Pc future-proofing

[Yoobsterlol]

So I know that you can't exactly future proof a pc but are there certain parts that can be? I know the case can be future-proof but what else?

[19_blackie_73]

nothing. maybe the psu but they are showing some signs of age after a couple of years depending on their quality.

Everything's getting replaced after a few years with better, more efficient, faster parts

[Mark77]

The best 'future proofing', in my view, is actually having some savings to replace things as they get to be old and their performance unacceptable.  Instead of buying a $4k rig every 8 years, why not a $2k rig every 4 years?  Or do what most of us probably on this forum have gravitated to, and that is, a continuous upgrade model.  Where maybe one or two components a year are upgraded, and while we don't have a 'new' computer per se, we're always moving forward.

[Katsunaka]

Nothing on a computer is future proof. At some point, every part on a PC will die due to age. It'll be replaced by a faster part, inevitably with RGB LED's on it. 

 

50 years ago a PC was the size of an average bedroom. Now look, Intel's Skull Canyon NUC is something you can stick in a pocket.

[App4that]

Case, spend the most you can as the case is future proof to a degree. I've had two builds in mine so far.

 

Powersupply, not only will the powersupply be the heart of your build, but as with me it will be the part that lasts the longest.

 

Monitors. The Monitor is the single most forgotten part of any PC. Can't tell you how many 2000 dollar PC's I see hooked up to 200 dollar monitors. A premium 1440 144hz monitor will last for years.

 

And that's it. Everything else is a risk. Hell, even mechanical switches are looking to be a thing of the past soon.

 

And there is no way of futurproofing your graphics card or CPU.

[Katsunaka]

2 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

The best 'future proofing', in my view, is actually having some savings to replace things as they get to be old and their performance unacceptable.  Instead of buying a $4k rig every 8 years, why not a $2k rig every 4 years? 

Because everyone wants a huge e peen now. 

[Yoobsterlol]

3 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

The best 'future proofing', in my view, is actually having some savings to replace things as they get to be old and their performance unacceptable.  Instead of buying a $4k rig every 8 years, why not a $2k rig every 4 years? 

Thats actually what I was gonna do, get a 1070 and when Volta comes out I sell my 1070 and add that money to whatever savings I had to get a Volta gpu, I'm not too worried about the cpu since they last quite a long time and also aren't that much of a bottleneck, I was also gonna wait til Kaby lake comes out since it's pretty close to launch

[Mr.Meerkat]

Mass storage drives, PSUs, possibly coolers, possibly cases and peripherals to a degree are the most future proof.

Faster SSD speeds and bigger hard drives are always going to come out but day to day uses of a 500MB/s SSD vs A 1500MB/s is like not noticeable, you can always keep the HDD and SSD and use it in your next build.

PSUs are future proof to a certain degree, if it's a high quality unit and has enough wattage then it can easily last you more than 5 upgrade cycles. Same goes for the case as in the end, all cases does the same thing which is hold your PC parts.

Peripherals is personal choice so maybe 10 years later, you're still happy with your current mice and keyboard which means you don't need to switch  

[Zyndo]

A case can last pretty much forever as long as you take care of it. No reason for it not to, its just a metal box.

 

A PSU can also be a good investment. a Power supply like my HX1000i comes with a 10 year warranty (according to corsair)... So whilst that's not FOREVER, 10 years is a looooong time in the PC world. and unless new connectors come out that you absolutely need, a PSU never really gets obsolete. (even if a new connection DOES come out, there's always molex to convert for you)

 

Tough to say about anything else though. In some cases a keyboard can last indefinitely, and in some cases you spill a drink on it 3 days after you open the box.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I've been thinking some about this topic recently.

 

For me, personally, if I have to uninstall / disconnect many parts to replace one particular component, I want to keep that particular component as long as possible.  Examples I can think of right now would be the case, power supply, and motherboard.

 

I don't like CPU sockets changing so often on motherboards.  I want to be able to upgrade to a CPU that's like 1.5x to 2x better than what was the top-of-the-line CPU at the time I bought the first one I used with that board.  (For example, I have a 4790K on an LGA1150 board, and I know that there's not going to be a CPU that's 2x better for that socket in like 3 years, or actually at all.)

 

When I replace a motherboard, I would prefer, if possible, to skip at least 1, preferably 2, generations each of RAM interface, expansion slot interface, storage interface, port interface, etc.  For example, my current board uses DDR3 (I wanted DDR4 but Skylake wasn't out for another several months and my dad's laptop was unusable for me anymore), PCI Express 3.0, USB 3.0, SATA 3, and I'll call it NVME 1.0 although idk what the actual version number is.  I'm not sure if the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 supports Thunderbolt - if it does, it'd need an add-on card, as it has no port.

 

For my next board, I'd prefer DDR6, PCI Express 5 or 6 (and/or NVLink 2 or 3), USB 5 or 6, SATA 5 or 6 (unless NVMe is superseding it), NVMe 3 or 4, Thunderbolt 3, etc.

