​Invictor Electronic Communications

Do I need a new PC?

 

The average life of a PC is about 7 years although I have one I built in 1998 still running in a shop!! Technology is improving all the time and a new pc will become old within 6 months. When I started building computers a good speed for the processor was around 600mhz. Now 5.5ghz is available. So that’s from 600 to 5-1/2 thousand hertz in 24 years. The old mechanical hard drives are now just used for storage. Windows is placed on an M2-NVMe solid state drive or a 2-1/2 inch SSD which gives it a massive speed boost. The memory and its speed have massively increased. Graphics cards too have improved so games run so smoothly the characters look almost real.

Since covid the supply of parts has been quite frankly terrible and I have been quoting a good desktop system for £1400. Thank heavens supply has improved and now I can bring the cost to around £500. Laptops however seem to have remained stable. Updating a pc can be quite straight forward but a laptop is another thing. The days of swopping the processor for a faster one are over as the processor is now incorporated in the motherboard. The cost of a new board does not justify the improvement. We can update the hard drive and in some cases the memory to get a bit more vroom out of it.

I think the day of the standalone pc still has some room left in it. The advantage is that you can upgrade it quite easily. The screen can be as big as you want it and yes you can attach a screen to a laptop as well.

A big mistake people seem to make is that they buy just on price. A £300 pc is just fine. Turn it on, go make a cup of tea and come back and its ready to use. A £500 pc will be ready to use long before the kettle has been filled. You should buy on application and not price. Once you know what you want then look at price but more importantly quality.

 

More next time.

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