Gaming rig finally died

[cwilliamsws6]

Over the last 6 or so months my 12 year old hand-me-down gaming PC has been getting increasingly screwy, it started not letting me use my memory card reader or assign drive letters to anything, then my keyboard would only work when it would let it, and finally it would not install drivers for any new devices. The final nail in the coffin was halfway during a Windows update we had a power surge (just my luck) and when I went to reboot it I was greeted with BOOTMGR MISSING then a flashing white line. I managed to boot it into a Linux LiveCD and I pulled all my photos, music etc onto an external drive. After 12 years, 2 power supply replacements, a video card replacement, hard drive and RAM upgrades, I decided it was time to let The Blue Beast go. I was initially going to build a new PC just with a new motherboard, processor, and video card, and cannibalize the rest but I ended up getting this: https://www.costco.com/HP-Pavilion-...7---Radeon-RX-550.product.100416234.html and so far I am liking it a lot and I am posting this from it.

 

[HangFire]

Lately I've been watching my several more-than-capable decade-old gaming machines die one by one. Usually it's just time to upgrade, so sometimes I buy a new motherboard (my definition of "PC death" is when the M/B dies), sometimes a used M/B, sometimes the M/B, CPU and RAM all need simultaneous replacement, and I just let the whole thing go and strip only the newest peripherals. Newer PC's certainly offer more computing for the money, and for the electrical power used, but any old quad core (or more) is more than enough for Windows 10, especially with a newer video card. Package deals are always more PC for the money, but you never know what proprietary H/W madness or near-malware shovelware HP or Dell is going to slip in there. Hopefully your new box uses a standard power supply et al. The specs are very good for only $550.

 

[Danno]

Looks good, from experience SSDs are best bang for the buck by far if you're looking for a speed boost down the road. M2 versions are even quicker.

 

[gathermewool]

I've been knocking on wood that my nine-year-old rig holds together for...well, forever! I've upgraded the GPU (RX580) and PSU, but that's it. FYI, the 550 is not a gaming GPU

 

[DrDanger]

Yup, can confirm 2 mobos and Q9550 CPUs died after 11-12 years of use. One was on 24/7 for the past 2 years. Overclocked to 3.75Ghz. As best I can tell P35/G33 Gigabytes die with the CPU, 12V rail mosfets and drivers die, sparing the RAM always and your VC if you're lucky. BOOTMGR MISSING is a disk drive not found/corrupted, most likely. Had a loose SATA cable teach me that. And the gradual, non catastrophic failure seems to point at a more manageable issue, but them old parts are not worth the hassle.

 

[cwilliamsws6]

My old PC was based around a Phenom II 1090T and a Radeon 6950 2GB VGA card, had 16GB RAM and Windows 7 Ultimate. Stock clock was 3.2GHz but I had it OC'd to 3.8 and it ran perfectly fine. Original PSU was a Cougar 1000W which literally blew up and the new one was just a cheap Thermaltake Smart unit I got for like $50 at BestBuy a few years back. I did end up running a scan on the drive and it had 40-something bad sectors so it was definitely on borrowed time anyway. A friend of mine collects old PC parts and builds "frankenputers" for himself and friends and he's giving me $120 for my old PC which is a good deal considering I originally got it for free. Obviously I pulled the hard drive since it has personal data on it but as you'd imagine that'll be no problem for him to source a new one to throw into it.

 

[Nick1994]

You need an SSD for the new PC..

 

[FordBroncoVWJeta]

I built my first PC gaming computer last year. The hackers on PC are really bad compared to PS4. Still fun though. AMD 2700X Asus 2080 Asus BF450 16GB Ram

 

[Pew]

Holy crap is that a Zalman 9900? I haven't seen those since the Core 2 Quads were the hottest thing.

 

[Ws6]

I am hoping my gaming rig lasts a bit longer. https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/19283674 I bought it new in 2017 for $1800 shipped through Best Buy, made by Cybertron, (minus monitor, and minus the PSU, which I yanked the OEM and replaced with this one), and so far, it's performed exceedingly well. If it were to die today, I'd do this: https://www.amazon.com/CYBERPOWERPC...;qid=1565801520&s=gateway&sr=8-1 Before that, I had an AMD Phenom 2 955 Black Edition, 8 of DDR2, and a GTX460! Kept it from 2010-2017 when I got this one. I tend to do massive upgrades spaced out by at least 5+ years, that way I really feel like I'm getting something for my money, and usually I can overclock the PC enough to where games are still fun for about 5-7 years.