Is my legacy, going to be a legacy, of e-waste? Sigh.

[hoorah]

Well, I realize I'm digging up a few month old thread, but I get where Larry is coming from. I see new platforms and upgrades coming out and wish I had a need to build a new system to get to try the stuff out and see how much faster it is. Thing is I don't have a need....so I don't do it, but I get the feeling.

I also have a LOT of unused and unwanted desktops around that have life in them but can't find takers for them. Difference is, all of mine are pulled from the town e-waste recycling center, so they don't cost anything.

I've built a lot of Kodi/HTPC/DVR pcs that have been ignored by their new owners in favor of fire sticks and roku boxes, and I can't blame them.

I will say though that with the recent popularity explosion of Fortnite, I've had a lof of kids (and parents) coming to me and picking up some core2quad desktops that I usually just give them. With a 750Ti or a GTX1050, they work great and get used again.

My recommendation is to 'tinker' with free stuff instead of buying parts.

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://www.nbcnews.com/better/pop-culture/how-sell-your-unwanted-stuff-ncna954546

 

[PingSpike]

I'm pretty sad that PC building is just not what it once was. It was a fun hobby for a long time but the last 10 years even the updates went from big, to marginal feeling, to unnecessary to seemingly new problems for no reason. I sort of revitalized my interest a bit like mxnerd by doing a bunch of stuff with virtualization, which requires different hardware choices.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'm pretty sad that PC building is just not what it once was. It was a fun hobby for a long time but the last 10 years even the updates went from big, to marginal feeling, to unnecessary to seemingly new problems for no reason. I sort of revitalized my interest a bit like mxnerd by doing a bunch of stuff with virtualization, which requires different hardware choices.

I disagree. I think you're getting less from PC building than you used to because once upon a time it was still a reasonably new and unusual thing for you.

Changing from a Phenom II to an i5 4690K resulted in noticeable improvements as did the change from HDD to SSD during the Ph2 era for me. I can't remember any significant-feeling upgrades before then.

Celeron 300A was my first build for myself, then P3-550, AthlonXP 1500+, Athlon II X4 630 was significant because I changed to Win7 in that build I think, SuperFetch did wonders for app cold boot times, but I don't remember any particularly amazing upgrade experiences along the way.

I think what was more interesting was keeping up with the news in the Pentium 4 era (the constant back-and-forth between Intel and AMD, when are they finally going to address heat concerns), ending around the Sandy Bridge era. Ryzen was a welcome surprise since.

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah... I can remember upgrading my 3 year old Pentium 75 with a Pentium II 300 back in the late 90's, and getting a 3X performance boost in almost every application I ran.

Nowadays, I would be lucky if a got a 2X performance boost if I upgraded my 6 year old Core i7 3770 to a Core i7 9700K.

 

[local]

These days I build a new PC every 5 years or so, that gives a noticeable bump. I also still have every one 286 20, 386 33, 486 66, Pentium Pro 200, PIII , PIV, C2D E6600, C2Q Q6850, i7 4790K.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I disagree. I think you're getting less from PC building than you used to because once upon a time it was still a reasonably new and unusual thing for you.

Changing from a Phenom II to an i5 4690K resulted in noticeable improvements as did the change from HDD to SSD during the Ph2 era for me. I can't remember any significant-feeling upgrades before then.

Celeron 300A was my first build for myself, then P3-550, AthlonXP 1500+, Athlon II X4 630 was significant because I changed to Win7 in that build I think, SuperFetch did wonders for app cold boot times, but I don't remember any particularly amazing upgrade experiences along the way.

I think what was more interesting was keeping up with the news in the Pentium 4 era (the constant back-and-forth between Intel and AMD, when are they finally going to address heat concerns), ending around the Sandy Bridge era. Ryzen was a welcome surprise since.

Celly 300a to P3-550 to Athlon XP 1500+ is like .. 2 or 3 years of evolution... you essentially say 50-100% gains every single year.

Phenom 2 to i5 4690k is like 10+ years apart, for, maybe 100% gains ... or, like 5-10% gains each year ...

Things have slowed down by an order of magnitude.

 

[Staples]

When I no longer want something, the options are 1) sell them or 2) donate them. Usually, if they are worth less than $15, it is not worth my time. I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I should try to sell things or just donate them. It is really a tedious and time consuming task just thinking about getting rid of stuff.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I mean, if anyone got free parts for me, I'll happily pay shipping.

(also want to build my gf a PC, i got a old psu, gpu, and that's it)

 

[Sonikku]

Or blow them out, for $200 a PC or something. (Most cost me $300-500 worth of parts.)

Blow em' out. You'll take a loss on every sale, but you'll make it up on volume.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Blow em' out. You'll take a loss on every sale, but you'll make it up on volume.

