Video by Christian Selig, creator of the Apollo third-party client for Reddit on iOS. I’d imagine many of us are familiar with him :)
Video by Christian Selig, creator of the Apollo third-party client for Reddit on iOS. I’d imagine many of us are familiar with him :)
He gives one of the criteria as “upgradable”. I also always purchase my PCs with the intention of having them upgradable, but the problem is that I do a good enough job at choosing parts that I never feel the need to upgrade them.
So, I only “upgrade” stuff if it breaks sooner than I expected, and otherwise, I simply use the PC until it breaks and I get an entirely new one.
As a result, I always tell myself that next time, I won’t worry about whether something is upgradable. But then, I choose parts to be upgradable anyways, because I can’t pretend to be somebody that I’m not.
One good way to think about the budget for a PC is to break it down by expected lifetime. So, if he’s spending $700 on a PC, and he uses it for 7 years, then it’s $100 per year. (My PCs usually last about that long, but I’m sure I’m the exception.)
I always end up ship-of-theseusing the hell out of my computer. Even if I replace my mainboard, CPU, GPU, RAM, and PSU, the old storage is still good, as are the case, the fans etc.
I phase out old components as they lose relevance, although my DVD burner has lasted forever and will probably keep doing so.
The last time I built my computer, my storage was magnetic disk drives, and I moved to solid state, but I’d normally save my hard disks as secondary disks. Fans aren’t that expensive and I think it’s a good time to replace them, and I always end up hating my case by the time I need to upgrade.
I hate my current case because first, it didn’t perfectly fit my motherboard, so the metal plate where all the connectors go wouldn’t fit. I’ve lived with that part missing for over 5 years now. And second, it’s got a stupid plexiglass window in its side, and I hate the whole concept of RGB stuff inside a computer. So all I get to see is how messy my cabling is and how much dust has accumulated.
If I was upgrading today, I’d probably try to reuse my disks and my power supply.