How old is your computer?

[Agema]

How long should a computer last if you're just using it to browse the internet?

Until it breaks, pretty much.

Tablets seem to have pretty short lifespan. I find my laptops have slowed heavily after about 4-5 years - the HDD, maybe, and/or more programs using more resources constantly doing stuff more for the benefit of the developers than you. Desktops are usually the kings of long-lasting.

 

[Chimpzy]

My current PC is about six months old. My laptop? I'm not entirely sure, but I do know that I brought it to both Escapist Expos.

First expo was somewhere around late summer 2021, so that'd make it 8-8,5 years old.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

How long should a computer last if you're just using it to browse the internet?

As long as the CPU/GPU is good enough to play the videos you watch like HD requires more power than SD and 4K requires more power than HD. Then as long as you have a SSD of some kind for storage of the OS and enough RAM, you'll be fine for a long time.

I find my laptops have slowed heavily after about 4-5 years - the HDD, maybe, and/or more programs using more resources constantly doing stuff more for the benefit of the developers than you. Desktops are usually the kings of long-lasting.

You can debloat Windows 10 A LOT and you shouldn't have many programs running at start (just go to Task Manager and Startup tab and disable everything). I only have ZoneAlarm Free and Open-Shell running at startup for example.

Here's my Task Manager with everything running (1st row) and Task Manager at Startup (2nd row) with only GIMP running (to save the screenshots).

And by everything running; I mean my music player, video player, video editor (I was encoding a video at the time), picture editor, Firefox with over 50 tabs open, Steam, Divinity Original Sin 2, and free Excel (LibreOffice Calc) and some odds and ends like file explorer, calculator, and wordpad. I'm willing to bet that with all that shit running, I have less processes running than almost everyone does with a fresh restart of Windows. Windows 10 can be made lean and mean.

 

[Agema]

You can debloat Windows 10 A LOT and you shouldn't have many programs running at start (just go to Task Manager and Startup tab and disable everything). I only have ZoneAlarm Free and Open-Shell running at startup for example.

Believe me, I tried killing pretty much everything. My last laptop I tried a fresh re-install of Win10, pruned as much as I could and blocked unnecessary start-up programs, and it still kept locking up for ~15 mins after rebooting. I think Steam may have actually been a major contributor, but if my laptop isn't running Steam, I can't play a lot of my games on it.

 

[Drathnoxis]

2012 laptop. It doesn't have any battery life and the GPU is barely worth spit, but everything is set up the way I like it and it has Windows 7.

 

[Kae]

Hmmm... A lot of people seem to have gotten their PCs on 2012, in any case me too, it's pretty old and practically obsolete, I've actually saved enough to buy a new PC which I was planning on buying on January but IDK, I haven't felt like doing so, besides considering all that's going on and that my medical insurance isn't great I'd just rather keep the money as a cushion or at least wait until the leftover cash is still pretty decent, also it just feels really nice to pay rent and know there's money in the bank account just in case, I'm not really used to having money at all.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I like that the insane march of computer tech has eased off. It used to be that you had to update your computer tech all the time to play the latest games: any single component in mine probably needed replacing every 3-4 years (I bought mid-range - if you bought bleeding edge and ran it to obsolescence you'd be looking at 5-6). So I'd usually buy CPU and mobo, and then over the next 3-4 years gradually upgrade RAM, GPU etc. and clip them into the new CPU and mobo when that time came around.

These days, seems games are made with far more latitude for older gear. Sure, you're not getting 4K or whatever, but you can get decent fps with the gfx turned down on some pretty old kit.

Yeah, if you're just shooting to play at 1080p at 60fps that's pretty easy to hit with most modern games since any cross-platform releases had to be able to do that on the Xbone and PS4.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Believe me, I tried killing pretty much everything. My last laptop I tried a fresh re-install of Win10, pruned as much as I could and blocked unnecessary start-up programs, and it still kept locking up for ~15 mins after rebooting. I think Steam may have actually been a major contributor, but if my laptop isn't running Steam, I can't play a lot of my games on it.

