I haven’t thought about it in a while but the premise of the article rings true. Desktops are overall disposable. Gpu generations are only really significant with new cpu generations. CPUs are the same with real performance needed a new chipset and motherboard. At that point you are replacing the whole system.
Is there a platform that challenges that trend?
Edit Good points were made. There is a lot to disagree with in the article, especially when focused on gaming.
Storage For the love of your data : storage is a WEAR component. Especially with HDD. Up until recently storage was so cheap it was crazy not to get new drives every few years.
Power Supplies Just because the computer still boots doesn’t mean the power supply is still good. A PSU will continue to shove power into your system long past the ability to provide clean power. Scope and test an older PSU before you put it on a new build.
The importance of open & interchangeable hardware and software goes way beyond the upgrades you may or may not make, or even saving money & reducing e-waste.
You get better products that way. Having complete control over your system benefits you even if you never exercise that control. It is literally a constraint on enshittification.
Let’s say that you’ve just significantly upgraded your GPU. If you were getting the most out of your CPU with your previous GPU, there’s a good chance that your new GPU will be held back by that older component. So now, you need a new CPU or some percentage of your new GPU’s performance is wasted.
There’s always an imbalance. It doesn’t mean it’s “wasted”. CPU and GPU do different things.
except, getting a new CPU that’s worth the upgrade usually means getting a new motherboard
Also not true. AM4 came out in 2016 and they are still making modern processors for it.
Generational performance increases are too small
No one should be upgrading every generation…
Ask yourself this: how much of your current desktop computer has components from your PC from five years ago?
Most of it.
They’re also ignoring the concept of repairability. If my CPU dies? Buy another CPU. Maybe upgrade at the same time. CPU dies in your PS5? Fuck you, better throw the whole thing away and buy a new one.
🎺"The upgrade argument for desktops doesn’t stand up anymore" 🎺
of course, you can still…
hum… well, you can also…
yeah, yeah, you can do that also… but…
…and so going on.
That’s a huge generalization, and it depends what you use your system for. Some people might be on old threadripper workstations that works fine, for instance, and slaps in a second GPU. Or maybe someone needs more cores for work; they can just swap their CPU out. Maybe your 4K gaming system can make do with an older CPU.
I upgraded RAM and storage just before the RAMpocalypse, and that’s not possible on many laptops. And I can stuff a whole bunch of SSDs into the body and use them all at once.
I’d also argue that ATX desktops are more protected from anti-consumer behavior, like soldered price-gouged SSDs, planned obsolescence, or a long list of things you see Apple do.
…That being said, there’s a lot of trends going against people, especially for gaming:
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There’s “initial build FOMO” where buyers max out their platform at the start, even if that’s financially unwise and they miss out on sales/deals.
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We just went from DDR4 to DDR5, on top of some questionable segmentation from AMD/Intel. So yeah, sockets aren’t the longest lived.
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Time gaps between generations are growing as silicon gets more expensive to design.
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…Buyers are collectively stupid and bandwagon. See: the crazy low end Nvidia GPU sales when they have every reason to buy AMD/Intel/used Nvidia instead. So they are rewarding bad behavior from companies.
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Individual parts are more repairable. If my 3090 or mobo dies, for instance, I can send it to a repairperson and have a good chance of saving it.
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You can still keep your PSU, case, CPU heating, storage and such. It’s a drop in the bucket cost-wise, but it’s not nothing.
IMO things would be a lot better if GPUs were socketable, with LPCAMM on a motherboard.
Don’t forget about PCIe expansion. Just yesterday I got a FireWire PCIe card for 20€ to transfer old DV tapes to digital with no quality loss. Plug the card in and you’re done. To get the same result on a laptop I’d need a Thunderbolt port and two adapters, one of which isn’t manufactured anymore and goes for 150€+ on secondhand stores.
PS. I would remove “CPU heating” from your system if I were you :)
Typically I’ve seen a motherboard supports about 2 generations of gpu before some underlying technology makes it no longer can keep up.
If you are going from a 30 series to a 50 series gpu there is going to be a need for increased pci bandwidth in terms of lanes and pcie- spec for it to be fully utilized.
