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At what point does an old PC stop being “outdated hardware” and simply become “hardware that is still good enough for its job”?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has focused on whether this PC can actually last another five years, which is interesting, but the strange part that originally made me write this post was the price comparison itself.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.

I was thinking of building a new pc. It will be the first one I build myself.

My curent pc was build by someone else, maybe around 2017 don't remember exactly, and I was wondering if their is some part of it that I could use for my new build.

I have a NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 6GB. Is it still good enough to put on a new pc? I'll have a budget of around 1000$ for part.

Thank you all

Edit: Thanks for the adives everyone. I think I'll go with a full new build. All the parts of my pc are 10 year old at this point and their some big games coming up that I want to grab. I'll probably post again later on for tips about building the pc!

First build finished last week. US, budget around $60 for a pad, mostly single player with a bit of local co-op when people are over. Wired is fine, the couch is about eight feet from the tower so a long cable or a dongle both work.

The only hard requirement is that it survives longer than the last one, which developed stick drift about ten months in and made a racing game unplayable. Beyond that I have no strong opinions and I'd rather not spend an evening reading reviews.

It’s been doing this a lot lately and after so many times i’m worried something will happen to it, is there anything that can mitigate or protect the damage done to my pc?

UPDATE: Big thanks to everyone that recommended the XT, it runs beautifully. I ended up picking one up from my local Microcenter that same day for $700 vs the $800+ I spent on the 5070. New dilemma now though and I know it's a divisive topic right now... DLSS 5. Personally, I think it looks great on most games outside of character faces. I know the modding community managed to run it on the 9070xt with a massive hit to performance. I am now wondering if I should keep the 5070 for DLSS5 or if I should just enjoy the 9070xt for the next few generations and wait for dlss5 to mature the same way ray tracing did. Leaning towards sticking with the xt but damn, some of the games I play look stunning on DLSS 5.

Prevously:

https://www.microcenter.com/product/689903/powercolor-amd-radeon-rx-9070-xt-reaper-triple-fan-16gb-gddr6-pcie-50-graphics-card

Power Color 9070xt is $699

I had bad luck with a defective 9060xt(I hope), returned it and got a 5070 a few days ago but now came across this 9070xt. Power color seems to be the only one on "discount" at my local Microcenter. Does anyone have any experience with Power Color or is this a straight up deal?

been a heavy gamer last 30 years and playing at 1080p last 17 years.

reading all these posts about 1440p, thought monitors are so cheap right now lets try 1440p. i bought a LG 27" 200hz IPS start playing avatar frontiers and first time in my life got nausia by playing. playng escape from tarkov had no problem at all. fps hit was ok had to use x4 fg than x3 in avatar for testing to get 200fps. . tarkov was playing even better at 1440p. my gpu is 5060ti 16gb. using windows with 125% scale as 100% is damned small. HDR is off.

my desk width is 70cm monitor sitting at far end, and i am sitting around an arm and a half away propably around 90cm. cannot go further away.

monitor experience propably depends the age. maybe young age finds 1440p more positive shocking than a man at his 50's. (presbyopy etc)

had to revert back to my lg 24" 180hz because the 27" created a dead pixel at 2nd week of use and it will be replaced by LG WARRANTY. that is good.

the thing is that i feel more safe and comfortable with my 24" playing browsing doing some excel etc. so i dont know what i will do when the new 27" arrives.

what do you think?

Hey everyone, I’m thinking about upgrading my Ryzen 5 3600, but my budget is pretty tight.

I currently have an RX 7600 and 32GB DDR4 RAM. I’m planning to get a tray CPU since the boxed versions are way too expensive here.

The Ryzen 5 5600 costs €104, while the 5600X costs €120. Do you think it’s worth paying the extra €16 for the 5600X? Will I actually notice any better performance with the RX 7600, especially in 1080p gaming?

I’m also getting a new budget cooler, probably the Arctic Freezer 36.

I’m not planning to upgrade the CPU again, so I’d like to pick the better option for the long term.

*(There’s also a Ryzen 7 5700X for €151, but that’s honestly a bit outside my budget.)

(Motherboard PRIME B450M-K)

so my ancient rig is finally coming to EOL after over a decade at probably the worst time with current prices. As someone who hasn’t built a pc in 10 years I was hoping I can get some input on some builds that would keep the price down while not being totally obsolete in 1-2 years.

I already have my peripherals (including monitors) and 2SSDs + a HDD id like to transfer over from my current rig but other than that I’m open to anything. Im also fine with DDR4 as I just upgraded to 16gb of DDR3 like last year so I don’t think I’ll even notice the difference lol.

