[Irinikus]

There isn't a sub-forum for PC's, so I've started this thread to discuss all things PC.

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I'm going to start things off by posting a video, showing the performance of my semi-vintage Alienware Area 51 7500.

This video shows the performance of a moderately specked Alienware Area 51 7500, with a GTX 690 fitted.  

It is a rather long video, so feel free to skip around as necessary.

I will be upgrading this machine in the future to see the performance I can get from it, and future video's will follow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbZgN_9YSTo




Here's a pic of the Alieware's innards:

[Irinikus]

Here are some pics of my gaming PC, which I'll discuss at a later stage:

[Irinikus]

Is a high end gaming PC form 2010 still relevant, if it's fitted with a GTX Titan X and a PCIe SSD?

[Jacques]

I don't have a 'PC', but I've kitted out my 2010 Mac Pro with dual 2.93ghx 6 core Xeons, 48Gb of ram and a EVO 960 nvme PCI ssd. I've also treated myself to a RX 580 8Gb gfx card and I have to say I'm very pleased with the machine, it will last me a good 3 or 4 more years. 

So yeah, machines from 2010 are still viable for production and some gaming. I only play Guild Wars 2 in Windows and it does very well!

(I put 'PC' as the Mac Pro is really a PC with a weird efi rom)

[Irinikus]

I don't have a 'PC', but I've kitted out my 2010 Mac Pro with dual 2.93ghx 6 core Xeons, 48Gb of ram and a EVO 960 nvme PCI ssd. I've also treated myself to a RX 580 8Gb gfx card and I have to say I'm very pleased with the machine, it will last me a good 3 or 4 more years. 

So yeah, machines from 2010 are still viable for production and some gaming. I only play Guild Wars 2 in Windows and it does very well!

(I put 'PC' as the Mac Pro is really a PC with a weird efi rom)

That's awesome! (Your machine should last you for many years to come! )

The point that I'm making here is that people tend to run after the latest and greatest, AT HUGE EXPENSE, but all that's really needed to keep a good system relevant and running for years to come, is the strategic replacement of key components when necessary!

Fitting a top tear graphics card or a PCIe SSD (although expensive), is allot cheaper than shelling out for a completely new system!

[dexter1]

A NVidia Titan X 6+ GB can run a lot of modern day CUDA code, so even for its advanced age it is still very capable. Is your card the Pascal core with 6.1 compute capabilities, or the older Maxwell 3.5/5.2 ?

[Irinikus]

A NVidia Titan X 6+ GB can run a lot of modern day CUDA code, so even for its advanced age it is still very capable. Is your card the Pascal core with 6.1 compute capabilities, or the older Maxwell 3.5/5.2 ?

Mine is the older Maxwell core.

When I first saw the Titan, I couldn't understand it's relevance and ended up buying the GTX 690 (as it was more powerful), but when I ran out of frame buffer while trying to run Assassins Creed Unity, I had to go ahead and get the Titan X. (simply to be able to play the game at my screen res.)

If I had bought the original Titan card, I would have been fine for a few more years, before needing to upgrade to the next card!

I'm going to see how long I can keep this system going for, so it will eventually receive it's last graphics upgrade in the form of the last Titan card they release before they switch to PCIe 4 (It will more than likely be a Titan V, which I will eventually buy as NOS.)

[Jacques]

I'm quite lucky as I received the EVO 960 nvme drive for gratis! All I had to buy was the Lycom DT-120 PCI card to take the drive.

[Irinikus]

I'm quite lucky as I received the EVO 960 nvme drive for gratis! All I had to buy was the Lycom DT-120 PCI card to take the drive.

That's very nice!

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A demonstration of the difference in philosophy, between CPU and GPU rendering in Blender.

[Trippynet]

If you perform strategic updates, there's no reason why an older PC shouldn't continue for many years - including for gaming.

I finally replaced my previous PC just last year. Prior to that, I was running a PC I'd built on a modest budget back in 2009. Overclocked Core i5 750 (running at 3.2GHz instead of the native 2.6GHz), it had upgrades over the years to double the RAM, replace the hard drive with an SSD, the original graphics card (bought on a budget) was replaced with a Radeon 7870 LE.

Overall, it ran very well for 8 years overall. My primary reasons for replacing it last year were that the upgraded graphics card was a good 4-5 years old again and was starting to struggle, plus the age of the motherboard meant that it only natively supported SATA 3GB and USB 2. I could probably have bought a bit more life out of it, but decided in the end to go for a full replacement.

However, a gaming PC reaching 8 years old overall is pretty impressive IMO.