Question: My computer is about five years old and it's still working.  It does pretty much everything I need (mostly surf the web, I don't play many games).  But several people have told me that my PC, because of age along, is probably on the way out.  My question is how long can I realistically expect my PC to last for?  When it does die, what's likely to go first?

Good question - but a really tough one to answer.  It's a bit like asking "how long will my car last?" or, maybe more morbidly, "how long will I live?"

Five years is not all that old for PCs.  In fact, I have several that are much older than that which are still going strong.  However, while the CPU, motherboard, RAM and PSU might be original, one thing that I have replaces on the older PCs will be the hard drives as I get wary of drivers that are more than about 5 years old.  In fact, it's a good bet that if/when you PC does experience a problem, it's likely to be hard drive failure.

Another point worth remembering is that an old PC might not dies as such any time soon.  True, like an old car is might have problems, but there's a good chance that it could be fixed with an upgrade.  Problems come when a CPU develops problems, not common, but if it does, it can be hard to get a replacement and an upgrade would mean swapping out the motherboard and possibly the RAM too - expensive.

Here's my tips for living and working with an older PC:

• Backup regularly, so if things do go wrong, you're prepared.
• Clean dust out from inside your PC.  Dust build-up causes overheating and overheating leads to failures. 
• If your PC does develop problems, weigh up the cost of repair verses buying a new PC. 

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 14:17 and is filed under Questions from Visitors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.