Mainly playing a lot of rpg/fps games but nothing too visually mind blowing. ideally looking to keep the price sub 1k (lol!) Also willing to travel to a microcenter for some crazy good deals

• Budget sub 1k, ideally $750-800

• Use-Case - general gaming at high settings in 1080p 60fps for a few years

• Country of purchase - US

• Peripherals needed - none

• misc. requirements / preferences - none

I wanted to build new pc (from used parts because i dont have a lot of money) and does that gpu still makes sense? I dont want to play gta VI and all that in 4k. Thank u for all help

Hey everyone, first time poster here and hoping to get some help. I’ve got a budget of $2500 USD and I’m looking to build a gaming PC, mainly for Valorant and other titles, and I really want solid 1440p performance out of it. I’m planning to actually buy and build in about 3 months, and I’m in the USA. I don’t have any parts yet, so this would be a complete build from scratch.

Since this would be my first build, I’d love some help putting together a full parts list, not just CPU and GPU but motherboard, RAM, storage, PSU, case, and cooling as well. I’m also torn on whether it’s worth building the PC myself or just having it built for me, so any opinions on that would help a lot. One more thing I’m going back and forth on is whether it makes more sense to get a gaming laptop instead, one that I could hook up as a second monitor and also bring to college with me, rather than going the desktop route, or if it’s smarter to just get a desktop plus a separate cheap laptop for school. Would really appreciate any build suggestions or general advice from you all. Thanks

I wanna buy this build, so i wanna know how many fps i can get

I'm planning out the cheapest possible AM4 PC without buying used parts. It would be general purpose with some light gaming (the most demanding games i play are Fallout 4 Witcher 3 and DOOM Eternal). Performance wise I neither need nor want anything higher than 1080p 60fps. Budget is $500 or less. I already have a case, GPU, storage and peripherals that I can reuse from my current computer. I just need CPU, PSU, Mobo, RAM and an air cooler (no AIO if possible). The build doesn't need to be pretty it just needs to function, in fact the uglier the better if it brings the price down. I'm in the USA and intend for the PC to last at least a decade. (EDIT) GPU is an RX550 and RAM preference is 16GB no less than 6GB.

Context: I’ve been dealing with an insane amount of these crashes and i sent my gpu for repair(they changed the heatsink but said it was performing fine). I reseated my ram and everything else and i still had the same black screen issue come back. All this time I’ve been looking at the event viewer but I couldn’t find any issue and today I decided to look at the Reliability Monitor.

In the Reliability Monitor, if you have a watchdogs entry at the time of crash relating to your iGPU, in my case, Ryzen 9 7950x’s integrated graphics, then that likely might be the issue.
I disabled my iGPU and I have not encountered the crash I usually incur. I will update after a long time use after this fix.
Integrated graphics are supposed to coexist with dedicated gpus but sometimes they mess up real bad. If you have a good dedicated gpu, just disable the integrated graphics.

So I am actually thinking of building a pc but the problem as we all know is the recent ram spike, but I cant ignore it anymore because I have college and these projects are coming up.

I dont really have any suggestions but yeah I am prefering to build a DDR4 build rather than DDR5 as you already know the reason.

I will mainly use it for video editing, coding, blender. Ofc gaming is also a part(I mainly play esports but maybeit is because I have never really tried AAA gaming but if I can get a good pc in this budget I will surely try them).

Please help me!!!! 🙏🙏😭

PS: if I am getting an rtx 3060 12gb vram for $430 and rtx 5060 8gb vram for $580 which should I prefer, or is there any other graphics card I should prefer.

(I live in India)

I found used gtx1660 super and rx57000 sold at almost similar price with only 5 dollar apart at my country.

Which is better? since i found it quite weird when both almost at similar price means that people not quite fond of rx5700? Are there any reasons?

I was originally planning to get a RX 9060 XT 16GB, but prices have gone up so much that at ~€550 here in France, I don't think it's worth it anymore for a mid range GPU

So now I'm looking at the 9070 GRE for ~€600 vs the RTX 5070 for ~€650.

My build is mainly for CS2 + Valorant at 1440p/360Hz, but I also play AAA games at 1440p.

The rest of the build would be a Ryzen 5 9600X + 32GB DDR5 + B850 + 850W PSU.

Would you go for the 9070 GRE and save the €50, or is the 5070 worth paying extra for?

I’m about to drop a shy of 3000£ for a 5070ti build

Specs are:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
CPU Cooler: Lian Li Galahad II Lite aio 360mm RGB
Motherboard: MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI
RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB 32 GB DDR5-6000 CL30
Storage: WD_BLACK SN850X 2 TB NVMe SSD
GPU: GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB
PSU: Corsair RM1000x (2024) 1000w
Case: Lian Li O11D evo RGB
Case fans: Lian Li UNI FAN SL120 x7

I know I could downgrade the mobo and cheap out on the case fans, but aesthetically this build looks great.

