Quad Core Lifespan

Author	Post
Opium Deactivated User 300 Posts 3/12	Posted - Mar 23 2012 : 5:12PM i'm looking to buy a new PC. i only need it for surfing the web, playing mp3's, and playing video so i thought a dual core PC would be sufficient. then i was told by someone at a computer store that the lifespan of a quad core PC is usually 5+ years while the lifespan of a dual core PC was only 2-3 years, which is too short for me. is there any truth to this? [Link]
Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02	Posted - Mar 23 2012 : 5:48PM I doubt that he was talking about how long the chip would last. More likely, he was talking about the ability of the chip to run new applications at a reasonable clip. As far as how long a chip will physically function, that mainly depends on how well you cool it, as heat is the enemy of electronics. [Link]
BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Mar 23 2012 : 7:46PM I haven't heard this and wouldn't believe this. There's lots of factors for lifespan and would guess manufacturing has more impact than many other things. That being said, what Hardware said. Just make sure you get a good thermal heatsink with a fan for your CPU and make sure your thermals are within reasonable range. If all you need is for doing what you said, you probably can get a cheap triple core or quad core (AMD Athlon II X3 or X4). However if you are only doing that, you could easily get away with a decent dual core and be perfectly fine. [Link]
Opium Deactivated User 300 Posts 3/12	Posted - Mar 24 2012 : 12:19AM BYOB_Kenobi wrote: If all you need is for doing what you said, you probably can get a cheap triple core or quad core (AMD Athlon II X3 or X4). However if you are only doing that, you could easily get away with a decent dual core and be perfectly fine. Click to expand thanks. the stores don't even seem to be selling triple cores right now, i've only seen dual and quad. how long would a good dual core PC last (on average) before it crashs if i don't have it on 24/7 (i usually shut my PC down once or twice a month for 2 or 3 days to give it a "rest", i think that's why my current PC last 11 years : ) Edited by - Opium on 3/24/2012 12:20:04 AM [Link]
Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02	Posted - Mar 24 2012 : 2:37AM I haven't seen anything that suggests that shutting your PC down for three or four days straight provides any greater benefit than just shutting it down when not in use. Obviously, the electronics aren't being heat stressed when the thing is turned off, but if the price is not being able to use it then I question the value of that strategy. In regards to heat - make sure that the air intake and exhaust are free of obstructions, including lint, and be sure to blow the dust out of the computer as needed. When it needs doing depends on how dusty your environment is, so you'll have to figure that one out on your own. [Link]

JohnW Senior Member 1351 Posts 6/08	Posted - Mar 24 2012 : 11:06PM You should expect your cpu to last for 10 years at least, as long as the heatsink is attached correctly. Don't worry about that. Sure, parts do die from time to time and you have no control over that, but there's no reason to expect the whole computer to die. However, a quad core will probably serve you a bit longer than dual core simply because applications are becoming more parallel. That is of course assuming that the cpus you are comparing have the same performance per core. The benefit to more cores will drop however, and if I was to make a guess, I would say that four will probably serve the average pc user well for a long time (5 years at least). If you are considering a specific pc or setup, you could link to it and we will be able to give you some advice on which will last you the longest (meaning that it would feel quick and responsive for the longest, not when it would "die"). [Link]
Opium Deactivated User 300 Posts 3/12	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 9:04AM JohnW wrote: You should expect your cpu to last for 10 years at least, as long as the heatsink is attached correctly. Don't worry about that. Sure, parts do die from time to time and you have no control over that, but there's no reason to expect the whole computer to die. Click to expand first i should say i don't know alot about computers. johnw i have 3 questions. what do you mean when you say the heatsink should be attached correctly? also are you saying that a decent desktop PC purchased in 2012 could last for 10 years? i always thought that the PC's built now are made shitty and don't last more than 5-6 years. also when you say that parts die from time to time could my PC still work properly if certain parts die? Edited by - Opium on 3/25/2012 9:09:58 AM Edited by - Opium on 3/25/2012 9:11:30 AM [Link]
Opium Deactivated User 300 Posts 3/12	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 9:21AM Hardware wrote: I haven't seen anything that suggests that shutting your PC down for three or four days straight provides any greater benefit than just shutting it down when not in use. Click to expand i was told that turning the PC on and off, on and off, on and off (i.e. what i would do if i shut it down when not in use) was not good for the PC's lifespan so that's why the past few years especially i give my PC "breaks". so i'll have it on say for a week or sometimes as long as 2 weeks w/o shutting it down but then i shut it down for at least 2 days (5 days at most). the other reason i do this is it gives me a chance to do other things besides sit on my ass at my PC (which i have trouble doing when i'm home and it's on : ) [Link]