It's not hard to test out and figure out what's causing it. It shouldn't be Steam because that doesn't even run at startup. You can image (Reflect is great and free) your current C: drive so then you can fuck around with Windows installations and then just restore that image when you figure out the culprit. There's really no reason to even fresh install Windows when you can restore images, like I never did a Windows install on my new laptop or desktop last year, I just used the image off my older laptop and loaded it on the new desktop and laptop because I'm not re-doing all my Windows and program settings, registry edits, group policy edits again. I'm sure you'll find people saying doing that is a big no-no but it works flawlessly (just uninstall the drivers from the previous computer's mobo, CPU, etc and install the proper drivers).

Try doing a fresh install, then run the debloat script and see if it still hangs after that as that script removes pretty much everything while keeping Windows still working (though the Microsoft Store won't work anymore). If that still doesn't work, maybe it's some weird hardware problem. Microsoft programs like OneDrive will max out the CPU and disk usage at the start. Below is a pic of my work laptop after a restart with "normal" stuff like OneDrive, Teams, VPN running on startup and look how it's pinging the CPU, SSD, and network 3 minutes in still. Notice how there's over 100 more processes running (with nothing opened by me yet) than my desktop with everything I could basically have open at once. Plus, you'll notice my desktop CPU (pic from the previous post) is basically doing nothing a minute in while my work laptop is at 100% over 3 minutes in. Windows 10 has a shit-ton of baked in stuff that doesn't need to be running.

 

[Agema]

It's not hard to test out and figure out what's causing it. It shouldn't be Steam because that doesn't even run at startup. You can image (Reflect is great and free) your current C: drive so then you can fuck around with Windows installations and then just restore that image when you figure out the culprit. There's really no reason to even fresh install Windows when you can restore images, like I never did a Windows install on my new laptop or desktop last year, I just used the image off my older laptop and loaded it on the new desktop and laptop because I'm not re-doing all my Windows and program settings, registry edits, group policy edits again. I'm sure you'll find people saying doing that is a big no-no but it works flawlessly (just uninstall the drivers from the previous computer's mobo, CPU, etc and install the proper drivers).

Try doing a fresh install, then run the debloat script and see if it still hangs after that as that script removes pretty much everything while keeping Windows still working (though the Microsoft Store won't work anymore). If that still doesn't work, maybe it's some weird hardware problem. Microsoft programs like OneDrive will max out the CPU and disk usage at the start. Below is a pic of my work laptop after a restart with "normal" stuff like OneDrive, Teams, VPN running on startup and look how it's pinging the CPU, SSD, and network 3 minutes in still. Notice how there's over 100 more processes running (with nothing opened by me yet) than my desktop with everything I could basically have open at once. Plus, you'll notice my desktop CPU (pic from the previous post) is basically doing nothing a minute in while my work laptop is at 100% over 3 minutes in. Windows 10 has a shit-ton of baked in stuff that doesn't need to be running.

View attachment 3408

Cheers -

I know from task manager it's the HDD - CPU was rarely above 60-70% on start-up. When I looked in detail at the write on and read off in details, there's a welter of programs clogging up the HDD at start-up. Steam is a major offender. I'm guessing it's some form of update / update check, possibly also rifling through the installed game files as well as Steam itself. One Drive I disabled, because it was an arse. Some are as far as I can see Windows stuff - and it's a potentially world of pain every time a Win update hits, not least because all sorts of other software updates after it. There's the antivirus - I tested disabling it but it didn't seem to help much. There are also the manufacturer utilities.

My conclusion was that it was if software mostly likely to be Windows, Steam and/or the antivirus. But as I heavily used it to play games and I just don't like not having an antivirus, I can't usefully disable any of them and retain the functionality I want. If hardware, I suspect the HDD had some minor fault - I ran some HDD checkers, but nothing reported anything, although I don't know if they would diagnose the fact it was just slow.

The previous laptop to that also slowed, but I'm pretty sure that was the CPU: it was okay as long as it didn't have to wok very hard, but ground to a near halt when asked to do any moderate-heavy processing. I don't know the tech enough, but I wondered if one or two of the cores on a quad core could fail, but the surviving ones could keep the thing going, if at reduced capability. Or maybe it was overheating and a regulator was kicking in to reduce CPU effort, but I cleaned out the fan and that didn't help.

It's kind of moot now, because I just bought a new one with SSD. The old one is now plugged into the TV to run any streaming services fopr which the TV doesn't have in-built apps. Just need to tell it to wake up a decent time before we want to use it to watch something.

