The longest you've ever used a single system?

[Junk Parts]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

For me the longest running system around here was and AMD K6/2 450mhz on the famous FIC-VA-503+ board. It may have been here about four years. It had many configurations over its lifetime. Now this is before anger management classes, and medication for me...LOL It was having a cranky "dead" hard drive day, and wouldn't reload Win ME after a format. This pissed me off so bad that I beat it to death. There is still a hole in the wall from this behind the Dell PC that I use today. When I was done with my little temper tantrum I put the few good parts left from my AMD PC in the wife's AMD 550 k6/2 PC.
My other good one was a PIII 1ghz on and Abit VL6 board. It lasted about three years. This PC was great. My brother gave me the chip but left it connect to the problematic VL6 board it was on. I shoved it all into a case and it worked great for a time. Got so it had real problems on the boot and liked to BSOD now and then too. This is about the time that I found and joined Badcaps. I inspected the caps on the VL6 and they were blown to shit! My friend Vernon sold me a Dell GX 150 1ghz PIII for $40 and I put the VL6 away. I think it ended up going to Kc8adu in the end. I would love to get the wife a new modern mid-line PC to replace the GX150 PIII that she is using. It all takes money, and that is what I don't have at the moment. That dual core Hp Compaq that I have yet to pick up from my cousin's place could be her "new" PC if I can save it. Guess I better get down there and get it before he puts it in the ash can with the trash....LOL Does anyone here know what and old wet ash can smells like? Its enough to make you love the smell of a dirty wet dog!

[goodpsusearch]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

CD and DVD ROM's.. I have had quit a few that were Lite-on, Digital Research, IO Magic, and a few other brands that crapped out on me.. What can i say.. when your ROM dies and you need a new one, you dont always have time to wait for an online order to come in and you get what the store has.. and most of them have lasted a little over 1 year or less.. lenses burning out, motors stopped working, would not read the disks even after cleaned.. etc.. nothing else burns out like ROM's

I have never blown a video card, modem, network card, RAM, Processor.. but have blown probably 3 power supplies, 3 bad hard drives if i remember right (were all maxtor's and all used for less then a month, bad from factory?) 1 fried motherboard (power supply took it out), but over a dozen CD or DVD ROM's

From my personal experience, the most easily failing parts in a pc are:

-power supplies (2 failed on me)
-hard drives (2 failed and 1 suddenly started to have noisy motor but still works, years after that)
-graphic cards (all in wonder 9700 pro gone in a year, all in wonder 9800 SE lasted 5 years)
-dvd/cd-rom/rw, but who cares now that a new drive comes at no more than 10 euros, except blu ray of course

[TheHolylancer]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

ouch 2k for a 500gb recovery?!

my longest used system is my A64 gamer, built in 2004 with a s 939 board (jumped to it from a PIII 550E that ran at 733 that was from 2000-2004, woooooooo baby) it had 2 gigs of OCZ high voltage low lat ram (remember the high volt part) and evga 6800GT with a Artic cooling after market HSF, boy did it kick butt when it came to gaming, works flawlessly with all the 1280*1024 stuff I can throw at it and It was running OCed on everything.

eventually the high voltage ram OC killed it and i got free 4 GB replacement that was rated higher :P

the 6800 GT too died when it overheated (It was running at close to 90 C at stock with stock fan!!) after the Artic cooler it was running at around 70-80 C, which kept it alive for a good 3 years with a small OC, but then it died and I had use the lifetime rma on the thing, and they sent me back a 7900 GS

so after two free upgrades, it was finally retired in june 09, when I built my current I7 rig, and after 4 months with the 7900GS, I got a 5870 and is running happily at 1920 * 1200, I wonder when will I consider this I7 system old?

It is still being used by my dad, with all the gaming capabilities lol, so this thing may very well have a longer life than what it already has.

[bgavin]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

Yes the 500 GB was a Caviar Blue.

I have a 500gb Caviar Blue sitting at OnTrack data recovery right now.
This sorry little piece of shit committed hara-kiri at only 5 months old.

While it was slowly dying, it was corrupting the backup files.
When it shit the bed, the customer had bad backups and a dead drive.
$1995 for the recovery.

