Submitted 2 weeks ago by worhui@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.howtogeek.com/upgrade-argument-for-desktops-doesnt-stand-up-anymore/
I haven’t thought about it in a while but the premise of the article rings true. Desktops are overall disposable. Gpu generations are only really significant with new cpu generations. CPUs are the same with real performance needed a new chipset and motherboard. At that point you are replacing the whole system.
Is there a platform that challenges that trend?
I have been ship of theseusing my desktop and server for 15 years. This article is fucking stupid.
Aye.
Personally I still prefer the desktop because I can choose exactly where I prefer performance, and where I can make some tradeoffs. Also, parts are easier to replace when they fail, making them more sustainable. You don’t have that choice with a laptop since it’s all prebuilt.
Desktops also offer better heat dissipation and peripheral replacements extending the life of the unit. It can be difficult for most folks to replace a laptop display or even battery nowadays frankly.
This is categorically untrue with the latest generations of chipsets, CPUs and GPUs. Just look at AMD instead of Intel: AM4/5 cross-compatibility, DDR4/DDR5 combined support and so on.
If anything, today is the day when you can upgrade beyond your current gen hardware component by component.
What are you on about? Which AM5 CPU can you drop in an AM4 mobo?
Let’s say that you’ve just significantly upgraded your GPU. If you were getting the most out of your CPU with your previous GPU, there’s a good chance that your new GPU will be held back by that older component. So now, you need a new CPU or some percentage of your new GPU’s performance is wasted. Except, getting a new CPU that’s worth the upgrade usually means getting a new motherboard, which might also require new RAM, and so on.
This guy’s friends should keep him away from computers and just give him an iPad to play with.
Technology moves on. The highest spec iPads blow away older workstation class pc’s for non-gpu loads. It would only be the OS holding that back, not the hardware.
Technology moves on. Any meaningfully upgradable desktop will blow away the highest spec iPads of 2026 once the owner finds it necessary to upgrade. And upgrading a pc doesn’t mean you have to replace the entire thing just because you want a new GPU, it’s just like bulldozing your house because you don’t like the current wall paint colour.
Sure, if you’ll go clinically insane if you get the smallest bottleneck with your hardware, sure, replace your rig if it’s viable for you, but most of the time for most workloads, small bottlenecks don’t mean much, so upgrading components when it feels right is generally just a better choice.
Also, the highest spec iPads only have 16gb of unified ram, and sure, with compression and it only having a single page table between all processors, it’s impressive, but realistically, what do you need all that insane power of memory architecture as well as the m5 chipset for a mobile workflow? And how are you supposed to replace the storage/ram/processor when it begins to feel slow after defying the trillion dollar company by putting a desktop OS on it?
iPads and workstations/desktops aren’t applicable to each other, they’re entirely different classes of devices. Frankly, if yoy manage to put a desktop OS on an iPad, I’d like to see you try using it for gaming, productivity and other workloads for at least a decade. And if you can’t? Well you can’t upgrade it like you can a real workstation/desktop.
Honestly most people just upgrade the GPU and ssd, after 10-15 years they buy a new desktop. Also one of the biggest reasons to get a desktop is that it is cheaper than laptops, last longer, and you can change any part that breaks. I had many laptops with one component basically making the entire device useless, if it was a desktop it could easily be fixed, for example soldered RAM.
This isn’t against desktops. It’s against idea that a desktop is significantly more future proof than another form factor.
The previous comment gives a pretty clear argument for why desktops are more future proof, I think. Being more repairable is a pretty big deal for the longevity of the whole system.
Not sure what “future proof” means, but my PC still has its original case from Windows Vista times, has seen 2 mobo replacements, 1 PSU replacement, and I don’t even know how many hard drive / SSD additions / swaps. RAM extensions too. Used to have a GPU but after the 2nd mobo/CPU replacement I dropped it.
Different screens, keyboards, and mice.
None of this would have easily been possible on a laptop.
In a world where hardware is getting more expensive again you are really sending the wrong message here.
Not to speak of environmental impact & consumerism.
CPUs are the same with real performance needed a new chipset and motherboard. At that point you are replacing the whole system.
I find the quoted statement untrue. You still have all peripherals, including the screen, the PSU, and the case.
You can replace components as and when it becomes necessary.
You can add up hard drives, instead of replacing a smaller one with a larger one.