JohnW Senior Member 1351 Posts 6/08	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 10:01AM Opium wrote: what do you mean when you say the heatsink should be attached correctly? Click to expand Nothing that you should have to worry about really, but since we were talking about cpu's, I mentioned it because that's really the only thing that can shorten the lifespan of your cpu (that and overclocking). Unless the person building your computer did something wrong, this is nothing to worry about. The heatsink is a aluminum or copper block that spreads the heat coming from your cpu. also are you saying that a decent desktop PC purchased in 2012 could last for 10 years? i always thought that the PC's built now are made shitty and don't last more than 5-6 years. Click to expand It should last 10 years to be honest. But expect the things you will do with it in 10 years to require more processing power. That's what happened in the last 10 years. Windows 7 requires a faster pc than 10 year old Windows XP. Also web browsing requires more power because most sites include fancy content (flash, html5, video, etc). And then there's of course games (which always pushes performance and is the thing you'll notice first). Your PC will _not_ degrade, but newer programs and games are likely to require more. The exact stuff you do today will not get slower. also when you say that parts die from time to time could my PC still work properly if certain parts die? Click to expand Probably not. It will require fixing in most cases. As long as you know someone with some knowledge of computers its usually easy to fix. I've been called many times by people claiming their pc is "dead", and it turns out it was quite easy to fix, maybe a broken graphics card (new ones are cheap unless you play new games), maybe a loose monitor cable, maybe a software error, maybe a virus, maybe faulty RAM which can be easily switched, maybe a faulty hard drive (no problem as long as you have backup). The whole pc rarely just "dies". If you're really unlucky the motherboard dies, then you only have to change that but it requires maybe a couple of hours of work by someone who knows what they're doing. i was told that turning the PC on and off, on and off, on and off (i.e. what i would do if i shut it down when not in use) was not good for the PC's lifespan so that's why the past few years especially i give my PC "breaks". so i'll have it on say for a week or sometimes as long as 2 weeks w/o shutting it down but then i shut it down for at least 2 days (5 days at most). Click to expand The only thing I can think of that would be "bad" about turning it off and on frequently would be the spinning up and down of hard drives. This can in theory increase the chances of hard drives failures but I don't think you should worry too much about it. Leaving your pc on for years is no problem unless you worry about the electricity bill. [Link]
Goldstein All-Star Member "You have sacrificed nothing and no one." 3689 Posts 8/10	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 10:41AM Speccy is a wonderful utility useful in showing you what is really going on with your computer and finding out information (i.e. information that is next to impossible to ferret out on your own). Speccy also shows you the temperatures for your CPU, mother-board and hard-drive(s) (so you can see that your hardware is operating within safe temperature ranges). [Link]
BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 12:56PM Opium wrote: thanks. the stores don't even seem to be selling triple cores right now, i've only seen dual and quad. Click to expand I read and look at benchmarks a lot for CPU, GPUs, chipsets, SSDs/HDs and I've read many articles/reviews that showed the jump between triple core from dual core yields a lot of performance increase, but not so much between triple to quad. I forgot manufacturers and vendors probably are pushing quads primarily now, so I guess they would be hard to find. As far as JohnW said, yeah, it would probably be a good idea to invest in a quad core to futureproof your PC. Although CPUs have gotten so good, that for basic and common tasks (office suites, web browsing, basic multimedia, low end gaming...) dual cores are probably sufficent and many laypeople don't need the power of quad core or hex core CPUs only if you are doing encoding, multimedia editing, crunching large datasets, or extreme gaming. That being said paying a little more for a lower end quad core wouldn't be a bad idea. Like I said, don't worry about the life span of CPU. CPUs have 3-5 year warranty and easily last that long. Like JohnW said, down the road in at most 5 years, CPU architecture will advance so much and cost cheap that upgrading to a new system will yield 1 hex performance for small amount. Many people don't hang onto systems for 10 years. Manufacturing process (doping), CPU series, quality control and even luck have most effect on lifespan. The most you can do is buy a decent heatsink w/CPU fan (can get