How long does each computer part last?

[SolidRedIron]

Since my family has the philosophy of "It might be old, but if it still works, we don't need to get a new one."  I want to make sure the parts I choose for the pc will last a good while until I have to get new parts (perhaps a decade or more).  So I want to get an idea about how long each product listed will last assuming I take good care of it.  I am wondering how long the Asus Prime B350-Plus, Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4, Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1050 Ti, Corsair Gaming K55 RGB Keyboard, and Corsair Harpoon will last me.

I know I didn't mention the CPU, Storage, Memory, Case, Display, Headphones, and Mouse Pad.   Well I plan to upgrade the CPU from a R3 1200 to a  R5 1600 later down the line, storage will fail eventually, memory should be safe, the case should be fine, the display should be fine as well, I'll just use me own headphones, and the mouse pad won't be a huge thing to deal when it does wear off.

[scighera2]

5 minutes ago, SolidRedIron said:

Since my family has the philosophy of "It might be old, but if it still works, we don't need to get a new one."  I want to make sure the parts I choose for the pc will last a good while until I have to get new parts (perhaps a decade or more).  So I want to get an idea about how long each product listed will last assuming I take good care of it.  I am wondering how long the Asus Prime B350-Plus, Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4, Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1050 Ti, Corsair Gaming K55 RGB Keyboard, and Corsair Harpoon will last me.

I know I didn't mention the CPU, Storage, Memory, Case, Display, Headphones, and Mouse Pad.   Well I plan to upgrade the CPU from a R3 1200 to a  R5 1600 later down the line, storage will fail eventually, memory should be safe, the case should be fine, the display should be fine as well, I'll just use me own headphones, and the mouse pad won't be a huge thing to deal when it does wear off.

I mean, if you want to make your parts last as long as possible then don't Overclock them. 
With things like motherboards and CPU fans they usually last for a really long time. By that I mean, since 2009 I've never had one fail on me. The most unreliable PC part is a standard Hard Drive (Not an SSD) due to moving parts.

[hconverse02]

Well if you mean until it can not process modern data, then I give a build like that about 15-20 years, but there's no way you will wait 20 years to upgrade it.  Maybe a component fails before its normal life cycle, but that is unlikely unless you have some part in that (i.e. spilling water on your motherboard :p).  I have a 6 year old laptop that has needed no upgrades and will still be viable for the next 4 years that I will need it.

[hconverse02]

Just now, scighera2 said:

I mean, if you want to make your parts last as long as possible then don't Overclock them. 
With things like motherboards and CPU fans they usually last for a really long time.

Yeah but he's asking for a time period not "a really long time"

[Billy_Mays]

Well it depends on how hard your using it

[scighera2]

Just now, hconverse02 said:

Yeah but he's asking for a time period not "a really long time"

There's not really a label on any marts that say when they'll break. Especially not on new parts. It also depends on things like temps and dust.
Most GPUs from 1998 are still working fine if they were taken care of in a half decent way.

[themctipers]

5 years before it starts to look like a i5 2600

7 years before you should really be upgrading

10 years before it won't run the latest version of windows fast and doesn't meet minimum requirements of progarms

15 years and it's a pentium 3

[themctipers]

Just now, scighera2 said:

There's not really a label on any marts that say when they'll break. Especially not on new parts. It also depends on things like temps and dust.
Most GPUs from 1998 are still working fine if they were taken care of in a half decent way.

i have a working hdd from the late 80s  

[desertcomputer]

Well i still have hard drive with 6 years of run time that is still working. Still have core 2 duo still working today, that been running 24/7 for past 2 years. 

 

The GPU will probably the one you will be replacing the soonest, you should get a decent PSU with 10 years warranty if you want to use it for a decade.

 

Really depend how you use your computer.

 

The display may not be, i had a 5 year old monitor die on my out of no where. Also the headphones is more 'breakable' than you think. Going with cheap ones with shitty cable will have you replacing that within a year. 

