Im asking because I recently bought a computer and I was wondering, in 5 years what computer parts would i need to replace to have good gaming and working performance? Until 5 years have passed i wont buy anything, frankly because il be out of the country and mostly unable to use my computer for that time. Keep in mind im not asking for perticular brands i should upgrade to, just what parts. Thank you.

Specs:

NEC DL DVD/CD Burner
GIGABYTE 915P Motherbaord
Intel 640 w/HT @3.85Ghz
600W PSU
PQI 2GBs ddr2 @ 3-3-3-8
XFX 7800 GT @ 500Mhz Core 1.15GHz Memory
Creative Fatal1y X-fi Sound Card
CTX 18 Inch Crt @ 1280-1024 85Hz
Maxtor 300GB SATA 16MB cashe HD
600MB/s Internet Connection
Windows XP home SP2
Processor Liquid Cooling Mini Aqua Gate

so basicly sell/toss my computer and start out fresh after i get back?

Yes, or you could preserve it for a few more years, and sell it as memorabilia!!!

looking at your name you aint going to prison are you or are you in the merchant navy or something.

System on a die. That's the future. Google it, or use wikipedia.

Machines these days typically will run games and applications with little or no problem for about 3 years. After that, things usually change drastically enough to warrant a new build.

Some people will argue this and say that their older machines run fine today but it depends on what they're doing with them.

Gaming changes so drastically that it's almost imperative to change builds after 2-3 years. With that build you have and in 5 years, it will definately be outdated. I would say at that point, scrap it and put together a new one.

Sell it now - invest the $$ - and buy a nice new rig in the future - JMHO...

Can I buy your 600MB internet connection right now?

holy crap i never saw that. wth are you doing with all that bandwidth? how fast is your upload? DAMN
I have had cable for the past six years and the bandwidth has been more then enough. I think that connection will last 5 years.

Well, it is a given that the CPU, motherboard, and RAM will need to be replaced. Optical drives are generally still usable- a 5-year-old CD-ROM still works fine. Ditto with hard drives. But you'd likely want to supplant them with something new as a a 5-year-old 10x CD-R and 100GB IDE HDD aren't great now, but can be used as a scratch disk or backup. I don't see IDE going anywhere in five years, but new stuff will likely be all SATA.

Cases and PSUs usually stay good for a while, especially if you got an ATX case and modern PSU of decent capacity. You can likely reuse them just fine, as long as whatever comes along in 5 years does not outstrip your PSU. And with the recent push to lower TDP, I bet a 500W PSU will be more than enough.

And I agree that 3-4 years is the lifespan of a non-gaming computer that sees decent usage. After that, things start to wear out and performance starts to hinder work. A thin client or Internet-only machine will last about twice that long as there is very little power needed from that hardware. You pretty much can run that stuff until you want to do a serious OS upgrade, something breaks, or you are just sick and tired of looking at it.

If you're not gonna be able to use it for 5 year, you may even want to sell your rig just befor you leave and get all the money you can for it. No use in letting it collect dust and devalue. Put it towards a cheep laptop that can take a beating...to keep you busy while you're gone.

Just hope you won't have to, anytime soon, start feeding your PC silcon, oil, or themal grease with vitamins and minerals soon.

You already do that now, it is called subscription updates.

Always fun to speculate. Never quite turns out how we think, though. I remember about 20 years ago the thinking was by now we'd be so much more productive that people wouldn't be working 40 hours per week anymore, that we'd have more time to recreate. They were almost right, the 40 hour work week has about disappeared, but not for a 30 hour one, more like a 50-60 hour one! I do think that by 5 years time, the hard drive as we know it now will be gone. Likely just be a chip on the motherboard, or something like a current memory stick.

Wow, tell you what, just give me your machine and i'll use while your gone!

After 5 years, you'll probably just have to put together a whole new rig man. You can still use the old one for basic use though.