Desktop mobos are usually more upgradeable with RAM than laptops.
There’s probably more arguments that speak against the gist of this article.
All of the peripherals will carry on to any new system. With usb-c basically all you need to run in your case is a gpu and nvme.
Throw in thunderbolt and networking as well as hdd based das won’t be bottlenecked.
Yeah desktops can have more ram than laptops and that is the one case where a desktop can really shine. Even then there is usually a pretty big ram limit you need to pass.
Everything is disposable. I don't think you or the author who wrote that article has a clue. It's a matter of getting things that'll last longer than others do and making financially wise choices and purchasing decisions based on the needs of the moment.
Like, I'm not spending $5 on a toothbrush when you need to replace it every 30 days. I will spend some more money on a computer component if I feel it will have a positive increment on my entire system. Replacing my entire system would just set me back big and it would make me waste the components that are already inside that are still good. Plus, if I decide to sell the old system, I'm not going to get a good value back.
The only thing I've yet to replace is the case. Why? Because it's still serviceable to me.
I just don't get this stupid logic where you have to replace the entire system. For what? just to be with the in-crowd of current technology trends? No thanks, I'll build my PC based on what I want out of it.
Exactly HOW much more do you have to spend on a system that is upgradable like that? It’s goddamn significant.
You are now cleanly in the enterprise space.
You upgrade the whole system because the piecemeal upgrades don’t make a significant impact and the larger upgrade is basically a whole system.
It great to work on systems as a hobby, I do it. If I take an older system and swap in a 5090 for a 1080 it’s because I can, not because it makes a difference.
The improvements have drastically slowed. No longer will a 1 generation bump be a worthwhile improvement. Once you get to 2 generations enough stuff changes that it’s not as meaningful to upgrade.
Sorry bruh, but I don't think you've taken a closer look at where the RAM prices have gone. Do you truly believe people have that much disposable income to continually upgrade entire machines on a regular basis?
People will ultimately build a system if it will suit their needs and purposes within budget. I don't get what is there about that to get so complicated over.
Disposable my ass. I just did the final upgrades to my AM4 platform to be my main rig for the next 5 years. After that it will get a storage upgrade and become a NAS and do other server stuff. This computer 7 years in has another 15 left in it.
Yeah, it’s crazy that someone could have gotten like a Ryzen 5 1600 then upgraded to a 5800x3D around 5 years later without needing to buy a new motherboard, which usually can mean having to buy a new set of ram too.
For a long time just doing a new build if upgrading to a newer CPU used to be the thing when Intel was dominant.
Yeah, I usually over spec when I build my main rig because I want to have it last and repurpose it later down the road. I finally retired a power supply that I bought back in the mid 2000s. I can’t power modern cards anymore unfortunately. 🫡 pc power and cooling single rail take a break. You’ve earned it.
Laptop CPUs are crippled garbage compared to desktop CPUs of the same generation. So there’s that.
AMD challenges that trend, but the article writer dismisses them because of Intel’s market share.
Terrible article.
Let’s say that you’ve just significantly upgraded your GPU. If you were getting the most out of your CPU with your previous GPU, there’s a good chance that your new GPU will be held back by that older component. So now, you need a new CPU or some percentage of your new GPU’s performance is wasted.
There’s always an imbalance. It doesn’t mean it’s “wasted”. CPU and GPU do different things.
except, getting a new CPU that’s worth the upgrade usually means getting a new motherboard
Also not true. AM4 came out in 2016 and they are still making modern processors for it.
Generational performance increases are too small
Wrong again.
Ask yourself this: how much of your current desktop computer has components from your PC from five years ago?
Most of it.
The manufacturing of consent to move your machine to the cloud has begun. We had a good run lads.
You are literally the only person saying that out this this whole exchange.
“This persistent narrative in the media trying to talk consumers out of desktops as being viable options kind of sneakily ties into the greater “you will own nothing and you will be happy” narrative being pushed by big tech.
It’s really obvious and it needs to be consistently called out for what it is.”
Literally the most upvoted comment in the linked article.
I guess some frogs are just to stupid to figure out they’re being slow boiled and it’s up to us to carry the dead weight out of the pan…
I don’t agree with this article. Everyone I know usually upgrades their GPU until the CPU is bottlenecking it heavily and that is only the case after a few GPU upgrades.
Yeah, and when CPU is the bottleneck upgrading the CPU, mobo, and ram but not the GPU.
