Time flies too quickly!

[Bloodwych]

Time does indeed fly too quickly!

Sounds like it's time to offload some of your lesser used stuff. What's the point of it collecting dust when it can go to a good home.

I myself am not short of PC's, many outdated by today's standards, but I prefer to use different machines for different tasks so they still get use. My excuse is when I bought a router it had four parts asking to be filled, so I make use of all of them by hooking up left over hardware.

Online machines:

For instance, I have a general work machine which I'm typing on now. Powerful CPU, large hard drives and plenty of RAM, but crap 3D videocard. Silence, data storage and security are it's main goals, so I designed it with cool running parts and low speed fans. No file sharing, games or dodgy apps on this box - it's what I use for online banking and purchasing.

Then I have a gaming PC - mATX case powerful video card and CPU, fairly noisy. Tend to play the trailing edge games bought from ebay on older hardware (6800GT) as leading edge is too expensive.

Now onto a file server and file sharing laptop. Very energy efficient, almost silent, so can be left on 24/7 serving the internet with little dent on my electricity bill.

The forth port is hooked up to an old Athlon XP 1.33Ghz, with Radeon 8500 and sblive! Great for playing older Win98 games and DOS titles, but just sits there most the time as a backup PC. Should really get rid of this.

All of this lot sits on the same large desk, sharing one flatscreen monitor (laptop has it's own obviously) Takes little more than the corner of a room, so not too bad.

Offline machines

I also have a retrobox! SFF PC used purely for retrogaming and emulators setup arcade cabinet style with X-Arcade joysticks.

Then we have a SFF offline gaming PC, because, er, I had upgrade leftovers and they were on special offer. It has a 754 Athlon64 3200 and second hand Radeon x800 pro I snatched on ebay. Use it for LAN gaming with the mATX machine above and with friends as it's portable.

Come to think of it. I have far too many PC's! I even have a modded X-Box in the front room for multiplayer games and beer.

Sounds more than it is - it really doesn't take up much room since five of the above machines are tiny.

Do you think I have a problem? LOL!

[Harrison]

Sounds very similar to me.

Your mention of the offline gaming PC just because you had upgrade leftovers is exactly why I also have some of my machines. The one I mentioned not switching on for over a year was actually built from components left over from a dead PC. The motherboard and PSU failed so I decided it was time to build a new PC. But what do to with the CPU, ram and other components from the dead one? Easy, buy a new case, new PSU, second hand compatible motherboard from ebay and build another system! But there is the issue. I built it, installed and got everything running nicely in XP and then disconnected it and put it in the cupboard, not to be used until now.

I also have a SFF system that I used to use as a file and p2p system but it started to become unstable so I pulled the HD and DVD writer from it and put those in another PC and now use that instead. The SFF PC is now just sitting in it's original box in the cupboard too. I really should see if I can get it working correctly again and then sell that.

[Bloodwych]

Yes, all these parts build up!

The biggest problem is technology moves so fast that when it comes time to upgrade many left over parts become redundant and aren't worth the hassle of selling!

I do try and offload stuff straight away now however, regardless of what they're worth, as I can't possible think of another use for a PC and the current ones are doing their jobs nicely.