 

[Piscian]

Couple weeks.
AMD 5600x
Taichi X570
Gigabyte RTX3080 OC

Just lucky enough to live near a Microcentor and walked in at just the right time. They literally had just put 20 RTX 3080s and RTX 3070s on the shelf. I called all my friends. Last dude said he went an hour and 1/2 later and they were all gone. The 5600 my boss found when he went on an slow day, though they are pretty common now I think, at least at my Microcenter. We've tried for 4 weeks straight to find my friend a 3080 though and no luck since that one day. Supposedly AMD is gonna send most of the 6700XTs to brick and Mortar..fingers crossed.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

2012 laptop. It doesn't have any battery life and the GPU is barely worth spit, but everything is set up the way I like it and it has Windows 7.

I would say just image your current laptop and then restore that image on a new laptop but there's a ton of drivers Win7 doesn't have. I was a pretty dedicated Win7 user and I installed it on a cheap ($250) Dell laptop I got 2 or 3 years back and the USB ports didn't even work. Win10 isn't so bad once you "teach" it not to be bad

Cheers -

I know from task manager it's the HDD - CPU was rarely above 60-70% on start-up. When I looked in detail at the write on and read off in details, there's a welter of programs clogging up the HDD at start-up. Steam is a major offender. I'm guessing it's some form of update / update check, possibly also rifling through the installed game files as well as Steam itself. One Drive I disabled, because it was an arse. Some are as far as I can see Windows stuff - and it's a potentially world of pain every time a Win update hits, not least because all sorts of other software updates after it. There's the antivirus - I tested disabling it but it didn't seem to help much. There are also the manufacturer utilities.

My conclusion was that it was if software mostly likely to be Windows, Steam and/or the antivirus. But as I heavily used it to play games and I just don't like not having an antivirus, I can't usefully disable any of them and retain the functionality I want. If hardware, I suspect the HDD had some minor fault - I ran some HDD checkers, but nothing reported anything, although I don't know if they would diagnose the fact it was just slow.

The previous laptop to that also slowed, but I'm pretty sure that was the CPU: it was okay as long as it didn't have to wok very hard, but ground to a near halt when asked to do any moderate-heavy processing. I don't know the tech enough, but I wondered if one or two of the cores on a quad core could fail, but the surviving ones could keep the thing going, if at reduced capability. Or maybe it was overheating and a regulator was kicking in to reduce CPU effort, but I cleaned out the fan and that didn't help.

It's kind of moot now, because I just bought a new one with SSD. The old one is now plugged into the TV to run any streaming services fopr which the TV doesn't have in-built apps. Just need to tell it to wake up a decent time before we want to use it to watch something.

I just checked, there is an option in Steam settings to not run at startup. OneDrive is good and bad at the same time because it does put everything you have in it on the local computer (and cloud obviously) so you can access files with no delay and when offline because they are on the local drive. However, it means lots of syncing. You don't need an antivirus, really the only way to get a virus now is to download it yourself (you ain't gonna get the Blaster Worm like back in the day that even shutdown my college for a day way back). Again, with the power of imaging, if you do get a virus, it's faster to restore an image than run a virus scan. You just get your C: drive setup with all your programs and settings and whatnot, and image it so you can just go restore the image if a virus or Windows breaks itself. I haven't run an antivirus in probably 15 years already. I also don't even have Windows Defender or Firewall running. I even have Windows Update completely disabled (I only do the feature updates in the Spring and Fall). My computer ain't gonna be restarting itself unless I tell it to.

It could be the HDD, I don't even know what makes them so slow sometimes. We have one old model of desktops with HDDs in the environment at work still and some of them are so slow it doesn't even make sense and they aren't THAT old. Trim all the Windows stuff and everything else (since it's just a streaming box basically) and run a suite of HDD utilities to defrag and find bad sectors and whatnot. You could probably throw on Win7 now as it's not nearly as bloated and it'll perform basic streaming ability.

 

[Saulkar]

My computer is all over the place.

It has some hard-drives from 2011 that are still somehow chugging along as if they are not 10 years old, I always back them up though. Most of the other hard-drives are from 2015-2020.

