 Is upgrading your 10-year-old Intel Core i7 desktop computer worth it? You might be surprised what the answer is. It's not as obvious as you think. Hey there, NJV22.com here with a geek talk or tech talk video. I'm gonna try and make this in under 10 minutes. But there's a million and one tech videos online Upgrading your PC, but no one upgrade applies to everybody. I mean unless you're upgrading your PlayStation or something that's extremely limited We were originally we shot overhead video when we filmed our upgrade of our PC And it was gonna be like one of those how-tos that there's a million of but I realized as I went through the process that There's too much going on for this and there's too many variables Every some people have Intel something about AMD got Nvidia you got Radeon it there's Several thousand different combinations of computer setups. So this is gonna be more of a philosophical Big picture type thing like is it really worth it to upgrade your PC? And and maybe some people will get some benefit out of this. You might be in a similar situation As we were so let's start here Let me give you some background. I Built a premium Intel core desktop core i7 10 years ago. It was amazing. It was it was a cutting edge at the time You know 64 bit I had eight gigs of RAM Terabyte hard drive decent video at the time 10 years ago And I had that until just a couple days ago till yesterday. I finished my upgrade yesterday And but I did do some minor upgrades to this PC over the years this chick One of the things I did recently was I changed the case I moved the motherboard and all the components to a different case so it fit fit into a piece of furniture pretty good Naturally the video card I upgraded twice over the last 10 years I went from the original to a new to a replacement to yet another replacement So I think I have a relatively current one. It's an NVIDIA GTX 960 It's not the newest but it's only like a few clicks below the fastest so it's it's good I've also changed the boot drive the hard drive several times maybe two or three times I went from like certain, you know, 5400 rpm 7200 rpm all these different rpm hard drives and controllers I've been using a solid state drive for the past maybe five years Now that's been working great. I also upgraded the RAM to 16 gigs and a little bit faster and I Think I handled the I upgraded the bottlenecks over over the last 10 years And I scored a pretty decent score as far as I'm concerned the 1600 on Plus or minus on Nova Bench, which is the one benchmarking software we we decided to use and There's really not much else other than the fact that, you know, our CPU is Eight generation or nine generations are removed from the latest in the great And not only that they there's some recent developments relatively recent like in the last year or less About the boot drives that they have as I'm called an M2 technology and it's something called NVMe I'm not sure if there's a acronym or Way, but it mounts on the motherboard. It's just basically it looks like a memory chip and It's supposed to be like 10 or 20 times faster than Then even an SSD drive which has no moving parts. So I was excited. So I Instead of going to the latest intel I jumped ship again. I've been an AMD guy in the past before 10 years ago But I went with this AMD is back in the game as I am led to believe that this rising chip I bought a rise in the seven chip It has eight cores and I was hoping that because of my old processor four cores cores are how many simultaneous Operations it can do at one time. So I got an eight core processor. It's faster It has more just more overall capacity because I just wanted to see if I can make my video editing a little bit quicker Sometimes especially if you like 4k was unusable on my last PC. That's part of the reason why I Then I made this upgrade And so for 300 bucks. I got I got a brand new motherboard wasn't the best I wasn't getting some like top-of-the-line gaming motherboard with lights and fireworks coming off and dancing Mice inside. I just got a basic motherboard because I don't really I'm not doing any game So for 300 bucks, I got a new motherboard a new 16 gig ram set, which is pretty fast I think I got 2667 speed and I got The CPU actually I didn't buy the latest and greatest rise in CPU either I just got the 1700 not even the 1700 X so I looked at all the specs It was like 5% faster and I think I'm splitting hairs there, but I got a good deal I had to buy a package, but anyway, and then I bought for another 150 bucks I bought two new M2 hard drives to 500 gig hard drives. They knew latest and greatest Samsung 970 Evo and Crucial just a SATA drive that whatever so for 450 a I basically Upgraded the system and a brand new system with video card and everything else Probably would have cost in this capacity like 1500 bucks So by using my existing video card and other hard drives and the power supply in the case and everything else and windows Of course, if you buy a computer Windows, you gotta usually tack on an extra hundred hundred fifty bucks for the license for that software So all I had to do was swap the parts and we're good to go I just want to point out you got to be careful when looking on both YouTube and searching the search engines This is this is irritating me because You get bad information And you get these suspicious tech sites keep never heard up before and they're all peddling it the same if you're all You got to go into your registry before you are change your motherboard I Was seeing some fishy stuff there they all they