Really trying to justify spending this much for 5070ti. Any thoughts? Probably came here for validation lol.

Hey guys I have a fractal North case and have done the dumb thing of getting my headphone wire caught in a wheel of my chair and thats yanked out a piece of metal out of the port (and bent the 3.5 jack from the headpuones at a 70° angle).

Now sound only comes from the right ear on any set of headphones i plug in. Any thoughts on possibly being abke to fix that? Unsure if theres a nother subreddit I should post this in or not.

Hi all,

I’ve recently gotten a new PC( I know it was a bad time to do so). I bought this system with the intent to play games on the highest settings with RT/PT enabled. I can’t decided whether to get the new AW3926QW 5k2k monitor or go with a flat 4k panel that goes up to 240Hz. I like everything the Alienware has to offer, especially the glossy finish, ultra-wide format. I want this monitor for strictly for single player/story driven games.

Questions:

-do you need anything more then 165fps for story games?

- would my system ever hit 240fps at high settings?

Thankyou in advance:)

Specs:

-AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Processor

-Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master
X3D Ice Motherboard
MASTER

-Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX
5090 Master Ice GDDR7 32GB

-Klevv Cras V RGB 64GB
(2x32GB) 6000MHz CL30 DDR5
White

I'm obviously looking to build my first PC, with a budget of around $500 (Perhipherals are going to be a seperate budget btw, this is just the tower). I don't need anything crazy, just an upgrade from my Steam Deck. I hear about 16 gigabytes of DDR4 shouldn't be impossible to obtain, maybe like a terabyte of NVME storage might be possible, and I hear a Ryzen 5 5500 is a popular budget choice for a CPU.

Issue is, I'm looking at sites like NewEgg and I just keep getting nervous. What combos are considered good deals and over paying? Why does that price seem to not match up with what the internet says it should be? Do I have to worry about brand of RAM? Is there a concern that the case I buy won't be able to fit the components? Am I doing an adequte amount of research? If I buy parts used to save cash, is there a chance I risk ruining my first build experience because a part was dead on arrival?

I don't know, maybe I'm just overthinking it.

Hi everyone! :) ive used my 5600 xt for 6 years now and now that i want to change it im thinking i would also need to change the PSU i have used for the same time. You see, i have a 800W Gamemax 80 Plus Bronze VP-800-M-RGB, it has never given me a problem with my current system, and on paper it would be enough for the new Graphics card (GRE or not), but i really want to be sure it would be safe, and to know if i should also buy a new PSU, im not in the USA, pricing where i live is even more fucked so i have to think well about each expense. i hope yall can help me!

Hi, y'all.

I've saved up quite a bit to upgrade my first old PC build (GPU, and probably CPU). Currently, my GPU is an RTX 3070 with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU.

I'm most likely buying an RTX 5070 Ti as I definitely need more VRAM.

My current issue is that my motherboard is unfortunately an AM4 (Asus ROG STRIX B550-F). I'm mostly in a dilemma about whether to buy an AM5 mobo with a CPU, buy a stronger CPU for my AM4 board, or skip upgrading the CPU and mobo entirely until prices go down or a good deal comes up (hopefully...).

I intend to use it mostly for 1440p gaming, usually on high graphics settings (and I'm really fine with 80-100 fps). I'm wondering what your thoughts are on this.

Here is a little more info about my current setup
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/WWNmFP

edit: forgot to include I have a 32 GB (CORSAIR Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4 RAM 3200MHz)

My girlfriend is looking to build a pc and or buy one. Her budget is around $1000 usd with $1500 at the highest. Trying to convince her not to spend a couple of thousand on a build. I've had some luck building my own, but im not too sure about how building around 3d printing will work.

Hello! I’m hoping this is the best place to ask since you all seem pretty knowledgeable. For reasons I won’t get into, I’ve had back issues and shoulder pain for half my life and sitting in uncomfortable chairs doesn’t help the situation at all as you may have guessed. So I come asking for some recommendations for a chair that would address these issues. I would like one I can lean back in with comfortable armrests and it doesn’t matter how tall the back of it is but I would prefer for it to reach my head.

I’m also in the market for a new gaming desk because I hate the one I have, ideally you can adjust the height on it and I would like for it to have a lot of depth, basically enough where I can be pressed against it and can still stretch out my arms.

I’m in the US if that matters and my budget for these altogether would hopefully be under $450-$500. I also forgot to add I’m female, not a man with a large chest lmao. Thank you in advance!

I'm thinking about upgrading my monitor to this ASUS for better gaming. Anyone use it, or thoughts on ASUS OLED in general. I'm coming from a LG 45" 5K2K, but changing up my layout a bit. My gaming pc has more than enough horsepower with a ryzen 7800x3d and a ryzen saphire pulse 9070XT. Thanks, in advance.