this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
60 points (96.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43901 readers
2113 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

While moving from one nest to another (we're lemmings here; RP it a bit) I realized I still have all computers I ever bought or assembled, except for those that literally broke beyond any hope of repair.

Some are no longer used daily but all work and being on a point in life where everything and anything in the nest needs to have a purpose or a function, led me think what actually renders a computer useless or truly obsolete.

I was made even more aware of this, as I'm in the market to assemble a new machine and I'm seeing used ones - 3 or 4 years old - being sold at what can be considered store price, with specs capable of running newly released games.

Meanwhile, I'm looking at two LGA 775 motherboards I have and considering how hard can I push it before it spontaneously combusts to make any use of it, even if only a type writer.

So, per the title, what makes a computer obsolete or simply unusable to you?

Addition

So I felt necessary to update the post and list the main reasons surfacing for rendering a machine obsolete/unusable

  • energy consumption

overall and consumption vs computational power

  • no practical use

Linux rule!

  • space take up
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have this "rule" which might be a bit old, that 1 watt a year costs roughly 1€ (it's just getting worse).

So over say 5 years (a somewhat reasonable time today I think), your 180watt PC used 8h/d would cost 300€ in power usage.

An older PC with a power hungry GPU could use 400 watts => 666€.

A ThinkPad (ok, it has not a gaming GPU) would be like 50€ and a good used one can be had for 200-300€.

You can also get a 4 to 8 gen Dell tower for 40-140€, add a cheap GPU and you'll have a Roblox / even Minecraft PC.

If you buy a brand new PC yes that won't (most probably) be an economical investion concerning power use. But old PCs suck(draw) power and one day it's probably economically viable to change it for a mor recent one.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Which reasonable PC uses 400W?