I was wondering when people consider themselves to have a new PC. Technically I’ve had the same PC for close to 20 years now, but every part’s been upgraded several times over.
I figure everyone’s got a different mind about it. For me, I’d have to say when all of the big three—CPU, GPU, mobo—have completed a phase, my brain thinks of the previous setup as “the old PC”.
I had been wanting to move into a 10 litre case for a while, which meant I needed a micro-ATX motherboard, which wasn’t compatible with my 10 year old CPU and RAM of course, so I had to replace those and the cooler too. I know this build was coming so I’d been using a small form factor PSU before the switch. I’d actually bought the case nearly 18 months earlier but was still saving for the remaining parts.
Changing the Case and Motherboard feels like a big change. My friends who aren’t tech savvy see the new case and say it’s a new PC, and the motherboard demands so many other changes that I probably kept less parts than I didn’t, so I felt this was the new PC moment in my heart.