I just saw this play out with a coworker where he replaced 2x3090 with a 5090. The single card is faster but now the he can’t fully task his storage and gpu at the same time due to pci-lane limits. So it’s a new motherboard, which needs a new cpu which needs new ram.
Basically a 2 generation gpu upgrade needs a whole new system.
Each generation of pcie doubles bandwith so a future 2x pcie-6 gpu will need an 8x pcie 4 worth of bandwidth.
Even then gpu’s and cpu have been getting more power hungry. Unless you over spec your psu there is a reasonable chance once you get past 2 gpu generations you need a bigger Psu. Power supplies are wear items. They continue to function, but may not provide power as cleanly when you get to 5+ years of continuous use.
Sure you can keep the case and psu but literally everything else will run thunderbolt or usb-c without penalties.
At this point why not run storage outside the box for anything sizeable? Anything fast runs on nvme internal.
This doesn’t make any sense, especially the 2x 3090 example. I’ve run my 3090 at PCIe 3.0 over a riser, and there’s only one niche app where it ever made any difference. I’ve seen plenty of benches show PCIe 4.0 is just fine for a 5090:
https://gamersnexus.net/gpus/nvidia-rtx-5090-pcie-50-vs-40-vs-30-x16-scaling-benchmarks
1x 5090 uses the same net bandwidth, and half the PCIe lanes, as 2x 3090.
Storage is, to my knowledge, always on a separate bus than graphics, so that also doesn’t make any sense.
My literally ancient TX750 still worked fine with my 3090, though it was moved. I’m just going to throttle any GPU that uses more than 420W anyway, as that’s ridiculous and past the point of diminishing returns.
And if you are buying a 5090… a newer CPU platform is like a drop in the bucket.
I hate to be critical, and there are potential issues, like severe CPU bottlenecking or even instruction support. But… I don’t really follow where you’re going with the other stuff.
And if you are buying a 5090… a newer CPU platform is like a drop in the bucket.
That is the point of the article.
The problem my friends has is that he is rendering video so he has a high performance Sas host adapter on the same PCI bus as the GPU. He upgraded both hoping the 5090 would play nicer with the sas adapter but he can’t pull full disk bandwith and render images at the same time. Maybe it’s ok for gaming, not for compute and writing to disk.
The thing with power supplies, they continue to provide enough power long after they lose the ability to provide clean power under load. Only when they are really on their last legs will they actually stop providing the rated power. I have seem a persistent networking issue resolved by swapping a power supply. Most of the time you don’t test a power supply under load to understand if each rail is staying where it needs to be.
If my 3090 or mobo dies, for instance, I can send it to a repairperson and have a good chance of saving it.
While throwing out working things is terrible, the cost of servicing a motherboard outpaces the cost of replacing it. They can possibly still charge you 200 dollars and tell you the board cant be fixed, right? I think the right balance is that you observe the warranty period, try to troubleshoot it yourself --and then call it a day, unless you have a 400+ dollar motherboard.
Yeah, probably. I actually have no idea what they charge, so I’d have to ask.
It’s be worth it for a 3090 though, no question.
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This might be true for Intel, I don’t know, I use amd. I know the limits of my cpu/gpu pairing. I bought the affordable low end GPU for the cpu and in 5 years I’ll upgrade to the upper end gpu when it’s really cheap. 5 years later, I’ll get a new computer
My last GPU? $300.
One before that? $300.
Next one? $300.
(buy used)
The title of this article just doesn’t match reality. It really only (maybe) applies to very high end systems that are already pushing the limits of all components. Most people don’t have the money to waste on that and have plenty of room to upgrade their hardware for a looong time.
If you don’t need much (e.g. no gaming, 3D rendering, etc.), especially if you don’t need a dedicated gpu, then you can upgrade for at least a decade before running into issues. To be fair, a laptop should last a decade as well in that case, but at a higher prices and while being less repairable.
The manufacturing of consent to move your machine to the cloud has begun. We had a good run lads.
You are literally the only person saying that out this this whole exchange.
"This persistent narrative in the media trying to talk consumers out of desktops as being viable options kind of sneakily ties into the greater “you will own nothing and you will be happy” narrative being pushed by big tech.
It’s really obvious and it needs to be consistently called out for what it is."
Literally the most upvoted comment in the linked article.