This time though I only upgraded the CPU, since AM4 had supported multiple generations of CPUs. One of the best things to happen for PC.
Yes, desktop PCs challenge that trend. If you’re not chasing the newest of the new, you can keep using your old stuff till it dies. I’ve done one CPU upgrade, and a GPU upgrade, to my desktop in the eight years I’ve owned it, and it handles all of my games fine.
If you’re changing the motherboard, you’ll usually need a new CPU, and sometimes RAM. As long as your MOBO has a PCI/PCIE slot you can shove your old graphics card in there. Unless there’s a new RAM version, you don’t need to replace the RAM, and SATA’s been the standard storage connector for how long now?
Unless you’re going above your current PSU’s rating that thing’s good until it’s dead.
I just don’t see how this argument holds up. If your motherboard is old enough that they no longer make your CPU/RAM socket, and you’re looking to upgrade, chances are very good that thing’s lived far longer than most laptops would be expected to. But like. When I built my current desktop 8 years ago, it had 8gb of RAM and a… I don’t remember the graphics card, I know the processor was a pentium G something, and like 1tb of storage. It has an i7 (don’t remember the generation off hand), and an R9 290, and 32gb of RAM, and 7tb of storage now. Same motherboard. If I replace it I will need a new processor, and new RAM (the RAM is actively dying, so I haven’t been using it much), but these parts are all nearly a decade old, with the exception of the RAM. Well. One RAM stick is 8 years old, but that’s beside the point.
This just doesn’t line up with my own personal experience?
Unless you’re going above your current PSU’s rating that thing’s good until it’s dead.
Power supplies will work well past the point of providing clean in spec power on each rail. Lots of parts in a power supply can stop working properly before it physically no longer passes power.
Unless the PSU is relatively new it’s not a great idea to put it into a new build with testing that it is still in spec on each voltage rail under a load.
I wasn’t talking about a new build at any point in my comment.
Everything in this post is wrong, actually. But if you buy shit parts to build your desktop, you’ll have a shitty desktop.
Simple answer is at the motherboard level - you look at your motherboard’s future expansion capability and if you started with a good foundation you can do years of upgrades. Also your computer case needs to be big enough to fit extra stuff, full ATX motherboard size is great.
For example I have a VR gaming rig that runs VR games well on DDR3 RAM and a Sandy Bridge CPU, because it has a decent modern GPU and enough CPU cores + RAM.
I disagree that you need to upgrade your CPU and GPU inline. I almost always stagger those upgrades. Sure, I might have some degree of bottleneck but it’s pretty minimal tbh.
I also think it’s a bit funny the article mentions upgrading every generation. I’ve never done that, I don’t know a single person who does. Maybe I’m just too poor to hang with the rich fucks, but the idea of upgrading every generation was always stupid.
Repairability is a big deal too. It also means that if my GPU dies I can just replace that one card rather than buy an entire new laptop since they tend to just solder things down for laptops.
I typically build a whole new PC and then do a mid-life GPU upgrade after a couple generations. e.g. I just upgraded my GPU I bought in late 2020. For most users there just isn’t a good reason to be upgrading your CPU that frequently.
I can see why some people would upgrade their GPU every generation. I was suprised at how expensive even 2 generations old card are going for on ebay, if you buy a new card and sell your old one every couple years the “net cost per year” of usage is pretty constant.
The title of this article just doesn’t match reality. It really only (maybe) applies to very high end systems that are already pushing the limits of all components. Most people don’t have the money to waste on that and have plenty of room to upgrade their hardware for a looong time.
If you don’t need much (e.g. no gaming, 3D rendering, etc.), especially if you don’t need a dedicated gpu, then you can upgrade for at least a decade before running into issues. To be fair, a laptop should last a decade as well in that case, but at a higher prices and while being less repairable.
Meanwhile I’ve been using an AM4 board and DDR4 for… well, it’s been awhile now.
This might be true for Intel, I don’t know, I use amd. I know the limits of my cpu/gpu pairing. I bought the affordable low end GPU for the cpu and in 5 years I’ll upgrade to the upper end gpu when it’s really cheap. 5 years later, I’ll get a new computer
My last GPU? $300.
One before that? $300.
Next one? $300.
(buy used)
🎺"The upgrade argument for desktops doesn’t stand up anymore" 🎺
of course, you can still…
hum… well, you can also…
yeah, yeah, you can do that also… but…
…and so going on.
