George Washington Is Getting a New Computer

[billroper]

My increasingly creaky home computer in the office is getting increasingly creaky. I have replaced essentially everything on the machine except for the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Well, and the case. This has led me to refer to it as George Washington's Computer after George Washington's Ax, which George Washington actually used himself. The blade's been replaced three times and the handle's been replaced five times, but it's still George Washington's Ax.

George Washington's Computer is a bit over eight years old now and has found a new trick of just freezing and shutting down. When one of these incidents occurred recently, the computer rebooted and complained of a corrupt BIOS. So I went in and fixed the settings. But this suggests to me that one of the major motherboard components is creeping up on end-of-life and that it's time to get a new machine.

Late Saturday night, I priced out a new set of components -- which, as I expected, cost just about the same as the components that I bought the last time that I built a new machine for my home office eight years ago. They are, however, faster and provide more storage and RAM.

The new parts should show up on Thursday. Then I can build the replacement machine, install the software, transfer everything over, and ease George Washington's Computer into a gentle retirement.

All things considered, eight years is pretty good. :)

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Seems like a reasonable term limit.

[scarfman]

I've got a Gateway from about twenty years ago that was still in periodic use till our last move in 2013. It would probably still fire up just fine and be perfectly usable as an occasional temporary backup if I could be bothered to clean off the hard disk. Ian configured it for us.

[hms42]

I managed to get about 8-9 years out of my previous Windows desktop, so that sounds like a reasonable life for the machine.

[demoneyes.livejournal.com]

Been there, done that! Have certainly had PCs where motherboard, processor, RAM and graphics card had been upgraded multiple times each! I may even have had one where the only original component left was the keyboard...

Current PC was bought in 2009, but recently had a RAM uplift from 4GB to 12GB and its second GFX card upgrade. (I wanted to be able to play Fallout 4! So hopefully good for a few years yet! Though an SSD would be nice...

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

Will all the new parts still fit into the original case?

[billroper]

They would have, but I decided to buy a new case so I could keep both machines running side-by-side while transferring all of the software and data from the old box.