[bgavin]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

Netware... probably 10+ years in the same box. Ran forever.

[i4004]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

recently had a scare with cheap external tray and that very hdd.
power lamp on, hdd won't spin. probably a poor sata power connection(because it's cheap and crappy chinese tray).
hdd works in pc just fine.
now i'll buy one more(320gb..i'm cheap and i prefer to have 2 smaller than one big hdd), copy stuff to it, and keep both off when not in use(and that will be most of the time...i dump video on those, and i turn it on only when i'm processing it etc.).
i'll put small switch on its 5 and 12v supply and switch it on/off while pc is in s3-stby.

i trust that will be more reliable system than cheap chinese hdd tray...huh...

oh yeah, have two more trays (and hdds in them) that are behaving ok...

[Krankshaft]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

>I have replaced more roms then all other parts combined in my computers over the years..

ram?
cd-rom?

>It's gone from a Maxtor 250 GB PATA to a WD 500 GB Sata (died)

caviar blue wd500 aaks? lasted for how long?

Bought the 500 GB OEM from Newegg in March of 07 died June 09 sent to WD for RMA and got a 650 GB Blue use it for backup now. Yes the 500 GB was a Caviar Blue.

The system just froze one day while playing a game bad sectors popped up in just the right places of the OS so it wouldn't boot. I was barely able to recover my data. I now keep my stuff on an external HDD.

[kaniki]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

>I have replaced more roms then all other parts combined in my computers over the years..

ram?
cd-rom?

CD and DVD ROM's.. I have had quit a few that were Lite-on, Digital Research, IO Magic, and a few other brands that crapped out on me.. What can i say.. when your ROM dies and you need a new one, you dont always have time to wait for an online order to come in and you get what the store has.. and most of them have lasted a little over 1 year or less.. lenses burning out, motors stopped working, would not read the disks even after cleaned.. etc.. nothing else burns out like ROM's

I have never blown a video card, modem, network card, RAM, Processor.. but have blown probably 3 power supplies, 3 bad hard drives if i remember right (were all maxtor's and all used for less then a month, bad from factory?) 1 fried motherboard (power supply took it out), but over a dozen CD or DVD ROM's

[ratdude747]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

1.5yr- presario 5000, got traded.

the rest have been constantly modded so they are never the same system.

[Wizard]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

Pentium 233mmx using baby AT mainboard machine in use since 2002 the year I begun working for tv shop, still is. Chugging along. with JTS 1GB HD running 98, 64MB IIRC, PSU same ditto. Only one task for one simple text application, that is all. Only maintaince is rarely blow dust out.

If that PC dies, not a big deal since the data is served from another machine on the network.

Cheers, Wizard

[washu]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

Actually, Intel made a Pentium II 333 MHz overdrive for the socket 8. It required a BIOS upgrade on most boards.

I completely forgot about those. I've never heard of anyone actually using them until now. I've come across lots of P-Pro systems in my days but never any with the overdrive chips. They were so expensive when new that most people avoided them and just upgraded the MB. Hope you got a good deal on them.

[tj2]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

... Would take a MB swap at least.

Actually, Intel made a Pentium II 333 MHz overdrive for the socket 8. It required a BIOS upgrade on most boards.

There was another company, PowerLeap, that made Pentium III adapters for the socket 8, though with such a fast processor, the bottleneck is the system bus running at 66 MHz. Also, FPM RAM and even EDO, are quite a bit slower than SDRAM.

Since the main OS, NEXTSTEP 3.3, on that machine was released in 94 for the 486, it is quite speedy on a PII 333. KDE under Linux, on the other hand, is really too slow.

[i4004]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

>I have replaced more roms then all other parts combined in my computers over the years..

ram?
cd-rom?

>It's gone from a Maxtor 250 GB PATA to a WD 500 GB Sata (died)

caviar blue wd500 aaks? lasted for how long?

[kaniki]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

I still have 5 computers that still get used. 2 get used every day and the other 3 get used a bit, but not every day.

My main one has had a bit of updating.. i used it for about 5 or so years i believe when my power supply died a year ago and took out my motherboard. I replaced the motherboard with a comparable on and still use it. It is a AMD athlon 2200+ processor. I have upgraded both my roms.. both died on me. and upgraded my video. It had a 64MB Nvidia geforce4 when i first built it and now has a Nvidia FX 6200 card. Everything else is pretty much the same.

