December monthly poll

For the month of December we thought it would be interesting to see how old the computer you're currently using is. Feel free to share stories such as how much the computer was when you bought it, issues you've had with it, upgrades you've made to it, when you plan on buying a new computer, etc.

All past monthly polls and results can also be found on the Computer Hope poll page.

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As some may know, just finished building my own PC just about a month ago.

Here are specs again:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965
Motherboard: Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P
RAM: 6 GB OCZ DDR3 Tri-channel PC3-12800C8
HDD: 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F3
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-S223B DVD+/- Multi-rewriter
Case: Antec Nine Hundred
Monitor: 23" Acer v233Hb 1080p HD
Graphics: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5750 1 GB GDDR5 PCI-E, DirectX 11
PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

fairly recent build for me as well- < 4 months or so.


CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33Ghz
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP43-UD3L
RAM: 8GB DDR2 Corsair PC2-6400
HDD: 750GB Seagate 7200RPM (forget the exact model#)
Optical Drive: LG +-R/RW +Lightscribe
Case: Cooler Master 500
Monitor: Acer E151H (1440x900)
Graphics: NVidia Geforce 9800GT 512MB GDDR3
PSU: Corsair TX750W
Network: On-board PCI-E Gigabit, as well as my Xtreme-N Wireless Card that I installed for no good reason.
Sound: RealTek HD- but I'm using my X-Fi XtremeGamer I installed in it instead
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate x64

PC before that was a Dell Dimension 4400; used it for around a year and a half.

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1.6Ghz
Motherboard: Intel Pendleton 854PT
RAM: 1GB DDR (I believe it was either transcend or Corsair)
HDD: 500GB WD Caviar 7200 RPM
Optical Drive: Samsung WriteMaster DVD+-RW
Case: Stock
Monitor: Same as above
Graphics: NVidia Geforce 5500FX
PSU: stock- I think it's only 250W
Network: D-Link DGE-530TX Gigabit PCI
Sound: Same X-Fi card I'm now using in this build.
OS: Windows XP Pro SP3

And Before THAT: (Might I add that this is all from memory except my latest build?)

CPU: AMD K6-2 350Mhz (now a 500Mhz)
Motherboard: ePoX MVP3-G
RAM: 512MB PC133
HDD: 80GB WD Caviar (cylinder reduction jumper set, only 32.7GB usable)
Optical Drive: Samsung WriteMaster DVD+-RW
Case: some crappy ol' standard white case.
Monitor: whatever I could use! I was lucky if I got a monitor capable of more then 800x600 sometimes.
Graphics: Came with a ATI Rage Pro 8MB, upgraded to a Radeon 7000VE which failed, used a PCI Radeon 9250 for a while, up until I got the Dimension.
PSU: awful stock PSU until recently, when I replaced it with a much quieter Antec.
Network: D-Link 100mbps
Sound: Creative SB Audigy SE
OS: Windows XP SP2

Need I go on? I can remember all the way back to my 286 if I wanted to... 

My computer is less then a year old, but still slow.
I may build a computer in late March which is FAST.

My computer is 4 yeras old and i added more ram to it about 8 month ago other than heating up my computer runs fine.

I answered "less than a year" because that's true for the motherboard, CPU, HDD. PSU and RAM after I rebuilt last spring. The tower case is about four years old from an earlier rebuild. The DVD and floppy drives and the monitor are all from the original configuration, a Compaq I bought in 2001.   

We have two here.  My laptop is 4 years old...or 5.  Not bad.
PC is ancient....6-7 years old.  Super slow, and we (ie. mum) don't DARE buy more RAM or something .

Anyway, life goes on...

Hello,

Most boxes retire in 4-5 years with modern and more powerful hardware. Built a 2 GB with a P4 9 years ago and was excited about it.

It might have been interesting to have a further breakdown in years for older PC's.

Based on some of the compatibility problems posted here with Win 98, and even Win 95 sometimes, there are still a lot of older PC's out there.

It might have been interesting to have a further breakdown in years for older PC's.

Based on some of the compatibility problems posted here with Win 98, and even Win 95 sometimes, there are still a lot of older PC's out there.

I think you have a valid point.  Even computers 4 years old or older can run Windows 7.  I'm running Win 7 RC on a Compaq d530 CMT.  I did not buy this computer new, so I'm not sure how old it is.  But, as far as I can determine, it's at least 5 yrs. old. It's a Pentium IV, 2.66GHz.  The motherboard supports up to 4GB of RAM; I have 2GB in it.  With a video card upgrade, this runs Win 7 fairly well, with Aero effects enabled. 

Back in the days of 286, 386, 486, and first Pentiums, a 4 year old machine was getting closer to obsolescence than with more recent generations of processors and other hardware.  This is financially good for users; the replacement cycle has been lengthened. 

The main guts of it (cpu, motherboard, ram) is around 1.3yr old.  The graphics card is about 6 months old.  The hard drive and case are a couple months old.  I just voted 1-2 yr though

well mines quite old now, mostly built by myself,
maybe 2002 from already hard second hand stuff.

Dual boot XP&XP- one slim version other where all my apps are.
2x P3 xeon (i did say it was old)
20 gig hard disk
500 gig storage gd
768mb ram,
-plus some stuff for music production, e.g. fat emu card, scsi interface for an old sampler etc...

some may hate me for this, but a very old pci ati 2mb video card

a very old pci ati 2mb video card

Ouch!  That's painful.  I don't know how you can even run Win XP with that video card. 

Probably runs alright, I probably have a similar model card with 8MB of RAM, and it ran fine. The only limitation the VRAM gives is less resolution; for the most part the card (mine was an ATI 3d Rage Pro) could hardly handle much 3-d, Direct3d worked somewhat, but it had NO OpenGL support at all.

In this case, 2MB is capable of 800x600x24-bit colour, which is the XP default on first boot.

That being said the processor that I used was far less powerful then dual xeons; XP is FAR more dependent on Processor power then graphics capabilities, and in the case were the latter is true one can always simply use the classic theme.

I chose over 4 years, I have 2 PC's & use both about evenly. Both are 2001 or older.

   - PC #1 (year 1999)
CPU: AMD K6-2 350Mhz (just upgraded to 500Mhz but my PC still says I have a 350?)
Motherboard: still trying to figure it out
RAM: 512MB PC133
HDD: 30GB Maxtor HDD
Optical Drive: LG CD+-RW, LiteOn DVD reader, 2x 3.5 floppy drives
Case: standard ATX casing
Monitor: Samtron 76V 17" CRT.
Graphics: S3 ViRGE 2MB PCI card.
PSU: 150W Antec.
Network: standard ethernet and modem
Sound: Creative SoundBlaster 16 ISA card
OS: Windows 2000 with 98SE

   - PC #2 (year 2001)
CPU: Intel Celeron 667 Mhz
Motherboard: ?
RAM: 768MB PC133
HDD: 20GB Maxtor HDD
Optical Drive: LG DVD reader, 3.5 inch
Case: standard ATX casing
Monitor: Samtron 76V 17" CRT.
Graphics: ATI Rage 128 16MB AGP
PSU: ?
Network: standard ethernet
Sound: onboard
OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (main), XP (secondary)