What Im looking forward too:

Solidstate storage HD's
Stackable/interchangeable/ CPU's, IO bridges, and the such
No ram for solidstate storage = constantly growing/uber speed
Infinitely vast net connections
No cooling needed

Lego-like components. They all fit anywhere (infinate possibilitys). IE: A big CPU there and a small one here and all run in parallel, or can be customised how-ever.

next-to-nothing power consumption.

NO MORE FRIGGIN LAGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I duno.. shoot.. I just like to dream!

In five years, computers would be:

Fiber Optics cpu/chip and boards

Holographic hd/cd/dvd

Nanotechnology

Virtual Reality games and simulations

In five years pc would be as powerful if not more as the supercomputers of today.

But I could be wrong and computers might be more than what we can predict. As computer technology develops/evolve exponentially.



This is what the computer scientist/expert in early years, predicting what the personal/home computers would look like in the year 2000. Dead wrong.

This the predictions now for our future computers and some have been in development and research.

Nanochips Coaxing single atoms into place to make the tiniest of transistors (nanotechnology) will extend the life of existing silicon techniques for a good ten years or more. By 2007, Intel expects to have a 1-billion-transistor, 20-GHz chip, making complex voice commands and language translation a snap. Get much smaller and electrons start to act more like waves than like particles, quantum mechanics kicks in, qubits replace bits, and processing speed hits the stratosphere. (IBM, Intel, Oxford University)


Half-Pound PCs IBM is getting extreme about minimizing. Its MetaPad condenses the core of a PC (microprocessor, graphics controller, hard disk, and memory) into a PDA-size package, so you can easily carry your entire computer with you anywhere. Everything else becomes an accessory that plugs into its docking station. Expected ship date: 2006.


Photonic Fibers Thin air may the fastest route to superspeed Internet connections. Today, data in the form of light travels through fiber-optic threads made of glass, but light leaks out, and the signal gets weak. Shoot the light through thin air (actually, the hollow core of photonic-crystal fibers) and the signal stays pretty intense. And it's cheap, since there are no outrageously expensive amplifiers under the oceans to repair. (Corning, MIT, Omni-Guide Communications, University of Bath)


Desktop Chip Fab Download instructions for the latest microprocessor from the Web and print the chip out using "semiconductor ink" on a sheet of plastic. Instead of etching circuits onto silicon in a billion-dollar factory, this special ink prints them, pronto. Big problem: The speed of silicon is about 1,000 times as fast. Lots of work to do here. (MIT)


Roll-Up Displays Take a concoction of organic stuff like pentacene (for low-temperature flexibility) and inorganic stuff like a Perovskite (for speed), print it onto a thin piece of plastic, and you've got flexible transistors perfect for a roll-up display. The same technique could turn out paperback e-books and maybe even computer chips. (IBM, Lucent, MIT, Penn State)


Magnetic Memory You can count on your computer's memory to forget every bit of information it knows once you shut the power off. But if data is stored magnetically (as on a hard drive) instead of electrically, it never forgets. Magnetic memory, in development at IBM, is fast and high-capacity, so you'll never have to boot a computer again. Just flip the switch and it's on.


Thinking Caps Technologies for the disabled are fueling the most mind-boggling advances, such as input devices that—believe it or not—capture your thoughts. Wrap your head around this: An electrode-studded cap picks up brain waves, delivers them to an EEG machine, and feeds the results to software that can maneuver a wheelchair or type text. As for the able-bodied, a brain interface can provide new forms of education and entertainment. Some of the kinks: A mini EEG machine needs to be developed, and who really wants to wear a swim cap at work? (Joint Research Center of the European Commission)

Well, as others have said, 5 years from now your computer will be nearly completly useless spare a few parts.

"System on a Die", sounds like a geek rock band. . .

But it is the future indeed. Offcourse one would not be able to make any changes, replace any components inside or whatev you could make with today's PCs but they(systems on a die) will be smaller and faster and will deliver enough computing power for everyone.