for only $20-30) and make sure thermals are within range. Power cycling - I think this is a myth. Articles I've read said you can turn your PC off every day and be fine. Unless you are doing several times a day, don't worry about it. Parts die - Remember PC components are individual parts (CPU, video card, motherboard, RAM, optical drive, HDs) with different qualities and characteristics. Usually only 1 part will fail. I've save (and fixed others PCs) tons of money learning about PC hardware. It takes a lot of reading and keeping up to date with new architectures, but it's not hard stuff. You just need patience and thinking logically (substituting known good parts with a suspect bad part tells you a lot). You should definitely learn the basics. CPU cooling - Don't worry about the heatsink and CPU fan. Just get a cheap decent one. There can be alot more to it, like many people use thermal compound/grease as a layer between CPU and copper/aluminum plate to increase thermal transfer, but there are many techniques and can get messy (also intimidating to beginners). Just get a heatsink/fan and read instructions/videos and mount it. Remember besides your type of work, price is another consideration. What is your budget? [Link]
BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 1:04PM The best thing to do is start to configure your PC on paper and run your build/specs by us. After reading all heatsinks benchmakrs, this probably rates a 8 out of 10 but really cheap. It's called COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus heatsink and many great reviews and many people use it. [Link]
Harri Patel Senior Member #SDNY he's all yours. -- Michael Steele 5110 Posts 3/03	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 4:03PM Opium wrote: i'm looking to buy a new PC. i only need it for surfing the web, playing mp3's, and playing video Click to expand If this is all you need the computer for (no gaming? no processor-intensive tasks like video encoding?), you don't need a powerful CPU. A Solid State Drive (SSD) instead of a traditional hard drive would make more of noticeable difference in your day-to-day use of the machine than a quad-core processor would (the system will boot up and shut down much faster, programs start up in a flash, Windows updates get installed much faster, etc.), but I'm not sure if you'd have much luck going into a store and trying to find a pre-built, otherwise modest machine that has a SSD. Might be worth getting a local guy to build a system for you, or try doing it yourself (it really isn't very hard). [Link]
Opium Deactivated User 300 Posts 3/12	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 7:15PM sounds like from what's been said i should go with a dual-core since there's no difference in lifespan between dual and quad. thanks everyone for the advice. Edited by - Opium on 3/25/2012 7:17:33 PM [Link]
Hardware All-Star Member Your other left 14594 Posts 3/02	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 9:17PM Harri Patel wrote: A Solid State Drive (SSD) instead of a traditional hard drive would make more of noticeable difference in your day-to-day use of the machine than a quad-core processor would... Click to expand This may be true, but SSD's have short life spans - mine died within a couple of years. I went back to old-fashioned drives because, really, there wasn't that much difference. Of course, the longer a Microsoft operating system is out, the more their patches bloat it into an unwieldy pig, so maybe the SSD should be the drive you go to when you want to keep that old system running for just another year or two before spending the bucks to replace it. [Link]

BYOB_Kenobi Senior Member “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09	Posted - Mar 25 2012 : 10:12PM Opium wrote: sounds like from what's been said i should go with a dual-core since there's no difference in lifespan between dual and quad. thanks everyone for the advice. Click to expand Yeah don't worry about lifespan. There's no data (I haven't even heard rumors) that duals are shorter than quads. Even if you were unlucky, there's going to be a small amount that might die shorter than normal whether dual, tri, quad, hex, octa cores. Budget besides type of work is key to deciding too. Although duals can do most of what you want now, for paying 20-30% more for quad, it might be a good investment, esp if you are going to keep it a long time. But it depends on budget. Edited by - BYOB_Kenobi on 3/25/2012 10:13:11 PM [Link]
jrv Senior Member 1266 Posts 2/03	Posted - Mar 26 2012 : 3:41AM Opium wrote: i'm looking to buy a new PC. i only need it for surfing the web, playing mp3's, and playing video so i thought a dual core PC would be sufficient. then i was told by someone at a computer store that the lifespan of a quad core PC is usually 5+ years while the lifespan of a dual core PC was only 2-3 years, which is too short for me. is there any truth to this? Click to expand I used to design PC's for a living... The store is almost certainly referring to "usefulness in terms of being able to run applications". They're also almost certainly wrong: a wimpy table has enough power to do what you want and a bottom-feeder PC has twice the beef. And a bottom-feeder will do just fine for your needs: I doubt you'd notice more than two cores or more