around the beginning of May.

I usually upgrade when i need more power, no set schedule to follow.
Im still on socket 1366 from 2008, but i bought a 6core xeon for it on ebay for about 100 bucks, 6 cores/12 threads at 4 GHz is alright.
as graphics cards go, i usually do a high end card every other architecture.

at the moment my computer consists of

• Intel Xeon 5675 @ 4GHz
• Asus P6T Deluxe v2 motherboard
• 3x2 GB + 3x4 GB of various DDR3 ram @ 1390 MHz
• AMD 290X with aftermarket accelero xtreme 3 cooler ( 30c idle 55c load 65c mining)
• 1x500 GB samsung 850 EVO SSD
• 2x500 GB 2x640 GB 1x3TB HDDs
• Cooler Master M700 PSU

So some of these parts are 8 years old and still don't hinder performance significantly.
Pay attention when you buy your stuff, and you might not have to replace it that often.

I noticed that the last time I upgraded everything I didn't really use it that much for games so it felt kinda wasted. Just bought a 4K TV(which is my only screen) so I might upgrade soon.

Right now my PC consist of:

The same tower I've been using since 2001 or so.

i5-4690k
16 gigs of RAM
GTX 680

I got the PC I am currently at I think early 2010 and I will be building a new pc this autumn so I guess 6 years?