Tell HN: I used the same computer since 2007 (with minor upgrades)

I plan to upgrade to the am5 platform, same motherboard and cpu since 2012. i7 3770k, R9 390x

Also jumping on that Samsung qd oled train.

So I absolutely agree and applaud your effort and think that we should all generally endeavor to use our hardware until it breaks or is completely impossible to work with anymore. However. If you replaced the motherboard, the CPU, the graphics card, and the hard drive, how exactly are you calling this the same computer? Forget "minor upgrades", that's a proper Ship of Theseus - I guess you've got the same case and... some of the RAM? but what else is even left from the original?

I’m still using a Phenom X2 with now 12Gb of RAM. I do have 4 spinny 7200rpm drives. Got gifted some of those hard drives from a former company as they were slated to be thrown away (proper methods were followed to ensure they were wiped). Been running FreeBSD with jails for a home server for a long time (now nextcloud, Smb/nfs, now plex, munin, a few other random services. I know it will die one day, but enjoying it while it lasts!

I still have a 2008 Mac Pro (tower). At the time it was possible to order the bottom of the line system and add your own memory, video and drives, just like a "normal" PC. I think it cost about $3000 new which was still the most I'd ever paid for a computer. Picked it up from an Apple store. I used it as a home workstation for work and music and a gaming rig by dual booting to windows -- which no longer works. Did a few upgrades, video card, SSD, more memory. It's a dual quad core Xeon, 32gb of ram and 2tb of storage. It's almost 15 years old now and it still runs fine.

Except!

I feel like there's been a lot of forced obsolescence for sure. Things really went downhill like 2-3 years ago. Gradual lack of OS and driver support made it harder to use as a music machine. Boot camp was no longer supported without some crazy firmware hacks that I didn't bother with. I just got an xbox/ps instead. After some combination of OS and driver updates, my firewire audio devices no longer worked. The USB Audio devices I tried were always terrible (keeping the machine from sleeping properly).

It can still mostly log in to iCloud and iMessage, but there are weirdnesses. I did pick up a used firewire interface that does work with this OS (El Capitan).

But I really think the hardware could be made to work on the latest OS with very little effort.

Thank you for your service fellow e-waste reduction brother.

I've been getting my equipment 2nd-hand off of ebay. Recently "upgraded" to an HP fanless mini-pc (Core i5, 16GB) to make more room on my desk. Since Moore's law is practically dead, I didn't see the point in paying ~$800 for a new one when the 5-yr-old scratch-and-dent model was only $135, and any performance difference has been imperceptible under my use cases. I work mostly in the terminal anyway. The previous computer was also more than fast enough, and so was the one before it.

Only "game changer" for me has been the SSD. I will never go back to platters for an interactive machine.

I also have a really outstanding clicky-keys keyboard I picked up on alibaba a long time ago, and it disassembles easily enough for an occasional run through the dishwasher.