I think the real thing you have learned is that PC upgrades are largely unnecessary. They are only selling new hardware that is better on paper and they need to create compatibility traps to make you upgrade a bunch of other shit to get that incremental upgrade.
Even still, there are a lot of components that are not cheap that you can reuse regardless of CPU socket and memory compatibility changes. I’ve used the same PSU and case and drives and network card for a decade. That’s all shit I would have had to pay for over and over again with a different type of system.
I’ve used the same PSU and case and drives and network card for a decade
How many full backups do you have of the data on a decade old drive?
Storage is one of the most relevant things to be continually replacing. I have decade old drives as well but they live in tandem with their replacements as mirrors. Until recently storage was so insanely cheap there was little reason not to replace it.
12 4tb drives in mirrored pairs in a zfs pool on a headless server supporting our local media server and various other data storage needs. The only stuff on the desktop is game installs and software.
Most of us who survived desktop gaming in the early 2000 learned not to keep anything important locally cause your gonna have to wipe your os every now and then.
It rings true but it’s not. It’s highly dependent on your upgrade plan. You can get a new CPU without a new mobo if you aren’t changing architecture like jumping from AM4 to AM5. The idea that only the cheap parts last the longest isn’t true either. I’ve been on the same GPU for nearly 7 years. It’s getting long in the tooth but when I do decide to upgrade I’m not forced to upgrade anything else. The GPU is the bottleneck but the bottleneck isn’t noticeable unless I’m playing some new AAA game that requires everything under the sun to run it.
That last paragraph about parts being 5 to 10 years taking up close to 0% of your build just isn’t true for me either. The newest parts in my PC are three years old at this point. The case, the CPU and Mobo, Ram and an NVME drive. The case was purely for vanity reasons. I got an old GPU, and old PSU, 1 NVME drive, 2 SSD drives, and 2 HDDs that are 10 years old. All those parts are older than 5 years. The argument that most people are using PCs that are less than 5 years old sounds like some phone FOMO shit. I don’t buy it.
This is a weird way to say that PC tech is stagnated and improvements between “generations” is incremental.
This has been true for a long time, CPU sockets don’t last long enough to make upgrades worth it, unless you are constantly upgrading. Whenever i’ve built a “futureproof” desktop with a mid-high end GPU, by the time I hit performance problems I needed a new motherboard to fit the new CPU anyway. Only really upgradable components are storage and ram, but you can do that in your laptop too.
The main advantage of Desktops is still that you get much more performance for your money and can decide where it goes if you build it yourself.
The main benefit of a desktop is the price / performance ratio which is higher because you’re trading space and portability for easier thermal management and bigger components.
Depends on what you use the computer for, for gaming, maybe you’re right, idk. I personally use the computer for 3D modeling which mostly relies on the GPU.
I’ve recently built a computer with the latest gen GPU and got a nice 12 gen i7 as platform for it, the GPU is from 2025, but the CPU is like 4 years old.
The thing is, I could have gotten a much older CPU haven’t I found the 12th gen for the same price. If I could just upgrade the GPU and ram on my old laptop I wouldn’t have bought a whole computer.
Besides, buying a laptop with 16GB of vram would have been much more expensive than a desktop.
It’s been like that that since I can remember. Upgrading can extend the lifespan by a few years, but often it’s a good idea to replace the whole system.
It depends on a lot of factors of course. If you buy a midrange machine now, you can upgrade it in five years to a high end machine from today, then five years ago.
Rarely do you get to take advantage of technology shifts like hard drives to SSD. A couple of years ago, adding more RAM and an SSD made machines usable, that had these bottlenecks. Still the best thing you can do to an old laptop or desktop.
Over the last decade performance hasn’t improved that much for most typical use cases. An i7 from ten years ago with 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD, and a NVIDIA GTX 1080 is still a decent computer today.
What makes PCs great is that you’re more flexible regarding how you configure your machine. Adding more storage, more ports, extension cards, optical drives inside your machine etc. is just nice.
With a laptop you end up with crappy hubs and lots of cables.
From a pure aesthetics standpoint hubs and cables suck. From a functional standpoint they are equivalent except for the GPU.
The importance of open & interchangeable hardware and software goes way beyond the upgrades you may or may not make, or even saving money & reducing e-waste.
