This thread is for those of you who are still rocking those ancient CPU's for whatever the reason may be.
Why are you still using it.
How old is it?
How long have you personally had it?
Problems with it.
What have you replaced it with.
So let met start first here. Ever since highschool and all throughout University I have been rocking my trusty E8500 Intel Socket 775 (bought in 2008) in an Asus P5NE-SLI chipset. Total about 8Gb DDR2 RAM OC to 1066. It's had 3 GPU's go through it, first a Nvidia 8500, then a GTS250 and lastly a GTX650Ti. It still runs the latest games, albeit with difficulty. VM's are possible too (about 1) web browsing is where it seriously suffers, open up Chromium and Firefox and everything starts to go downhill.
Regarding games, I only really use it to play project reality (Battlefield 2 Mod), It even runs ARMA 3 on low/med very nicely actually (this speaks volumes about how badly optimized the arma game engine is) CSGO does about 70FPS on high at 1080P (not sure how, Source 1 isn't well multi-threaded I guess)
So after 9 years of loyal service I will be replacing this loyal servant with a new Ryzen 1700X build (ASRock Gaming K4, 32Gb 3Ghz RAM, plus GTX1060). And I'm rather curious to see what 9 years of CPU evolution will look like (I haven't really used any more modern CPU's myself other than others PC's)
PS: Yes I preordered It, I have a trusted source. ;)
Old Hardware Pics to follow If I get time to make some.
On an embedded motherboard. It was a "ebay Kleinanzeigen" find (the German craigslist equivalent). 25€ (30$ at the time) for: -ITX motherboard with integrated Atom 330 CPU -2 Gigabytes of DDR2 RAM -PCI 4 port SATA controller (1 physically broken) -1 Noctua ULN fan -Lian Li case (Aluminium panels) -400W fanless PSU It's currently running my old 250 Gigabyte IDE drive and 3 other 80 Gigabyte IDE drives. It is my photo-backup machine and also hosts old backups (ICQ chatlogs with my first girlfriend. If I feel to chipper I go and read those, ohhhh the cringe)
A pretty amazing deal all things considered. The CPU runs hot if no fan is plugged in because the after-market heatsink is too small and I'm missing the hard drive mounting screws. (All drives are currently in the 5.25 inch bays).
I'm still using it because it works and I paid so little for it.
Dell Vostro 230 w/ some core2quad cpu (I think a q9550, upgraded from a dual core). It served several years in a data center. I picked it up for free in 2013 and have had it running close to 24/7 since then as a server.
From the same person, I also acquired a 2U dell poweredge 2950 III. Same backstory. I did some mods and used it as a workstation for 6 months or so until x99 came out. Now, it sits around as a backup machine.
MacBook2,1. Core2duo. I use it daily. I don't have a better laptop, so the MacBook is at bat. It's meh, but it works.
I have a few Pentium 4's. I know that it's been said that it was trash, but I haven't had a problem with it. I don't really use them much since I killed one of the mobo's I had for one after forcing Oblivion to run on its integrated graphics (onboard audio died, the rest followed)... Much less after my last IDE HDD died.
I've got an Intel Core 2 Duo. It's older than some other stuff I have. Have no idea about anything else though. Will edit with specs I have from a Win98 machine though.
Oldest cpu I use every single day is a few 25 year old intel cpu's but still does it's job perfectly
I still use them becuase there is no newer cpu that can be used it's 25 years old I've personally had them for 6 years No problems so far And they essentially cannot be replaced
My main computer is still a 2008 Mac Pro. Does that count?
Oh, I forgot to answer the questions! I replaced the video card a few years ago (with a GTX 760). I don't recall what happened to the original HD, but I doubt it's still in there. And I've upgraded it to 16GB of RAM, which is as much as I want to spend on a computer that old.
It is obviously not my primary machine, but I use it virtually daily. It is a Shuttle XPC barebones box, which I purchased new in circa 2005. Originally, I had installed a "low power" 65W Athlon 64 X2 dual core CPU and Windoze XP on it. Later, I installed Linux Mint Gloria/GNOME2 on it. Over the years, it has been upgraded to 4GB of RAM and a GeForce GT220 GPU. Currently, I am running Solus/Mate on it and it runs like a top. Obviously, apart from Solitaire, or Mahjongg, games need not apply.
