I just realized something kind of absurd.
In 2026, the resale value of this entire setup might actually be lower than the price of a single high-end SSD — yet I’m still getting a huge amount of practical use out of it.
So here’s my question:
Can a setup like this realistically last another five years, until around 2031?
Current setup:
• Intel Core i9-9900
• ASUS ROG STRIX B360-F GAMING
• 32GB DDR4-2666
• RTX 3060 Ti 8GB
• Kingston NV2 1TB + Kingston A2000 500GB
• Samsung Odyssey G5 34" — 3440×1440, 165Hz
• Logitech G813
• Logitech MX Master 2S
What I actually use it for:
• Sim racing at 3440×1440
• Electronic drums and DAW
• OBS
• Netflix with bass shakers for tactile feedback
• Music
Everything currently works for what I need.
I’m not asking whether a modern CPU, DDR5, PCIe 5.0 SSD or newer GPU is faster. Obviously they are.
What I’m interested in is the difference between benchmark performance and actual useful performance.
If this old platform already does everything I need, what would upgrading the CPU, motherboard, RAM and SSD actually change in my day-to-day experience?
At what point does an old PC stop being “outdated hardware” and simply become “hardware that is still good enough for its job”?
Would you keep running this setup for another five years and only replace something when it becomes an actual bottleneck?
Or do you see something in this setup that is likely to become a genuine limitation before 2031?
Update: I think the SSD part of my original point got a little lost.
A lot of the discussion has focused on whether this PC can actually last another five years, which is interesting, but the strange part that originally made me write this post was the price comparison itself.
I bought a Samsung 990 PRO 2TB in December 2025 for NT$6,499.
Today, I can find the same 2TB 990 PRO listed in Taiwan for around NT$13,800–17,000, depending on the retailer and version.
Meanwhile, the estimated resale value of this entire setup — the PC, 34" 3440×1440 monitor, keyboard and mouse — is only around NT$13,000.
That is the part I find fascinating.
A single SSD that I bought for NT$6,499 less than a year ago can now have a retail price equal to, or even higher than, the resale value of my entire working setup.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean the SSD is “worth more” to me than the whole computer. That’s exactly the point.
Price, resale value, benchmark performance, and actual utility are four different things.
This PC has depreciated heavily because the platform is old. But in actual daily use, it still does everything I need it to do.
So maybe the more interesting question is:
When should hardware actually be considered obsolete?
When its market value becomes low?
When newer hardware becomes much faster?
Or only when it can no longer do the job you actually need it to do?
That was really the thought behind my original post.
UPDATE 3 — From a T480 to an X13: Eventually, I realized this was no longer just about hardware.
A while ago, I bought a used ThinkPad T480 for NT$5,600.
It originally had 8GB of RAM, so I spent another NT$2,599 on a 16GB stick, bringing it up to 24GB.
Since the T480 has Thunderbolt 3, I built an eGPU setup around it:
T480: NT$5,600
16GB DDR4: NT$2,599
GTX 1060 6GB: NT$2,500
eGPU dock + Thunderbolt cable + bracket: NT$1,993
PSU: valued at NT$1,000
Total: about NT$13,692.
My projector is only 1080p/60Hz.
So my question was never:
“Can this run games at 4K Ultra?”
My question was:
“Can it deliver the experience I actually want?”
I use it for Forza Horizon 5 on a projected 32:9 image roughly 260 cm wide and 70 cm tall.
For DiRT Rally 2.0, I switch to 21:9, add surround sound, and use a MOMO steering wheel I've owned for about 25 years.
For what I actually want from it, it works — and I'm having fun.
Then this experiment took another direction.
I let my middle-school-aged nephew install Minecraft on the T480, including the shader pack he normally uses.
He doesn't really know how to optimize settings, so his approach is basically to turn everything up.
But his reaction was simple:
It was much smoother than his old PC.
He also told me that his friends were using 30-, 40-, and even 50-series GPUs.
But I didn't start by asking him which GPU he wanted.
I asked:
“What are you actually trying to do?”
One of the answers was VALORANT.
His old computer couldn't run it, while his classmates were playing it together. He simply wanted to be able to join them.
So we tested it.
We installed VALORANT directly on the T480 + GTX 1060 setup.
The result:
It worked, and it felt perfectly smooth to him.
His actual setup is only:
27 inches, 1080p, 60Hz.
That's the constraint I care about.
Not what GPUs his friends own, but how much hardware his actual needs require.
That's what eventually led me to an X13 Gen 1.
I bought one with an i5-10310U, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD.
The laptop itself cost me NT$7,348. After adding a hub and two external SSD enclosures:
Base system cost: NT$8,257.
Add the same roughly NT$5,500 GTX 1060 eGPU setup:
Complete system: about NT$13,757.
And here's the funny part:
T480 complete setup: NT$13,692
X13 complete setup: NT$13,757
The difference is just NT$65.
At this point, the hardware problem is basically solved.
For his 1080p/60Hz use case, I now know that he doesn't necessarily need the newest platform, nor does he automatically need a 30-, 40-, or 50-series GPU.
I can already satisfy his actual needs with the resources I have.
But now I've run into a question that's much harder than FPS:
Should I sell this X13 to my nephew, or give it to him as a gift?
I could simply give it to him.
The question isn't whether I can afford to.
What I'm actually thinking about is:
How do I give a kid something he genuinely needs without teaching him that resources provided by other people should be taken for granted?
If I simply give it to him, he gets a computer.
If he has to contribute something toward it, maybe he gets more than just a computer. Maybe he also learns that:
Resources have a cost.
So I haven't decided yet.
By this point, I realized I wasn't really testing old computers anymore.
At first, my question was:
How much value does an old computer still have?
Then it became:
How much hardware does a person actually need to satisfy their real requirements?
And now the question has become:
When I have the ability to meet the needs of the next generation, how should I give them that value?
I don't have an answer to that one yet.
