this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Is that realistic? Not a rhetorical question: I'm genuinely curious. I ask because the last time I tried to update a single (desktop) part, it was more cost-effective to replace the whole Pc and migrate the salvageable parts since the only thing I could have held onto would have been the ram, SSD, and PSU.
I suppose with a laptop you have the monitor to also consider, and admittedly I know nothing about laptop boards, but it just seems like 6 years is replacement time anyway, at least for a daily use computer.
The last time I replaced my PC the hardware was ca 12 years old and barely working. It went to the recycling center except the harddisk.
Honestly, we don't know. Average laptop screens haven't had any major improvements since IPS, so I think the screens have longevity. RAM and processors are more focused on lower power nowadays. Framework has already shipped "drop-in" replacement boards, and their whole company is based around that idea.
If I had the money and i could afford to wait, I'd be willing to take a bet on Framework. I think the frame of the laptop will hold up as well as any other, but it's only been a few years so who actually knows.
Laptops from 6 years ago hold up well enough, except the batteries and main boards, if I could have replaced my old main board with a more modern processor and gpu I never would have had to upgrade.
So far as your desktop, you can certainly upgrade your computer without it being more cost effective to do a whole new build. It really just depends on what you need. Mostly it comes down to the limitations of your motherboard.
Every so often they change the CPU socket required for new CPUs. So if you need a new CPU and you already have the best the socket on your mobo can do, then yeah you're maybe looking at a new build at that point anyway. But otherwise you can just get an upgraded CPU of that socket. Similarly, eventually your motherboard won't be able to support the latest version of RAM and if you need that you'll have to replace the motherboard. So on and so forth.
Great in theory.
Keeping backwards compatible hardware is nearly impossible in reality. USB A 3.x is not the same hardware as USB A 2.X despite keeping form-factor backwards compatible.
Practical exercise: Find a board capable of swapping DDR4 RAM with DDR5 or vice versa.