 

I mean it might be still running in 10 years times, but using it a daily computer probs not. My core 2 duo was working great but now it just a pfsense router, i mean it was good back a the days but not with modern operating system (even linux is laggy). 

[SolidRedIron]

So my choice of motherboard, cpu cooler, keyboard, and mouse are well though and I should reconsider in the power supply, monitor, and headphones?

[LienusLateTips]

4 minutes ago, SolidRedIron said:

So my choice of motherboard, cpu cooler, keyboard, and mouse are well though and I should reconsider in the power supply, monitor, and headphones?

You never listed your PSU

[hconverse02]

4 minutes ago, SolidRedIron said:

So my choice of motherboard, cpu cooler, keyboard, and mouse are well though and I should reconsider in the power supply, monitor, and headphones?

No you should not just think about the components in a sense of lifespan but in a sense of are they going to give you what you desire until you would like to continue/discontinue pc building or until you are going to upgrade

[LienusLateTips]

1 minute ago, hconverse02 said:

No you should not just think about the components in a sense of lifespan but in a sense of are they going to give you what you desire until you would like to continue/discontinue pc building or until you are going to upgrade

Yep, agree all the way. A Pentium 3 *MIGHT* work now but no one will use it.

[SolidRedIron]

8 minutes ago, hconverse02 said:

No you should not just think about the components in a sense of lifespan but in a sense of are they going to give you what you desire until you would like to continue/discontinue pc building or until you are going to upgrade

Alright, I will consider this when I select my parts, thank you.

[Bcat00]

5 hours ago, themctipers said:

i have a working hdd from the late 80s  

can i ask why?

[themctipers]

Just now, Bcat00 said:

can i ask why?

dad is a techie too

[Bcat00]

Just now, themctipers said:

dad is a techie too

k fair enough, i can dig that

[themctipers]

2 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

k fair enough, i can dig that

microsoft certified OEM system builder

[mariushm]

Mechanical hard drives, fans and power supplies (kinda in this order) are the most prone to failure.

 

Mechanical drives can last a long time, but there's definitely a "failure curve" - a lot of them die in the first few months of use and if they survive that, the chances of them dying suddenly or after brief periods of reporting errors increases substantially after around 3-4 years. Temperature they work at also plays a big role in their survival chances.

You can read Google's hard disk study to see how hard drives typically fail (pages 5-8 are most interesting) : https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf

 

Fans have a finite life, dust gets inside them, the oil that lubricates them gets out of breaks down eventually, lots of reasons. The cheapest sleeve bearing fans typically have a MTBF of less than 40-60k hours, which doesn't mean that the fan is guaranteed for only 60k hours, just that ... well in a very simplified way, if you buy 10000 fans, statistically one fan may die on average every 60000 / 10000 = 6 hours

Typically even the cheapest fans will last 2 years or so before they have to be replaced.

There are high quality fans with various bearing types and innovative variations of the classical sleeve bearing or ball bearing, which have really high MTBF numbers and can last 5-10 years, but they're generally more expensive.

 

 

Power supplies have components inside (electrolytic capacitors) them which are sensitive to heat. Modern higher end power supplies use more and more polymer capacitors which are less sensitive to heat, in order to increase a psu's life.

Anyway, the point is power supply rely on the fan and air flow to keep the internals cool, otherwise they can degrade over time. If the insides get too dusty, the fan may have to work harder to keep the power supply cool or the internal components could degrade faster.

If the fan dies in some power supplies, the internal components will suffer to the point where they may just break down and your power supply will die.

 

High end power supplies from brand name manufacturers (Seasonic, EVGA, Superflower, Delta OEM designs, I'd include Corsair as well though they use crappier and crappier OEMs these days) have high end power supplies with long warranties (7-10 years) and the huge majority of these will last more than their warranty, they're that good.