than the slowest CPU. Six core fast $$$ CPUs are for guys who recode their porn collection. If the fans fail the system ages quickly. If the CPU heat sink loosens the CPU likely dies. The heat sink should not come off short of a catastrophic drop. The biggest motherboard risk to a system today is the power supply and VRM. Those are full of components that don't last forever. Consider disconnecting power and all wires during thunderstorms - less stress that way. Hard disks do fail but disks are cheap. Consider getting a second disk and using a program like Acronis to do backups to a different hard disk than the one you use. The biggest risk to not being able to use the system is viruses & barnacles (tools & widgets installed & removed over time). A backup is helpful for viruses. The CPU itself is one of the more reliable chips in the system. I don't think I've had one die expect by screwing up something elsewhere on a motherboard (misreading a schematic & sending 5V into 3V, etc). The CPU guys do their homework. A 10 year system life is on the long but definitely doable if good engineering was done originally. All those little capacitors and resistors on motherboards are there for a reason and a major-vendor PC manufacturer who actually looks for under-shoots and over-shoots will extend the lifespan. A "clean" motherboard is actually a bad thing, whereas a lot of tiny parts may mean someone actually spent the no-fun-at-all time with an oscilloscope to make sure the signals stayed in spec. SSDs help some things but are a long-term question mark. Nobody's used them for 10 years. They do very little for your needs. Skip them. The issue with power cycling is current in-rush: what happens in the first few microseconds when power starts flowing into chips. Voltage spikes internally, transients from the power supply, etc. Notebooks have been cycling power to parts of systems for almost two decades so I bet those problems are solved. [Link]
Opium Deactivated User 300 Posts 3/12	Posted - Mar 28 2012 : 11:31PM here are the desktop PC's on sale at the store closest to where i live: Lenovo- 6GB RAM/1TB HD/i5 processor($499) HP- 6GB RAM/1TB HD/i3 processor($450) HP- 8GB RAM/1.5TB HD/i3 processor($599) Dell- 8GB RAM/1TB HD/i5 processor($499) as far as the brands go i have no clue what the difference is between an HP and a Dell, etc so that's not too important. all i really need is something that works fast enough to play HD video (something my current ancient PC can't do), surf the web, and play mp3s. what is the minimum RAM you would recommend? also what is the minimum GHZ that i need (someone told me this is important, i don't even know what GHZ is for : ) the same person said that the "cache" should be at least 3MB? is this true and what is cache used for (as you can tell i'm pretty clueless when it comes to computers which is why i'm asking for advice here). i don't know anyone either that is very knowledgable about PC's. oh, and what's the difference between an i3 processor and an i5? PS- are there any other specs i should ask about before making a purchase? thanks in advance for any advice, i appreciate it. Edited by - Opium on 3/28/2012 11:32:31 PM [Link]
Harri Patel Senior Member #SDNY he's all yours. -- Michael Steele 5110 Posts 3/03	Posted - Mar 29 2012 : 2:34AM Those are all more than good enough for what you're talking about. i3 and i5 and i7 are ranges of Intel CPUs, in ascending order of performance. More GHz and cache is better than less, but it's academic for your purposes; like worrying about peak horsepower and torque figures in a commuter car. One thing that hasn't come up is the graphic capabilities of the machines. There are two approaches: on-board graphics (incorporated in the main circuit board of the computer) and a separate graphics adapter (a smaller circuit board that plugs into a slot in the main circuit board). Probably all the machines you're looking at are being sold with on-board graphics only, and that will probably be fine for all your needs. However, there are currently three common, and a fourth less common, ways for computers to hook up to monitors: VGA, DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. I bring this up because sometimes on the low-end, on-board graphics machines, the manufacturers try to save a cent or two and, say, will only put a VGA port on them, or only VGA and DVI, or only VGA and HDMI. So you need to make sure that whatever monitor you're going to be using has at least one type of connection that matches one on the new computer (preferably HDMI, and preferably not VGA, which is the outmoded, "connect the VCR to the television with the coaxial cable and tune to Channel 3" kind of connection). BTW, better/more CPU, memory and graphics can all be easily swapped in, if the need arises in the future. Edited by - Harri Patel on 3/29/2012 1:34:48 PM [Link]
jrv Senior Member 1266 Posts 2/03	Posted - Mar 29 2012 : 3:55AM I agree with Harri, except that more CPU isn't cheap - you will want to pay someone else to swap out the CPU chip for you. But more CPU is the least likely thing you'll ever need. Any of those listed systems is fine. Keep in mind that things change drastically if you ever want to do gaming: games are incredibly demanding of the video card. But you don't say gaming so don't waste money there, [Link]