were copying pasting the same like I think bogus Information so I said I'm not gonna change my registry. I'm just gonna swap the parts and see I have faith that windows was gonna take care of the Sensing the changes now on the side as a side note here Windows licensing has some issues when you when you upgrade your hardware, they may not let you activate windows And it could be a lot of people have massive ordeals trying to get their windows license up upgraded or transferred to the new PC Real quick go on eBay. I bought a license today for two dollars They delivered it to me instantly and I solved the problem Do not waste your time trying to figure out whether you can activate your license on the new new setup $2 on eBay. I got a full windows 10 professional license key. But anyway I want to point out that the bad search results real quick because I have an Android phone which I'm filming this video on and what I wanted to do What I like to do is have a screen mirror like either use another computer or a laptop to so I could see myself right now I'm not using it because I'm pretty much got this down through the science yet, but I Spent a week looking for a screen mirroring application on Android and it was just coming up with all these shitty little like what do you call it the ass and they didn't work and they They just sucked or they made you pay Let me tell you something and then it was right in front of my eyes the whole time as a windows 10 creators edition user There's a screen mirroring app built right into windows. I didn't know that I don't stay up to date This but why didn't it show up on the first second or third page of results? I found it through some obscure other website like they're trying to hold Microsoft down It's like a conspiracy against it against them. It should have been like the first two or three Search results when I type screen mirroring Android windows 10 should come up first that just but I'm gonna get back on I got a digress here. So As you can see here there, I'm like showing you the whole upgrade process. It's a It's boring. It's boring boring stuff. Basically if you could read instructions and follow instructions Anybody can do this even a ten-year-old or six-year-old should be able to follow the instructions It's not that hard, but I want to tell you about some mistakes. I made just upgrading a PC Number one if you if you're getting a new PC with the motherboard that has the M2 NVMe slots for those mini hard drives not even hard drives SSD Solid-state storage if you want to call it that Be careful with those hold-down screws. I ended up snapping the Standoff off and that was almost like a like a deal break like oh I got to put the old motherboard back in in order to replace it and tell them tell the people that it broke You know, I said no Only the screw broke. So basically what I did was I I Glued it. I glued the screw to the chip and I taped it down. It's in there perfectly works fine So I'm a guy read it and it's working fine But be careful when you screw down those M2 drives because you will snap the the little holder off and The second thing that I did wrong and this was my own fault for not researching The motherboards work thoroughly. I mean I did a pretty good job The price was was was weighing too hard on my decisions Like 50 bucks more I could have gotten the motherboard that would have solved this problem But what was missing from the current ace rock motherboard I bought was an optical audio out there. I have one little fiber optic cable going to my speakers and It's does this one doesn't have it and that was like a major league. I'm like, ah What am I gonna do and I have like three options of what I can do I can Get that other motherboard, but then I got to go through this whole take apart and put back together Process again. I'm not doing it my second option is to Excuse me get a cheap sound card that has the optical out and I have three options I get like a $20 like made in China. They're all made in China And it got okay reviews it All I want is what optical out I can get like a $40 aces which Probably the same thing and I can get $60 creative labs I'm not sure what to do with that yet and I did connect my speakers to the analog out on the PC And it sounds okay. I'm not a big audiophile. I think I might live with that for now just to I think it'll work. I'm not a I'm not an audiophile anymore. I'm not Playing games with surround sound or watching movies, but We'll see I mean, I mean I can always get the sound card and return it if I don't like it Okay, here's the next thing that you have to consider if you're doing doing it yourself Do I do a fresh do I build a PC from scratch and do a fresh install of Windows and Or do you try and keep your existing setup? I like the fact I like trying to keep my existing set up because you have a lot of Personalization that goes into your whole desktop environment or a computer environment It's not just the Windows operating system in the settings and all this other stuff in the accounts and the emails passwords But it's the app. It's the applications as well. If you have everything set up everything is working. So if at all possible, I like to keep my existing install but for the most part in the past Existing setups always throw people off because there's driver issues and You know taking that old hard drive and putting it on the new motherboard It's sort of they speak different languages. So You know, there's there's problems either way you do you have clean up the mess with the transfer or start from scratch