I guess some frogs are just to stupid to figure out they’re being slow boiled and it’s up to us to carry the dead weight out of the pan…
This is categorically untrue with the latest generations of chipsets, CPUs and GPUs. Just look at AMD instead of Intel: AM4/5 cross-compatibility, DDR4/DDR5 combined support and so on.
If anything, today is the day when you can upgrade beyond your current gen hardware component by component.
What are you on about? Which AM5 CPU can you drop in an AM4 mobo?
Honestly most people just upgrade the GPU and ssd, after 10-15 years they buy a new desktop. Also one of the biggest reasons to get a desktop is that it is cheaper than laptops, last longer, and you can change any part that breaks. I had many laptops with one component basically making the entire device useless, if it was a desktop it could easily be fixed, for example soldered RAM.
This isn’t against desktops. It’s against idea that a desktop is significantly more future proof than another form factor.
The previous comment gives a pretty clear argument for why desktops are more future proof, I think. Being more repairable is a pretty big deal for the longevity of the whole system.
Yes, desktop PCs challenge that trend. If you’re not chasing the newest of the new, you can keep using your old stuff till it dies. I’ve done one CPU upgrade, and a GPU upgrade, to my desktop in the eight years I’ve owned it, and it handles all of my games fine.
If you’re changing the motherboard, you’ll usually need a new CPU, and sometimes RAM. As long as your MOBO has a PCI/PCIE slot you can shove your old graphics card in there. Unless there’s a new RAM version, you don’t need to replace the RAM, and SATA’s been the standard storage connector for how long now?
Unless you’re going above your current PSU’s rating that thing’s good until it’s dead.
I just don’t see how this argument holds up. If your motherboard is old enough that they no longer make your CPU/RAM socket, and you’re looking to upgrade, chances are very good that thing’s lived far longer than most laptops would be expected to. But like. When I built my current desktop 8 years ago, it had 8gb of RAM and a… I don’t remember the graphics card, I know the processor was a pentium G something, and like 1tb of storage. It has an i7 (don’t remember the generation off hand), and an R9 290, and 32gb of RAM, and 7tb of storage now. Same motherboard. If I replace it I will need a new processor, and new RAM (the RAM is actively dying, so I haven’t been using it much), but these parts are all nearly a decade old, with the exception of the RAM. Well. One RAM stick is 8 years old, but that’s beside the point.
This just doesn’t line up with my own personal experience?
Unless you’re going above your current PSU’s rating that thing’s good until it’s dead.
Power supplies will work well past the point of providing clean in spec power on each rail. Lots of parts in a power supply can stop working properly before it physically no longer passes power.
Unless the PSU is relatively new it’s not a great idea to put it into a new build with testing that it is still in spec on each voltage rail under a load.
I wasn’t talking about a new build at any point in my comment.
This post is about new builds, upgrades and using old parts with new ones.
This post, to my reading, is about how desktop PCs are disposable, and my comment is providing evidence to the contrary
I’d say that now is one of the strongest arguments for upgradability. Memory is really expensive right now. At some point in something like 1-3 years, it will probably be considerably cheaper. If anything, CPUs and motherboards are expected to be cheaper during this period due to reduced demand for new PCs. If you can tolerate less memory now and want to save money, upgrading then would be a good idea.
I don’t agree with this article. Everyone I know usually upgrades their GPU until the CPU is bottlenecking it heavily and that is only the case after a few GPU upgrades.
Yeah, and when CPU is the bottleneck upgrading the CPU, mobo, and ram but not the GPU.
This time though I only upgraded the CPU, since AM4 had supported multiple generations of CPUs. One of the best things to happen for PC.
Everything in this post is wrong, actually. But if you buy shit parts to build your desktop, you’ll have a shitty desktop.
Simple answer is at the motherboard level - you look at your motherboard’s future expansion capability and if you started with a good foundation you can do years of upgrades. Also your computer case needs to be big enough to fit extra stuff, full ATX motherboard size is great.
For example I have a VR gaming rig that runs VR games well on DDR3 RAM and a Sandy Bridge CPU, because it has a decent modern GPU and enough CPU cores + RAM.
AMD challenges that trend, but the article writer dismisses them because of Intel’s market share.
Terrible article.