Cheaper power supplies (especially bronze efficiency psus for example) which have only 2-3 year warranties ... if you're lucky they'll last 5-8 years but after around 4 years they may be less "stable", may deliver less "quality" power (but still within acceptable parameters) to components.

Point is, just don't expect these cheaper lower efficiency (small warranty) power supplies to last 10 years...they cut corners (cheaper, short life fans, cheaper internal components) to make the power supplies cheaper.

 

 

SSD drives are also kinda designed to fail very soon, due to the limited number of writes (more exactly erase cycles) the memory chips support, once you write too much on them they become read only and you need to buy something else. 

 

It's not intentional (designers don't have a switch in them which makes them fail after ## days), it's just how the memory chips are made, a compromise.. make the chips smaller so you can produce more chips out of a 30cm wafer and therefore make cheaper products, but lose endurance...  squeeze more bits into the memory chips by going from MLC to TLC or QLC but again lose endurance, makes them degrade over time (with the number of writes and erases) to the point where they become read only...

 

Anything with mechanical things (motors, fans) in them tend to last less time... so for example statistically, a motherboard with fans on heatsinks will have a higher chance of failure

 

Hope it helps.

 

[Arika]

going by Apple's logic, each component will last the length of the Warranty

[PianoPlayer88Key]

On 9/16/2017 at 6:44 PM, SolidRedIron said:

Since my family has the philosophy of "It might be old, but if it still works, we don't need to get a new one."  I want to make sure the parts I choose for the pc will last a good while until I have to get new parts (perhaps a decade or more).

I think my dad is like that too, and takes it a step farther.  When it does break, fix it, or replace the broken component while keeping everything else.

 

As I read the post (especially the bolded part), I'm thinking along the lines of...

 

What parts would someone need to get today (preferably without splurging on HEDT / server parts, so no Xeon 8180M, Epyc 7601, i9-7980XE, Threadripper 1950X, Quadro P6000, Titan Xp, DC P4800X, DDR4-4600 or 64GB per registered ECC DIMM, etc.), so that the day before they die of old age, they're still usable for basic / light tasks, and don't feel "sluggish"?

 

Let's assume the system isn't tortured (no mining, or 24/7 Furmark on founder's edition GPU or Prime95 Small FFT on CPU with stock heatsink), has a decent PSU (SeaSonic Prime Platinum 1200W for example), and is kept in a fairly cold environment, where the ambient temperature is from -20°C to 5°C or so.

 

 

P.S. mods / forum coders, how do you change the font color of a block of selected text on mobile?  I was trying it and it only changes the first word, even when I have an entire sentence or paragraph selected.  Being able to see all the editing/formatting controls on mobile IS nice, though.

[TetraSky]

Each parts can last between 0 seconds (DOA) to 15+ years.

It's all about the luck of the draw and how hard you are pushing those parts on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

The parts more likely to die off a premature death, is anything that has moving parts, as well as the PSU if you have bad power in your area/don't use a UPS to prevent sudden power loss.

 

That said, even if the parts last a long time, their actual usefulness might have expired though. For example, last year I trashed/recycled an old P3 computer I had lying around, that was still working with Windows XP on it(booted it up to see if there was anything on it I wanted to keep).

But really, who in their right mind would willingly want to use a Pentium 3 based computer today when even the cheapest smartphone out there perform better than it.

Right now it's not so bad, 10 years ago we had quad core CPUs and all, which are not that terrible today for a basic system. But then you go a couple years older than that and suddenly you essentially have trash.

 

I fully expect computers made today, to still be useful 15 years from now though, simply due to how performances increases have been marginally better each year, unlike 15 years ago when things moves quickly, with double the performance and not just a "10% increase" that's barely noticeable outside of benchmarks, unless there's some big jump in tech and we will have quantum holographic computer or whatever.

[Fahim Foysal]

simple. Moving parts fail first. Then the ones that gather the most heat. Although I have never seen a cpu fail.