The motherboard, cpu, and AIO (Asus Rampage V USB 3.1/5960x @4.5GHZ, Corsair i100H) are all from 2015. I used to rock a 5930k that could only hit 4.2GHZ for the longest time but I switched to a 5960x on the cheap late last year. The only thing stopping me from getting a 6950x to make full use of the aging platform is that I would need a 360mm cooler in order to cool the damn thing if I were to get it up to 4.5GHZ which is very important for real-time viewport animation playback which would mean removing the HD cage, which I do not even know if it is possible.

The 1600w EVGA GOLD powersupply (from when I was running 4 GPUS for rendering) is also from my 2015 upgrade.

The case is a Corsair C70 from 2018.

And the GPU and M.2 NVME SSD are an RTX 3090 and Samsung Evo 970 Plus from 2020.

 

[Schadrach]

Desktop, 2017. Got it around when I started dating my now wife. Can't afford to buy a new one ATM, significantly because of said wife. It's good enough for gaming at 1080p 60Hz, which since I'm using a cheap 30" FHD TV as my monitor is really all that matters.

Laptop, mid-2015 MacBookPro. Got it on eBay in late 2015 for roughly 70% off retail.

 

[gorfias]

Feb. 2018. Oldest part is an RX 480 8 Gig graphics card, which I think to be about a year older. Knock on wood, it is running well as I'm using it all the time for games and for work. The price of graphics cards at this time are insane. If you can find one. I have to hope this thing holds up for another 3 years and that things are available at normal prices again by then. Ryzen 1700 and 16 Gig DDR4 RAM. Running out of room on my hard drives for games, which bums me out. 4 TB internal, 4TB external.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Current build is from November 2017

Asus Z270 Mk1 MB
Evga 750W PSU
Core i7700
Evga 8GB GTX1070
16GB RAM
3 HDD’s (one Program drive and two Storage)
Windows 10 Professional

Eventually I’ll probably double the RAM and get an RTX GPU whenever they’re sold normally again (if ever, thanks to the crypto bs). Might also finally look into an SSD for the next reinstall of Windows

Oh, and still rocking a 1650 x 1050 Samsung monitor from 2007 (or 8?). It sounds like LED monitors are where it’s at these days, if when I inevitably upgrade, but HDR not as much.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Oh, and still rocking a 1650 x 1050 Samsung monitor from 2007 (or 8?). It sounds like LED monitors are where it’s at these days, if when I inevitably upgrade, but HDR not as much.

The fact you run the current you build you do without even a 1080p monitor is kinda bonkers, I'm surprised. Rather curious how ya put that much into a rig but never upgraded the screen to go with it. I imagine it's quite a work horse of its time?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The fact you run the current you build you do without even a 1080p monitor is kinda bonkers, I'm surprised. Rather curious how ya put that much into a rig but never upgraded the screen to go with it. I imagine it's quite a work horse of its time?

 

[laggyteabag]

The fact you run the current you build you do without even a 1080p monitor is kinda bonkers, I'm surprised. Rather curious how ya put that much into a rig but never upgraded the screen to go with it. I imagine it's quite a work horse of its time?

A friend of mine is contemplating getting a PS5, but is still rocking a not-quite 1080p TV from at least 2009.

What can you do, eh?

If it ain't broke...

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

The fact you run the current you build you do without even a 1080p monitor is kinda bonkers, I'm surprised. Rather curious how ya put that much into a rig but never upgraded the screen to go with it. I imagine it's quite a work horse of its time?

It only a 22” screen though so 1080p to me isn’t a noticeable enough improvement to justify it, let alone buy the larger desk I’d possibly need to fit something significantly larger to take advantage of the extra pixels. Sure, it could fit one by itself no problem, but I’d need to make special wall-mounted shelves or something for my desktop speakers, because it’s tight as it is. I could buy a bigger desk I suppose, but then that encroaches on my room space for anything more than slightly larger.

A friend of mine is contemplating getting a PS5, but is still rocking a not-quite 1080p TV from at least 2009.

What can you do, eh?

If it ain't broke...

Indeed that’s my baseline mentality right now lol. Or at least, the improvement to be had by going up to even 1080p personally isn’t enough to upgrade yet, for the above reasoning. It’s something I’ll do eventually, and might even leapfrog 1080p right to 4K for added effect! This one looks rather nice, and might be able to fit my desk with some efficient space management,


Guess I’d just have to get used to lower framerates, unless I upgrade my GPU...whenever that’ll be possible at reasonable pricing.