"Futureproofing" our pc's, what have you done that "futureproofs' your pc?

[aaradorn]

I don't think anyone can truly futureproof their pc, with all the advancements these days in hardware it's going to be obsolete within a few years anyway. What have you done in the past or going to do to future proof your system?

 

I remember buying a 120gb SSD because it would futureproof my pc, 2 years later the entire thing was obsolete.

 

This year I bought a new monitor (I think this will still hold up in a few years), a 3440x1440 Gsync 120hz monitor. My pc has issues pushing games at that resolution but I think it will be useful when I eventually upgrade it.

 

 

What have you guys done/ will do?

[flashiling]

got 3 monitors

1440p 240Hz TN panel monitor (FPS games)

1440p 144Hz IPS panel monitor (youtube videos or games where graphics look better on IPS panels than TN)

1080p 60Hz IPS panel monitor (discord)

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

39 minutes ago, aaradorn said:

obsolete within a few years

It's only obsolete if it can no longer provide you what you need.

For example, my twin Xeon workstation will never go obsolete, because it runs the games (all 2 of them) that I play just fine, and for my photography work, it's perfect, so I'll get rid of it when the hardware dies, and not before that.

[Arika]

whole bunch of harddrives for storage that will last me years (Hopefully)

[NineEyeRon]

I felt I futureproofed my PC very well. I built it back in October last year.

 

Firstly I worked out what the next 5 years would be gaming wise for me, based on the types of games I play.

 

I then worked out what improvements I would like, such as moving to 1440p gaming.

I then specc’ed out a PC that would deliver what I need now, without hindering me if I decided to upgrade.

 

I am very confident my PC will last me the 5 years minimum I planned, based on my use case.

 

For me that is futureproofing done right.

 

[Automobili3XF]

Just a few days ago i got a Super Flower Leadex III 750w PSU, the one that was on it was already really good, but this one is even better.

This year i also upgraded my SSD to a 1tb NVME model and doubled the capacity of my spinning rust mass storage disc, from 2tb to 4tb, but both are almost full already, oh well...

[Nuklearfire]

58 minutes ago, Arika S said:

whole bunch of harddrives for storage that will last me years (Hopefully)

remember Linus 1 Petabyte Project its already full

[Nuklearfire]

my futureproof concept is not to spend to much money on buy newest Hardware so i can upgrae more often and hold my system up to date

[Amaranth]

I don't future-proof. Instead I buy the best hardware I can fit into my budget at the time, unless there are no performance gains to be had or lower hardware would perform equally well given my use-case, and then upgrade as needed.

[LloydLynx]

I only use Radeon if I'm going dedicated graphics. The driver is open source and theoretically infinitely supportable, and their cards usually have higher VRAM which is usually the first thing to because obsolete.

[jones177]

I have done several things.

 

I bought 32gbs ram(2x16) for one of my gaming PCs. None of the games I tested use it but it is there if future ones do. 

 

I bought a 2tb 970 EVO. In all my vanilla games the EVO performs about the same as my 2.5 SATA SSDs. The only exception is my modded games that use 4 and 8k textures. They stutter on a standard SATA SSD but not on the EVO.  I don't need the performance now for off the shelf games but I may need it soon.

 

I Moved my 4k gaming rig to a 55" 4k TV that has HDMI 2.1.  This means 120hz with the 3000 series(hopefully) and PS5. 

In all the test that I have done with the 2080 ti at 4k and knowing that next gen(3080 ti) will probably be only 25 to 35% better 144fps will not be doable on the type of games I like to play.  120hz  is a much better target to shoot for.

It has also saved me some money. I was planning to upgrade my LG 38" 3840 X 1600 75hz monitor to a 144hz version if they ever materialize but after playing at 55" 16:9 for a couple of days it is hard to go back to 38" 21:9. Now my next monitor will need to be 48-49" 21:9 minimum before I put money down and that may be never.  

 

I bought a power consumption monitor.  I already knew that my  2080 ti used up to 387 watts in benches and my i7 8086k used about 150 watts in Cinebench but I did not know  how much in games.

With it I found that in games that mainly use the GPU my usage was around 350 watts with 400 watt for large events like battles. The shock came when I tested a modern game that used all the CPU as well as the GPU. They averaged 500 watts with events using up to 585 watts.  From this I know that the 1000 watt PSU on my 4k gaming rig was a good move and I wish that I done the same with my other gaming rig that uses a 860 watt part. 

 

 

[RejZoR]

The way I do it...

 

Don't be cheap with CPU, memory and motherboard. Because if you buy a capable one, it'll serve you for many years without having to replace or upgrade any of it. Graphic cards on the other hand, those are meant to be upgraded easily and it doesn't affect the rest of the system.

 

In the past, Core i7 920 at 4GHz and 12GB of RAM (later upgraded to 18GB). Served me for 5-6 years. Currently on Core i7 5820K at 4.5GHz and 32GB RAM. I've changed like 8 graphic cards on these 2 systems.

