Old hardware? No problem.

[LS8]

A while back the PSU in my old spare PC died and took the video card with it. A couple weeks ago I did a mild rebuild with some new parts and some used parts. The new parts included an Enermax Tamahawk 500 watt PSU ($65) and an ATI Radeon 2600XT 512 (AGP) video card (also $65). The used parts included a spare WD Raptor HD I had sitting around (1st gen) and 3x1GB DDR400 cas 2 memory I also had sitting around (Patriot). I reused everything else including the motherboard, CPU (AthlonXP 3200+), sound card (Creative Audigy SE 7.1) and DVD burner.

I did a clean load of XP Pro SP3 and have been using the box as my "main PC" for a couple weeks. Honestly, outside of gaming I don't see the difference between this box and my "hi-po" box (which has been parted out on eBay). I've pretty much retired from gaming but if I decide to play a few rounds of CSS I can. I have been using this PC for web, email, HD movies, IT work and graphics work. It has handled everything I have asked it to and the nice part is it's very quiet. The loudest part in the setup is the 10k HD.

Overall, unless I go back to gaming I can't see myself needing more power than this. Anyone else feel that way? I think this is why low-power Netbooks are getting so popular. People are realizing they don't need an uber PC for every day computing.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Agreed; unfortunately, I quite like PC gaming so I'm going to keep my powerful hardware around for a while. If I ever lose interest I guess I'll just stop upgrading.

Of course, one other reason people buy new hardware is for things like warranty support or simply to get more reliable, newer stuff as the old stuff dies (which is basically what you did). A lot more get new computers because they're too stupid to realize that their current one is slow because it's bogged down with crap they downloaded and buy a new computer instead of just wiping and reinstalling.

 

[polarbear6]

Originally posted by: LS8
A while back the PSU in my old spare PC died and took the video card with it. A couple weeks ago I did a mild rebuild with some new parts and some used parts. The new parts included an Enermax Tamahawk 500 watt PSU ($65) and an ATI Radeon 2600XT 512 (AGP) video card (also $65). The used parts included a spare WD Raptor HD I had sitting around (1st gen) and 3x1GB DDR400 cas 2 memory I also had sitting around (Patriot). I reused everything else including the motherboard, CPU (AthlonXP 3200+), sound card (Creative Audigy SE 7.1) and DVD burner.

I did a clean load of XP Pro SP3 and have been using the box as my "main PC" for a couple weeks. Honestly, outside of gaming I don't see the difference between this box and my "hi-po" box (which has been parted out on eBay). I've pretty much retired from gaming but if I decide to play a few rounds of CSS I can. I have been using this PC for web, email, HD movies, IT work and graphics work. It has handled everything I have asked it to and the nice part is it's very quiet. The loudest part in the setup is the 10k HD.

Overall, unless I go back to gaming I can't see myself needing more power than this. Anyone else feel that way? I think this is why low-power Netbooks are getting so popular. People are realizing they don't need an uber PC for every day computing.

Well my father also talks like this..

Well if your satisfied it ok. In my opinion there are only few things in the computer application world that need high configurations Gaming ,Video editing,Designing(Engineering),Graphics(Photoshop and flash cs4).
If you dont have anything to do with em you can be satisfied with anything ( Even a P3)

So how old are you cause you have retired from gamming...
And do you mind if i call you papa(Meaning father )

 

[LS8]

I'm not that old. I've been PC gaming since the mid 80s and building PCs since the early 90s.

I originally built this PC in 2004. The motherboard, CPU, case, and speakers date back to then. In 2006 the original PSU died after pretty much 24/7 use. I replaced it and upgraded the video card from a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB to a Radeon X1650 Pro 512MB. I built my new PC a few months after the repairs in 2007. The only reason I built the new PC was to play the latest games.

So now I'm back on the AXP machine and like I said in the OP it does everything I need it to. Windows boots in less than 30 seconds, all my apps are snappy, HD video plays great, etc, etc. I bet I could keep this PC 3 more years pending all the innards hold up (and I don't get the gaming itch again).

 

[Hacp]

If they hadn't invented h264, I'd still be on my 2.8 Northwood

 

[DaveSimmons]

The main thing I'd miss taking 2 steps back would be dropping down to single-core.

My work PC is a quad-core Q6600 and it's only a little faster than the A64 X2 3800+ dual-core, but that X2 was a noticeable improvement over the P4 3.2 GHz single-core it replaced. Not in general, but for 2 cases:
1. When doing something that would saturate one core, like "rebuild all" in Visual Studio, I could do something else like nef here
2. When some junky program like InstallShield's update service went rogue and used 100% of one core I could still ctrl-alt-del and kill the rogue.

For a HTPC or music jukebox a second core also prevents hiccups when Windows fires up some background process or service.

I'd want dual-core, even a slow one, for anything except a netbook from now on.