How long will my CPU last?

[BeefyDaddy]

How long will my cpu last before needing to be replaced? I'm not talking about burning out and dying (that takes many factors into account like voltage). What I'm talking about is how far down the line will I have to get a new CPU to keep up with games and GPU requirements? Eventually the CPU would be a bottleneck but I've heard of people gaming with CPUs as old as Sandy Bridge. 

 

Btw, I have an 8600k.

Edited July 29, 2018 by BeefyDaddy
Typo

[Speed Weed]

10 years maximum I guess. Radeon HD 7970 still rock n roll in 2018. I am still rock n roll with the i7 4790k in 2018.

[AntiTrust]

youll be good for a couple generations of video cards before the throttling might get noticeable

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, DaPhuc said:

10 years maximum I guess. Radeon HD 7970 still rock n roll in 2018. 

I would say 10 years minimum. I've got Athlon 64 chips that are still rolling today, granted with lightweight operating systems, but still working. I've got an Athlon MP system that's still going, too.

 

I guess it depends on what a user expects of their CPU. My old systems are capable enough for my various hobby uses.

[Speed Weed]

4 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I would say 10 years minimum. I've got Athlon 64 chips that are still rolling today, granted with lightweight operating systems, but still working. I've got an Athlon MP system that's still going, too.

 

I guess it depends on what a user expects of their CPU. My old systems are capable enough for my various hobby uses.

If  OP is going to play the latest AAA games than that CPU will be struggle. For surfing the web and video encoding, it can live longer than 10 years. Granted my i7 4790k will going to retired earlier than the OP's i5 8600k. 

[bebejapes]

12 minutes ago, BeefyDaddy said:

How long will my cpu last before needing to be replaced? I'm not talking about burning out and dying (that takes many factors into account like voltage). What I'm talking about is how far down the line will I have to get a new CPU to keep up with games and GPU requirements? Eventually the CPU would be a bottleneck but I've heard of people gaming with CPUs as old as Sandy Bridge. 

 

Btw, I have an 8600k.

depends on your usage and work load.

 

but yes 10 years at least. 

[Renton577]

Honestly I think that depends on if the CPU market stays competitive. If that's the case and CPU's become more heavily multi-threaded then it may not last as long as you want.

[Fullmental]

To provide a little bit of a case study for you here: I have an i7-2600 from 2011. It still works perfectly in day-to-day processes. The only reason I replaced it was because I do video rendering and wanted something faster. It's feasible that CPU may struggle on some modern games, but it will remain suitable as a daily driver for another year or two, and I keep it around for projects or extra resources when I need it.

 

In other words, I'd say 7-8 years for a conservative estimate, 10 years on average, and if you're willing to stretch to the absolute limits, 11-12 may not be out of the question either. You're at a slight advantage in that the i5-8600K is a hexacore that should handle scaled workloads as programs begin to catch up to quad and hexa core setups, but at the disadvantage that you're at the tail end of what's really been a lull in terms of processor IPC and architecture improvements.

 

Of course, this all goes out the window if some major breakthrough is made and processors suddenly get 50-100% faster in a generational gap, or there's a huge IPC performance gain that gets utilized in next-gen hardware. Then you could see shorter lifespans similar to what we were seeing 15 years ago.

[faziten]

Probably up to 2020 without much problems 144Hz in most -doable- titles, beyond 2020 you will need to take care of a few cpu taxing effects like shadows, AI (NPC count), etc or fall back to 60Hz higher res.

 

 

 

[KuronoXD]

Yep, I'm one of those still rocking a Sandy Bridge. It's a 2600K and as of yet, I haven't noticed it bottleneck my GTX 1080. Honestly, the only thing I've seen it struggle with is more mundane stuff, like video playback and video decoding; HEVC literally doubles the workload a x264 file would have and it completely gives up when trying to do 4K HEVC. Oh, and it can't do HDR in Youtube above 1080p, it just keeps "buffering" the already loaded video.

Games and draw calls are no problem, although it will reach 90-95% usage with some titles.

Productivity is obviously very behind everything else, but it does well for an almost 8 year old CPU; and I just haven't got around to dropping a couple thousand for a new HEDT.