Sell & Upgrade OR Use to Destruction?

Geminist

Hi All

I have a question where for computers, is it best to sell (whilst there is still some value) & upgrade say every three years, or use a PC to destruction before buying a new one?

I think this depends on how the computer is used, so to give you an idea of how I use my computer:

1) Movies and music
2) Work - MS Office, PDF etc
3) More work - Computer modelling, AutoCAD etc
4) Email, websurfing, using video chat etc
5) Infrequent gamer - First person shooter etc (I am not looking for gaming computer, but just something good enough to run modern games in moderate settings).
6) A computer serves as my main entertainment/work machine at home. I don't watch TV.

So I consider myself to be somewhat of an upper mid-range power user. Based on past experience, I tend to feel I need a better computer every three or four years.

Based on the above, my view is that the most efficient (money wise) solution for me is to sell my computer whilst it still holds some value and upgrade, instead of using it to destruction.

Is this a good idea? I just wanted to see if there's a better way to do it.

Also, when it comes to selling a computer, I think places like GumTree would give the best return. Has anyone else got other ideas where I can sell them?

Many thanks!!

Jeff_Bridges_hair

Is your current computer fully maxed out with upgrades itself then? Can you not do anything more with it to make it perform better?

Geminist

Hi there

I've tried to optimise the hardware of my computer so it is a 'balanced' system. I thought about upgrading, and the view I took is changing one component wouldn't do much overall as the other components wouldn't be able to keep up.

My other contention with upgrading is although the cost of the hardware is obviously cheaper than a new PC, it doesn't seem worthwhile. For example, I bought a laptop for about £400 and when it cost me about £70 to replace (DIY) the HDD one year later. The cost is about 18% of the price of the computer for one component.

Jeff_Bridges_hair

Nah i reckon you could upgrade for around half the price of a brand new PC - even taking into account how much you may get for your current PC.

Post the current specs of your PC here and lets see if we can all help you .

fwor

If the current computer was reasonably high spec 3 years ago, you probably don't need to change it for the uses that you describe, and selling a 3 year old PC will get you so little it's hardly worth doing IMO.

My main PC is around 5 years old and it handles everything I need it to do just fine with just a minor upgrade to the CPU last year with a secondhand replacement from eBay. The only thing I use a separate higher-spec PC for is a media centre with 3 tuners, though even that is now 3 years old and working fine.

Generally I keep PCs until they really can't cope with lots of concurrent tasks, and then give them away on Freegle/Freecycle, where they will be fine for use as a second PC for someone's kids to browse the internet on.

JasX

There is virtually no value in 2nd hand computers -you can almost always get a reasonable basic/3yo spec 2nd hand one on ebay for £50-80.

Usual policy is stick with your old one until it becomes noticably slow -check to see if its sensible to upgrade given what you currently do/plan to use it for.

if not practical to selectively upgrade then buy a replacement machine.

your suggestion of a 3 year sell / replace with new cycle would cost £450-600 every 3 years for getting £50odd back. Value wise would be a very expensive way to own/use a PC

Geminist

Thanks for all the replies.

My last replacement was after using it for 3.5 years when it couldn't do what I wanted fast enough. I only go for upper mid end stuff as I think I would be paying a premium for high end stuff.

Where I'm coming from is really to try and maximise the value of my current computer because my old computer is sitting at home doing nothing. So I thought if I sell my computer a bit earlier, I might be able to make some money off it (and not see it depreciates to nothing).

So am I right to think the best strategy is to actually use the computer to the point where it couldn't keep up anymore, and from there decide to upgrade or replace?

I appreciate this depends on use, requirements etc but from past experience, I suspect this should be around 4 years when an upgrade/replacement is needed. Is there a rule of thumb? What's everyone else experience? It would be nice to have a rough idea so cash wise I can always start allowing for a replacement machine.

Lil306

Geminist wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies.

My last replacement was after using it for 3.5 years when it couldn't do what I wanted fast enough. I only go for upper mid end stuff as I think I would be paying a premium for high end stuff.

Where I'm coming from is really to try and maximise the value of my current computer because my old computer is sitting at home doing nothing. So I thought if I sell my computer a bit earlier, I might be able to make some money off it (and not see it depreciates to nothing).

So am I right to think the best strategy is to actually use the computer to the point where it couldn't keep up anymore, and from there decide to upgrade or replace?

I appreciate this depends on use, requirements etc but from past experience, I suspect this should be around 4 years when an upgrade/replacement is needed. Is there a rule of thumb? What's everyone else experience? It would be nice to have a rough idea so cash wise I can always start allowing for a replacement machine.

Use it until it gets become stupidly slow where it can't handle the task

Buy a motherboard bundle and swap the components over

I paid £900+ for first PC, had 1gb ram and a single core athlon 1.6 about 5 years ago

2 years ago I bought an athlon upgrade bundle from novatech for £200 had 2gb ram and a dual core 2.8ghz athlon cpu

I'm still using that computer now, and it's getting slow but I'm not upgrading yet because it's more than capable of handling what I throw at it (and I play games like black ops)

That and I'm saving up to build a new future proof pc anyway (2k )

closed

The only reason to replace or upgrade is if you have a reason, ie your cad software or games require it.

Beyond that, pc's only get slow because they have been overloaded with software in startup, reinstalling windows cures that

Geminist

Thanks for your thoughts on this Closed and Lil306. Game is more or less a want instead of need as I wouldn't upgrade for the sake of playing games.

I do try to keep my Windows (I'm running 7) clean by running virus/adware/spyware scan regularly, minimising items at startup, uninstalling stuff I don't need, clean registry, keep good amount of free space etc. I don't defrag as I've read that it only helps you in the short run, but increases the risk of killing your HDD.

The slowness is coming from running quite a few things at the same time, for example I when I work at home, I have a few MS Words, PDFs, brower with multiple tabs, MP3, some CAD or modelling software opened.

I know there's an argument of closing stuff down but it just stops me from working efficiently :rotfl:

I've maxed out my RAM (I'm running Quad Core) and 32 bit OS as some software don't work on 64 bit unfortunately.

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Another thought Lil306, by taking a gradual upgrade route, do you find the need having to upgrade other components, e.g. HDD, monitor etc?

Lil306

Geminist wrote: »

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Another thought Lil306, by taking a gradual upgrade route, do you find the need having to upgrade other components, e.g. HDD, monitor etc?

There's different ways to approach the task

Save up (a crap load) of money, and build yourself a PC that will last for years to come which is usually the better option

Wait until existing hardware is too slow to run existing things cad, photoshop, movie editing, games, etc and simply buy the parts needed to upgrade

i.e buy an OCZ vertex 2e HDD (110 or 180 for 120gb), load your games, apps, o/s etc onto it and you will have lightning fast load times / access times. Use the old hdd as a backup

When you upgrade gradually you have to select the right components. I had to buy a seperate graphics card when i bought my new bundle because I stupidly didn't pay attention as to what onboard video it had (it had none!)

If I were to upgrade now (on the cheap) I'd buy a sandy bridge h67 motherboard. It has onboard graphics, and I believe the new intel CPUs getting released will be of the same pin setup as the current sandy bridge. Making the PC more future proof, although I think that was just something I read.