My other main computer (mom uses) is about the same specs as mine but an 1800+ processor and upgraded to a FX 5200 vid card, but same roms in hers. I have 2 computers like this one.

My oldest is a AMD athlon 800MHz computer. still has a GForce2 video card in it. was originally a 550MHz but when my friends motherboard friend, they just bought new and gave me her old processor so i upgraded my PC a little.

Pretty much, all my computers usually last me at least 5 years before i do anything about replacing them. If i do anything, it is usually upgrading my roms or video cards. I have replaced more roms then all other parts combined in my computers over the years..

[tj2]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

>tj2: Not saying that your system longevity isn't impressive, but you could not have had such a system in 1996. The PII 333 came out in Jan 1998. The P1 233 MMX didn't even come out until mid 1997

perhaps he upgraded to faster cpu a bit later?

Yes, the original CPU was a Pentium Pro 200. I got the motherboard in 96 (I think! I certainly had gotten the case, video card, scsi card, PSU, etc, then.) and put in the overdrive when it came out.

[Krankshaft]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

>I just recapped the PSU, which was filled with Fuhjyyus

now let somebody tell me fuhyu is crap, look at them go 14 years!

The TP 2.0 on my server in the cold basement had Fukyuus in it it lasted for 3 years until I opened and checked it not a single bulger probably would have gone longer. Once I discovered it though I immediately recapped it.

The one on the first floor though a SP 2.0 only lasted about a year and a half before they began to bulge. Although that system was more heavily loaded it was my gaming PC.

The longest I've used a single system has to be my custom built 3.0 Ghz P4 1 GB ram rig I just replaced a few weeks ago.

Built in 05 so 5 years. It's gone from a Maxtor 250 GB PATA to a WD 500 GB Sata (died) to a Seagate 1 TB Sata (transplanted to my current rig). Graphics card wise it originally had an ATI X700 (Vram died) then a Sapphire 3850 (transplanted to my new rig). The PSU was a recapped Antec SP 2.0 it had to stay in the old PC because my new mobo wanted a 6 pin 12V connector an Earthwatts 650 took it's place.

All that time gaming wise I was suffering with that pathetic 1 gig of ram.

Took forever for anything to load.

[washu]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

>perhaps he upgraded to faster cpu a bit later?

The first PIIs (233, 266, 300) came out in May 1997, so no CPU upgrade from 1996. Would take a MB swap at least.

[i4004]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

>tj2: Not saying that your system longevity isn't impressive, but you could not have had such a system in 1996. The PII 333 came out in Jan 1998. The P1 233 MMX didn't even come out until mid 1997

perhaps he upgraded to faster cpu a bit later?

[Topcat]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

tj2: Not saying that your system longevity isn't impressive, but you could not have had such a system in 1996. The PII 333 came out in Jan 1998. The P1 233 MMX didn't even come out until mid 1997

You are correct with your timings. I got my 233mmx the week it was released, and that was in mid 1997. I had to really think back on this one, but you're right. I changed over to a slot1 cellie in late 1998 (300A overclocked to 450/100 on an asus P2B).

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: The longest you've ever used a single system?

I had an HP Pavilion 753n that I used from March 2003 until February of 2008.

HP-version MSI motherboard
Pentium 4 2.53ghz, 533fsb
80GB HDD, upgraded to 320GB
512mb of RAM upgraded to 1GB
ATI 9600 added to replace the onboard video

All the upgrades happened sometime in 2007. That machine is the downstairs family computer now, still running with its original Bestec PSU and Teapo/Chemicon KZG on the motherboard. Most reliable machine I have ever had. Solid as a rock. Never any hardware failures, random BSODs, etc. etc.

Hopefully my new machine (August 2009 build) runs as long as tj2's machine has been running. It's got a Gigabyte motherboard with ALL Nichicon polys and a Delta PSU, so save for shitty RoHS soldering, I see no reason why it shouldn't. Only point of weakness is the graphics card, which runs at a toasty 48C, can't be good for all the BGA stuff on it.