Sounds a lot like MoviePass. Now that I've got a business model, I just need some Investors, I guess. Then I'll grow as big as Amazon.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Your legacy could be one of generosity. Send the best one to me and the others to anyone else greedy enough to ask and we'll like you forever. Or at least until we're distracted by something shiny.

Seriously though, maybe trade them in for some counseling because clearly you have a problem. You're intelligent enough to know that you're not going to use them or sell them for a profit, yet you keep doing it. Whatever it is that building computers has become a substitute for, you need to find a healthier way of dealing with it.

This.

Anytime I do a computer upgrade, I automatically know to immediately get rid of my remaining shit - less it depreciate further.

I mean, just for reference, I'm still running a Sandy Bridge i7 2600k. Still runs fucking awesome. Good enough for me. I don't have shit for time to game anymore anywayss.

 

[mikeymikec]

Celly 300a to P3-550 to Athlon XP 1500+ is like .. 2 or 3 years of evolution... you essentially say 50-100% gains every single year.

Phenom 2 to i5 4690k is like 10+ years apart, for, maybe 100% gains ... or, like 5-10% gains each year ...

Things have slowed down by an order of magnitude.

But did it make much difference to anything I did, is my point. But I only mentioned platform upgrades there, I actually went:
300A@450, 550, 866, (actually it was 1800+), 2500+, 3200+, X4630, Ph2X6-960T, i5-4690k

The main thing I noticed when (platform) upgrading generally was that if I played an older game then it was a bit smoother, and even then that was probably mainly when I did GPU upgrades (TNT, GF2GTS, Ti4200, 7600GS, 5770, 750ti, 380X).

However, changing from the Ph2 to the 4690K resulted in app cold start times halving again. It also smoothed out gameplay in a few games noticeably. And some of this series of benches suggest a 100% performance improvement despite 6 cores vs. 4:
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/146?vs=1261

Another factor to consider is maybe me getting older and wiser, but the Ph2 to 4690K change was spurred on by mobo quirks combined with what I thought was a mobo fault that turned out to be a faulty 750ti.

 

[BurnItDwn]

But did it make much difference to anything I did, is my point. But I only mentioned platform upgrades there, I actually went:
300A@450, 550, 866, (actually it was 1800+), 2500+, 3200+, X4630, Ph2X6-960T, i5-4690k

The main thing I noticed when (platform) upgrading generally was that if I played an older game then it was a bit smoother, and even then that was probably mainly when I did GPU upgrades (TNT, GF2GTS, Ti4200, 7600GS, 5770, 750ti, 380X).

However, changing from the Ph2 to the 4690K resulted in app cold start times halving again. It also smoothed out gameplay in a few games noticeably. And some of this series of benches suggest a 100% performance improvement despite 6 cores vs. 4:
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/146?vs=1261

Another factor to consider is maybe me getting older and wiser, but the Ph2 to 4690K change was spurred on by mobo quirks combined with what I thought was a mobo fault that turned out to be a faulty 750ti.

I miss when platforms started out with X performance, and then you could replace the CPU the next year for like $100 and get a nice performance boost, then, the next year replace the CPU and add a slotket and get another performance boost ....

When I went from Phenom 2 to i5 2400 it was a nice boost, but going from i5 2400 to i5 4690k was kinda meh ....
This is because the entire phenom/phenom 2 lineup was kinda mediocre... the single core performance was garbage, and, while cpu companies will tell you more core = more good, the reality is that for many things, the only important factor is the single threaded performance

AMD socket 939 and 754 were friggin amazing at their time, Am2, AM2+, AM3, was all lackluster .... Sure, Vishera was decent if you fet it like 200 watts, but, a dual core Pentium could outperform it in almost every game, and in most other applications as well. (exceptions of course to things that require heavy parallelism)

I'm not tryin to disagree, I like your posts and agree for the most part, my point is along the lines of "in the old days, you could spend less money, and get huge gains almost every year", now, you have to wait a lot more years to make upgrades worthwhile, there is no more "holy shit the new stuff is so fast", because, each generation is like 5-10% gradual improvement.

Enjoy your weekend

 

[Sonikku]

Yeah, I feel you. My first build ever had a socket A Sempron. Got 7.5 fps in WoW, the reason I built it. Then on these very forums, back in 05, in the hot deals forum I saw a newegg deal where you get a free socket 754 motherboard with the purchase of an Athlon 64 3200+. It was $64 shipped. I remember taking apart my machine to do what was at the time my very first upgrade and my fps in WoW went up to a staggering 30fps. A 400% boost to framerate!! And it was tangible. I felt like I was cheating to experience such an incomprehesible explosion in performance! I've never had such a boost in my gaming fps since. Those were the days.