 

And the reason I overdo RAM capacity is because over the long years, it's hard to find appropriate sticks to pair with old ones and I prefer to just take more in the beginning and be done with it. This method works great for me and I'm sticking with it.

[Princess Luna]

I sold it and bought a new one, best futureproofing there is.

[LogicalDrm]

I got beefy CPU 6 years ago so I don't have to upgrade in a while. And I still could go up one generation with chipset/socket. And overclock it. But more likely when I get new CPU, it will be platform upgrade.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, aaradorn said:

I don't think anyone can truly futureproof their pc, with all the advancements these days in hardware it's going to be obsolete within a few years anyway. What have you done in the past or going to do to future proof your system?

 

I remember buying a 120gb SSD because it would futureproof my pc, 2 years later the entire thing was obsolete.

 

This year I bought a new monitor (I think this will still hold up in a few years), a 3440x1440 Gsync 120hz monitor. My pc has issues pushing games at that resolution but I think it will be useful when I eventually upgrade it.

 

 

What have you guys done/ will do?

It's impossible to futureproof a computer as long as there's still some room to do a chip die-shrink.

 

However we are hitting the limits of what can be done with SSD's. Shrinking the die results in less wear being possible. Having more bits per cell also shrinks the amount of wear possible, however making the SSD larger in capacity increases the overall speed it can operate at. So for SSD's, you're kinda stuck in a rock/hard-place where you will only get the longest life out of a drive by buying something twice as big as you will use and only using half of it so the wear-leveling has more room to operate.

 

CPU and GPU's aren't futureproof, but they're not having the moore's law imposed anymore. CPU's haven't really gotten that much faster since hitting 3Ghz. For example, the fastest Core2Duo is E8600 3.33ghz (Passmark 1370) from 2008 and Intel Core2 Extreme X9770 @ 3.20GHz, which is the same single-thread speed as the i7-4200U 1.60Ghz and Intel Core m7-6Y75 mobile parts from 2015. If you start going down the list you start seeing more U and Y parts. If you look at the slowest 9th generation Intel part, the i3-9100T, it's the same spec as the i7-4770R

 

The point is, at least as far as CPU's go, you have about a window of 5-10 years before the fastest part is equal to the current generation's slowest part now. Sure you may have 4 or 6 cores instead of 2, but more cores doesn't scale with the programs used and even if a game or application is designed for 4 or more cores, often what is pushed to other cores doesn't make great use of them. Only highly parallel tasks scale to use multiple cores, everything else (eg web browser tabs) is inherently single-threaded out of an unwillingness to write multi-threaded code.

 

 

 

[pas008]

3 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

i think the only few pieces of hardware that could be considered "future proof" would be:

• a really good PSU (if you start spending for more than needed)
• a pretty large SSD, especially if you're okay with SATA
• a correctly configured audio system
• a really good keyboard/mouse/monitor

as for the rest, if it can maintain its general position within performance bracket, then you'd have something, but then again you're at the mercy of future hardware improvements.

case that satisfies all your needs imho too

1 hour ago, Princess Luna said:

I sold it and bought a new one, best futureproofing there is.

another way is flipping too

[John_Trollinski]

I upgraded my graphic cards and my cpu and ram from ddr3 to ddr4 in my opinion it has kept my pc alive for 4 years so far. I can still play the newest games at a good setting.

[RonnieOP]

Eh you dont need to do much.

 

Any mid to high end pc you buy today will easily last years. 

 

Ive got a spare system with a 6700k and 1080 thats years old and im not having issues running any games on high settings with great fps.

 

 

[Yoinkerman]

Nothing because the whole concept is dumb. Just buy the better part in a few years and save your money

[Teddy07]

I think the whole concept is questionable at best because tech advances so fast. 4 cores were for example just 3 years ago top noth while now it is considered entry level. Also new tech has gotten so cheap (mainboard, RAM, cpu) that upgrading is barely or not even worth it

[Cypher-Jackson]

Got a 6700k years ago and there is still barely anything noticeably faster. 16 Gb of RAM will be enough for years to come. Even 8 Gb works fine for most things. You futureproof a pc by buying it today. its done and 'good enough' for a decade.

[Mark Kaine]

On the contrary, I think if you're ok with not always playing at "max settings" it's easily possible to build a current high end PC that'll last you ~10 years. 

 

Also tech isn't "advancing so fast nowadays"  lol what are you guys on about,  we're slowly but steady reaching the end of what can be done with current tech (shrinking, shrinking, shrinking) and as such technological advancements keep slowing down since a while (AMD CPUs "might" be an exception but even they are limited by what can be done physically currently) 

[murph0981]

Getting an i7 8700 rather than an i5. I hope in 3-4 years it will still be a useful cpu.

[D.U.F.F.]

-Censored-

 

 

[steelo]

Over the winter, I plan on either upgrading from a Ryzen 5 2400g to a 3600. Also, upgrading from a RX570 to a  Vega 56 or a RX5700 if I can find a good deal (really don't want to spend much more than $250 for the GPU and I refuse to buy anything NVidia)