You get better products that way. Having complete control over your system benefits you even if you never exercise that control. It is literally a constraint on enshittification.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s a huge generalization, and it depends what you use your system for. Some people might be on old threadripper workstations that works fine, for instance, and slaps in a second GPU. Or maybe someone needs more cores for work; they can just swap their CPU out. Maybe your 4K gaming system can make do with an older CPU.
I upgraded RAM and storage just before the RAMpocalypse, and that’s not possible on many laptops. And I can stuff a whole bunch of SSDs into the body and use them all at once.
…That being said, there’s a lot of trends going against people, especially for gaming:
There’s “initial build FOMO” where buyers max out their platform at the start, even if that’s financially unwise and they miss out on sales/deals.
We just went from DDR4 to DDR5, on top of some questionable segmentation from AMD/Intel. So yeah, sockets aren’t the longest lived.
Time gaps between generations are growing as silicon gets more expensive to design.
…Buyers are collectively stupid and bandwagon. See: the crazy low end Nvidia GPU sales when they have every reason to buy AMD/Intel/used Nvidia instead. So they are rewarding bad behavior from companies.
Individual parts are more repairable. If my 3090 dies, for instance, I can send it to a repairperson and have a good chance of saving it.
You can still keep your PSU, case, CPU heating, storage and such. It’s a drop in the bucket cost-wise, but it’s not nothing.
IMO things would be a lot better if GPUs were socketable, with LPCAMM on a motherboard.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
You nailed it, except “huge generalization” is actually being generous. It’s simply wrong. The author is speaking esoteric gobbledigook:
It’s the sort of argument a husband might give his not tech savvy wife when she asks why he repeatedly needs to spend so much $$$ on something only he uses.
I think FOMO says it pretty well, or simply consumerism.
Now that hardware is getting more expensive again, this is really sending the wrong message.
And OP keeps doubling & tripling down despite basically every comment disagreeing. I think they wrote that article.
kreskin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
While throwing out working things is terrible, the cost of servicing a motherboard outpaces the cost of replacing it. They can possibly still charge you 200 dollars and tell you the board cant be fixed, right? I think the right balance is that you observe the warranty period, try to troubleshoot it yourself --and then call it a day, unless you have a 400+ dollar motherboard.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah, probably. I actually have no idea what they charge.
claymore@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Don’t forget about PCIe expansion. Just yesterday I got a FireWire PCIe card for 20€ to transfer old DV tapes to digital with no quality loss. Plug the card in and you’re done. To get the same result on a laptop I’d need a Thunderbolt port and two adapters, one of which isn’t manufactured anymore and goes for 150€+ on secondhand stores.
worhui@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Typically I’ve seen a motherboard supports about 2 generations of gpu before some underlying technology makes it no longer can keep up.
If you are going from a 30 series to a 50 series gpu there is going to be a need for increased pci bandwidth in terms of lanes and pcie- spec for it to be fully utilized.
I just saw this play out with a coworker where he replaced 2x3090 with a 5090. The single card is faster but now the he can’t fully task his storage and gpu at the same time due to pci-lane limits. So it’s a new motherboard, which needs a new cpu which needs new ram.
Basically a 2 generation gpu upgrade needs a whole new system.
Each generation of pcie doubles bandwith so a future 2x pcie-6 gpu will need an 8x pcie 4 worth of bandwidth.
Even then gpu’s and cpu have been getting more power hungry. Unless you over spec your psu there is a reasonable chance once you get past 2 gpu generations you need a bigger Psu. Power supplies are wear items. They continue to function, but may not provide power as cleanly when you get to 5+ years of continuous use.
Sure you can keep the case and psu but literally everything else will run thunderbolt or usb-c without penalties.
At this point why not run storage outside the box for anything sizeable? Anything fast runs on nvme internal.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This doesn’t make any sense, especially the 2x 3090 example. I’ve run my 3090 at PCIe 3.0 over a riser, and there’s only one niche app where it ever made any difference. I’ve seen plenty of benches show PCIe 4.0 is just fine for a 5090:
gamersnexus.net/…/nvidia-rtx-5090-pcie-50-vs-40-v…
Storage is, to my knowledge, always on a separate bus than graphics, so that also doesn’t make any sense.
My literally ancient TX750 still worked fine with my 3090, though it was moved.
And if you are buying a 5090… a newer CPU platform is like a drop in the bucket.