Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by SoftTalker 1 hour ago
I'm still using ~10 year old PCs at both work and home. Running linux, still doing fine.
5 comments

Yep. My gaming desktop is an old Ryzen 5, 48GB DDR4 RAM and an old nvidia 1660 super. Plays every game I want to play just fine still at 1080p, and even a few modern titles no problem. Most of my library can be played natively at 1440p too with some settings adjustments.

I suspect I can get a good 8-10 more years of use out of it, assuming components don't fail.

> I suspect I can get a good 8-10 more years of use out of it, assuming components don't fail.

That's rather optimistic with that aging GPU. Upgrading to something like an Intel B580 (a $250 upgrade) would give it a second life however.

I mean, surely this depends on what games you want to play. If you're playing mostly indies and retro games, an older desktop will be fine. If you want to play new AAA releases, probably much less so.
Compared to current computers, the ones from 10 years ago are not that different, especially with all the software updates, unless you want an edgy graphics card or Apple processor. In terms of durability I guess the battery is the less durable part but the rest should be fine if handled with care
Same. And my current daily driver laptop cost me $400 9 years ago. You can still do a lot for incredibly cheap.
I bought a 2013 MacBook Air for $50 two years ago to take on a backpacking trip. It runs Linux and I use it all the time. I had a video meeting on it this morning.

You run OpenCode with Big Pickle on it with decent performance. So you can even vibe code on it for free.

I recently liberated a couple of old Intel Mac laptops by installing Linux. These machines were not receiving system updates anymore. Even on the older machine with a dual core CPU and 4GB of RAM, GNOME runs well (XFCE would probably be a better choice to save RAM for programs, though). On the newer T2 machine with 8GB of RAM, GNOME feels basically as snappy as on my modern gaming PC.
My 2012 thinkpad still works well.

I've got access to a couple newer laptops, but they just dont stack up to the old one.