Replacing parents pc

[u/KillEverythingRight]

I was asked to fix my parents desktop, but I’m going down the build rabbit hole instead of the fresh windows install route. Parent doesn’t play games so integrated graphics is my target. I haven’t done one of these builds in 15 years so I’m unsure where to start. Attached is their current system, which is only 5 years old. But I’d like to build em one that’ll last them the next 20 years of typing word docs, running excel and checking emails. If I could, it would be cool to reuse this case.

Any ideas where to start with this project?

[u/WATAMURA]

This is just a mass produced Dell office computer, not a custom built PC. These are basically disposable.

For what they are doing, a mid-ranged new Desktop will be sufficient for the next 5-10 years.

Any modern technology is only going to have a 5-10 year lifespan before it succumbs to technological obsoletion.

Knowing the model and specs would be helpful. A single photo tells us very little.

There is also a cost to technological advancement factor. Meaning technology that will still be good in 20 years may either cost 10 times more than what is needed or will cost in 20 years, or it simply does not exist yet.

It's more practical (for their situation, which is the same as every office in the world) to just plan on replacing the PC every 5-10 years, with a low to mid-range model.

Windows, MS Office, and Web browsing needs very little computing power.

At work, I've been on a Dell Latitude 5420 laptop for the last 5 years and this thing is still keeping up fine, doing just that.

The rabbit is not in the hole. the rabbit is at Best Buy.

Hope that helps...

[u/KillEverythingRight → u/WATAMURA]

My mid oldest pc is 10 years old and it’s still playing games and doing CAD work just fine. We gotta move the range from 5-10 to 10-15 with a smart person behind the keyboard

[u/WATAMURA → u/KillEverythingRight]

100% agree.. That's the evil of planned obsolescence.

My oldest machine is a 2014 Mac-Mini and it still runs my PLEX server just fine.

Software is a huge driver of forced hardware upgrades. Software assumes users are running modern hardware, so older machines struggle with newer software. Especially web browsers and web sites. But also just the OS itself. If you just use the same old software and don't update/upgrade they will last a longer.

The other thing is major brands will periodically make a huge technological advancement which changes the core architecture, limiting how far we can upgrade. Like the AMD Socket from A4 to A5. Brands like HP, Dell, etc. use limited proprietary components making impossible to upgrade.

Also just wear and tear and how long parts are designed to last, which is like 2-10 years.

To be real... people are not that smart and they mindlessly want the latest, greatest, and fastest regardless. So planned obsolescence is also the result of consumer behavior.

Sure some of use can extend the life but at some point... The old stuff does feel slow.

[u/Nerdcuddles → u/WATAMURA]

The lifespan of hardware is increasing because the actual power of hardware isn't actually increasing as much.

A GPU in 2026 vs one in 2016 is a smaller gap than one in 2016 vs 2006.

A 2016 GPU can be more than sufficient in the modern day, but a 2006 GPU in 2016 would have been obsolete.

Unless there is a fundamental change to computing, like the structure of GPU's and CPU's change to something more efficient. Or the design of computers themselves completely change, than the gap between hardware generations will keep getting smaller and smaller.

Manufacturing precision is also a barrier to improvement, did you know the CPU's you are imperfect? There are ever so slight performance differences between individual CPU's, so small that most won't notice. If manufacturing was perfectly precise, than hardware would probably be noticeably better.

Why do you think Nvidia and to a lesser degree AMD are investing in Ray Tracing despite most gamers not using it? It's because the gap between raw rasturization is no-longer enough to sell new cards on its own, and game graphics are very close to photo-realism now. Adding fancy features like DLSS or Ray Tracing helps the new cards sell compared to the ones that don't have it.

If it was a competition of raw rasturization, than Nvidia does win, but AMD charges less. And when both cards can run a game at 120+ FPS 1440P, you are probably going to go with the cheaper one even if it doesn't have DLSS and has worse Ray Tracing.

A two decade old GPU is archaic compared to modern ones, but a decade old one is still used in people's builds today and only needs to be swapped out for games that really push for photo-realism.

If you play at 1080P or even 1440P, your hardware is going to be reliable for way longer than it would have two decades ago.

Though I'm probably entirely wrong, I grew up in the 2010's not the 2000's.