and people I Guess tend to lean towards start from scratch because it's like that brand new car Smell but it's not it's not too long before The brand new car smell goes away and you get your first ding in the fender and so on so You got to pick your poison. I went with the transferring of the drive and It's so far so good. I got a couple blue screens of deaths or b-sod. So they're called I think that's just driver issues. I'll work it out. I think slowly, but surely I think I'm like 95% Done with that And keep in mind this is probably the reason why cloud-based apps are Trending higher all the time because you have all your settings in the cloud and you can go from computer to computer to computer It's like having 10 girlfriends and all your same clothes are in every one of their closets You never really have to worry about that. I don't know. I don't like cloud computing at all But that's another another day So my computer is working right now. So like what's the verdict of all this? I upgraded to like eight generations newer of a chip. I have a better hard drives. They're supposed to be 20 times faster To sum it up, I'm not ecstatic. I didn't get that Wow feeling at all a little bit disappointed in fact because it's and there's no profoundly different Feel I'm not like who have that computer load. I mean the the files load this fast instead of This fact I'm not getting any of that My benchmarks I showed about a 40% improvement. I went from like the 1500s up to maybe the 2700 I have a car. I didn't save the screenshot, but I Almost doubled the speed I don't know I Mean that doesn't seem like such a huge Upgrade after it like I'm taking a 10 year old computer to a 2019 computer. I don't know it seems It shouldn't be 20 times faster It's pot. I mean like what happened to Moore's wall, you know, it's like I wasn't supposed to like double and double double I don't think I think I just Killed that one, but it's possible that the incremental update updates. I did over the last 10 years Made it pretty good. I mean I did have a 1600 or 1500 on that Nova Bench The second thing that bugs me is that those M2 hard drives that Samsung Evo Was supposed to be so much faster than what I had and I'm not seeing it as being that much faster. Um, I Haven't noticed it yet at least it's not like like loading before I think about it So I don't know. I I'm hoping that it's reliable and I noticed some change positive changes in the future lastly My regret may be eased in the fact that I have all new mostly new equipment in the box now I suppose it's better to have new components now, you know The future breakage is probably the chance of that has been reduced like my hands are inside these gloves I have snowblower gloves on by the way with rubber gloves on inside. I'm freezing my fingers It's like below freezing this in this movie studio Anyway, I hope I noticed some speed Increases and like reliability. I hope doesn't crash like non-stop And the new system that I put in I didn't take a picture But I you know, I put a new fan in the CPU fan is new and it's really really quiet It has a cool LED color ring around it, which is just a gimmick to make people feel good. I Spent way too much time tweaking it completely waste time. Leave it a solid color. Don't don't mess around with it Or turn it off entirely. Yeah, it's it's it's just a distraction but it is kind of neat and And What I've noticed though in searching the the message boards and reading about people who are upgrading People take this stuff extremely way too seriously Kids especially like the the nerds They get so upset that their their system isn't working perfectly almost become obsessive Compulsive about having the latest driver the latest software the fastest tweaks the fastest boot times In the end it really doesn't matter. It's just this weird internal like satisfaction. You need to have And then like they're in a constant state of upgrade like they'd like But you know Friday. Oh, yeah, my my computer's working great and then like a week and a half later It's a god. I have to upgrade again because they have a new this and new that a faster chip Oh my god hired 4k 8k Just be happy do something productive with your computer and don't worry I mean, I guess the whole hobby of building a computer Is in it of itself like just like a thing of life, you know, maybe that's what they want to do It's just constantly upgrading fiddle, which is good. I guess it's not such a bad thing to to Have a hobby like that, but When the hobby itself is just constantly spending money to make it better to do nothing with it it kind of Seems stupid I Think people need to take a step back from from that and realize that maybe what they're doing is really frickin stupid Oh, I have the fastest computer and like like I'd love to be the kid that comes in like moves to a new neighborhood All the kids are bragging about house is so So what yeah, and like they're they wouldn't be able to answer a question. Well, you know, well, I can run a game I'm like Ask so what so what I mean, I did ten years. I have the shittiest computer or Wasn't the best that's for sure, but I still produce content all over the web and and create just do the best with what you have and Maybe in retrospect, I shouldn't have upgraded the PC and saved my money, but that's it I hope I helped someone if you have any questions. Just shoot me a comment in on YouTube here or Just go to njrew22.com and leave a comment there. We need more Commenters we have visitors but people aren't commenting. So have a nice day and week ahead