Speaking of old machines, I just recently came across my old Gateway PC, with a 486DX33 CPU, complete with a VESA bus GPU and a couple of 3COM ISA NICs. I bought this machine new in 1993 and I put Red Hat 5 on it in 1997, at which time it was retired from desktop duty and put into production as a file and print server. I think it would be a hoot to see if I can get something a little more modern, such as Damn Small Linux, or some other such distro to run on it ... as if I need yet another project!
I also have a box with an AMD K6 3 /400 CPU, that I built circa 1999, with Haiku installed, but I don't use this machine for anything much, apart from marveling at how fast Haiku is.
I'm apparently far too easily amused, when I find a useful purpose for some of this antique hardware. I suppose that I need to learn how throw things away!!!
My main machine is the same-ish as the one I had in 2008. I guess I'm still using it because it was the first PC I ever built so sentimental reasons? I've never had any issues with it which is probably why it hasn't been replaced. (knock on wood)
It started with: Antec 1200 case PC Power and Cooling silencer 610 PSU Intel e8400 4 GB G.skill DDR2 800 RAM ATI Radeon 4870 512mb WD Blue 320GB HDD
Since then the case has changed to a Corsair Graphic 600T (modified it heavily for better cooling) and is now the Phanteks Evolv ATX. The PSU has changed to a Corsair HX750. The RAM has changed to 8GB of G.skill DDR2 1066. I don't even remember how much I've changed my storage configuration.
I bought a second ATI Radeon 4870 512MB on eBay and ran them in CrossFire. That proved to be too hot after a while (not to mention 512MB of vRAM ._.) so I bought a ASUS GTX 560 on eBay. I then wanted to play newer games so I bought a EVGA GTX 780 Classified on eBay.
I upgraded the CPU to a Xeon X3360 from eBay.
Current version: Phanteks Evolv ATX Corsair HX750 Intel Xeon X3360 8GB DDR2 1066 EVGA GTX 780 Classified Samsung 850 EVO 500GB Samsung 840 EVO 240GB Samsung 830 128GB Random assortment of spinning rust.
I still have all the parts that have gone through it. I might have a problem.
I still use my Ivy Bridge (i5 3570K) machine daily. It's not my main rig but it works fine for stuff like a single VM (I have 8GB of DDR3 1866) and for media consumption (in other words it's my Netflix, Amazon Prime, Steam Movies, general Internet Surfing box).
I've had it since launch day, because before that I had a i5 750 that I gave to my friend. So it's nearly 5 years old at this point.
I haven't had any issues with the CPU itself aside from I lost the silicon lotto. This chip doesn't OC well at all (and I've tried AIO coolers, beefy air coolers, all that.) but it comes down to using a shit MB. A GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 that was I think $140 at Fry's and came with a i3 2100 (which I didn't use, I sold it still new in box for $100).
I use my "main" system (which isn't much better) and it's just a Haswell based rig. I don't want to give spec's because everyone will say "Evil, that's BARELY a upgrade!!" and I could do without that.
got a couple amd ahtlon chips unlocked from dual cores to quads, got some old systems for the salvage yard that people threw away got them working and gave them to most of my family members.
I have a stack of computers next to me that I have been playing with recently.
Q6600 Core2Quad with GTX470 - use for some games on occasion.
Some Athlon II dual core - was given to me and jammed a bunch of hard drives into it that has backup copies of data. Used it to try out Peppermint 7 and really like that distro after changing out the hideous icons.
Pentium 4 640 3.2 GHZ socket 775 - My Raspberry Pi died and I wanted to use Sonic Pi. It was a hassle trying to get that to work on my HTPC, so when they released Raspbian x86 I loaded it up. I figure it will also be nice if I decide to get another Pi because I can practice some things with the faster single core performance of the P4 instead of waiting for the Pi to catch up. I might retire it and just load up Raspbian x86 on the AMD rig in the future.
I have more but haven't used them in over a year so they don't really count. I can't justify the electricity they use compared to newer Intel Atom based boards I run.