 

Also, when the time DOES come to replace the motherboard, or build a new PC, I really like to have at least a 3x-5x performance improvement at the same price.

 

Speaking of performance improvement, I've been trying (unsuccessfully so far) to find out what the cost of a 286-10MHz CPU was around Christmas 1988 / New Years 1989.  I know what my parents paid for a 486-120MHz CPU in October 1995.  Once I can learn the price of the 286, then calculate the performance improvement, I could more accurately figure my minimum criteria for performance vs price improvement in a particular time frame.

 

For now, I'm guessing the 286-10 CPU was $400 in January 1989.  (They paid around $940 for the CPU, board, RAM, floppy & keyboard.)  My parents paid about $100 for the 486-120.  Based on some googling I just did, a 286-10 was around 1.5 MIPS, and a DX4-120 around 70 or so, approximately a 47x increase in 6.5 years, for about 1/4 the price.  I'd like to get more accurate info on that, though.

 

It appears to me that I need to increase my expectations for performance improvement over time at a particular price point.  I had only been expecting like a 2-3x improvement (in single-threaded performance) in like 7-8 years, but if it was possible to get like 47x in 6.5 years at 1/4 the price in the 1980s/1990s....

 

 

 

To condense a several-petabyte post into a few hundred bytes ... I like keeping my motherboards as long as possible, then getting several times performance improvement at the same price when I do replace it, as well as skipping a generation or 2 of the various expansion/storage/other interfaces.  I don't like to frequently replace components that require me to uninstall many other parts to remove that one component.

[Yoobsterlol]

18 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Mass storage drives, PSUs, possibly coolers, possibly cases and peripherals to a degree are the most future proof.

Faster SSD speeds and bigger hard drives are always going to come out but day to day uses of a 500MB/s SSD vs A 1500MB/s is like not noticeable, you can always keep the HDD and SSD and use it in your next build.

PSUs are future proof to a certain degree, if it's a high quality unit and has enough wattage then it can easily last you more than 5 upgrade cycles. Same goes for the case as in the end, all cases does the same thing which is hold your PC parts.

Peripherals is personal choice so maybe 10 years later, you're still happy with your current mice and keyboard which means you don't need to switch  

Thank you for the amount of detail you put into your(actually quite helpful) reply. I'm just a kid right now(long story on the money part, no I'm not a rich brat that doesn't know the value of money) and I need to build a computer that will last me until I can at least get a job to buy a new pc(just turning the 14 in a like a week), I was thinking of waiting a little bit since I'm not in a huge rush for a pc since I already have my laptop which I use for gaming, it's not the best but it will do for now, if I wait I can get a Kaby Lake cpu instead of something like 6700k and If I get a gtx 1070 instead of a 1080 like I was going to, I can get a Volta gpu with the savings and any money gained from selling the 1070. Do you think this would be a good plan? 

[Herman Mcpootis]

heatsinks(if mounting mechanisms don't change) and fans can last a pretty long time, i've had fans from 10 years and older pc cases still work well after use. 

cases are futureproof as long as industry standards don't change and someone doesn't bend the case until its useless.

SSDs, HDDs are futureproof, just take it out and plug it into your pc and it'll usually work.

high quality power supplies(and maybe lower-end psus) can last for quite a few years. had an FSP oem 400w psu work perfectly in an acer pc for 6 years before i sold it.

processors(i5s and i7s) can last for several generations before they bottleneck gpus too much to use.

 

[Mr.Meerkat]

4 hours ago, Yoobsterlol said:

Thank you for the amount of detail you put into your(actually quite helpful) reply. I'm just a kid right now(long story on the money part, no I'm not a rich brat that doesn't know the value of money) and I need to build a computer that will last me until I can at least get a job to buy a new pc(just turning the 14 in a like a week), I was thinking of waiting a little bit since I'm not in a huge rush for a pc since I already have my laptop which I use for gaming, it's not the best but it will do for now, if I wait I can get a Kaby Lake cpu instead of something like 6700k and If I get a gtx 1070 instead of a 1080 like I was going to, I can get a Volta gpu with the savings and any money gained from selling the 1070. Do you think this would be a good plan? 

Kabylake is still 16nm so don't expect much in terms of performance increase . GPU side, If you are not building a PC for now, I would say don't get locked to only Nvidia as AMD quite a lot of the time does have better price to performance ratio. Vega should be out by the time Volta is out so depending on the performance, it's a good idea to see what both side can offer  

[Yoobsterlol]

2 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Kabylake is still 16nm so don't expect much in terms of performance increase . GPU side, If you are not building a PC for now, I would say don't get locked to only Nvidia as AMD quite a lot of the time does have better price to performance ratio. Vega should be out by the time Volta is out so depending on the performance, it's a good idea to see what both side can offer  

Well I would look at the amd side but I'm not a very big fan of them, Nvidia also offers some features that I really want such as shadowplay, I will wait for the Vega cards though since they might make nvidia drop their prices