I’m currently rocking a refurbished 2017 13.3" Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB PCIe SSD running OS X Mojave, bought just a few months ago. I specifically wanted a 2017 Macbook Air because it’s the last one with actual USB ports. It’s replacing a 2012 Macbook Pro that I accidentally upgraded to Mojave which bricked it, so I bought the cheapest laptop Apple had to offer. I pulled the SSDs out of my busted MBP, put them into enclosures and use them as external USB drives. This is primarily my “walking around/travel” computer.
My main machine at home is a Sager NP8374 gaming laptop: 6 core i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20 GHz, GTX 1070 GPU (8GB), 16GB RAM, 17.3" matte display, 1TB SSD, running Windows 10 Pro. I have another 8GB of RAM I could put in it, but I’ve not yet run into the need so I haven’t; I prefer not to open up a laptop if I don’t have to. This thing is a beast, and while I have plenty of recent computer-taxing games that this thing will easily run, I mostly just play Cities: Skylines on it.
A first generation Mac Mini and an old 520c that I still like for word processing/writing. Although I am seriously thinking of upgrading to a 2014 Powerbook or something newer since the only browsers I can run are basically collectibles.
My primary box is the penultimate 17" MacBook Pro model, the last that could natively boot MacOS 10.6.8; I’ve got the RAM maxed out at 16 GB and somewhere along the line I upgraded the internal HD to a 2 TB SSD. Now running 10.11 and holding (got no reason to put something newer in there).
I have an identical spare, so if the motherboard fries or the screen goes wonky or something, I just do a hard drive transplant and keep going.
All my older computers sit off to the side, on the network so that I can Timbuktu in and remotely control them at will. I can go all the way back to System 6.0.8 (well technically I can boot System 0.9 off a floppy on that box, but I can’t put that on the network).
My desktop machine is a Core i7 2600K (Sandybridge) Hackintosh that I built in 2011. It’s still more than fast enough for my needs. I’m tempted to upgrade it, just to have Thunderbolt and USB-C, but I don’t feel like spending the money right now. I also have a Touch Bar MacBook Pro. It’s a really nice machine, and actually faster than my Hack, but I wish the battery life was longer (I can get around 8 hours if I’m careful). My wife has a MacBook Air, and we have an old MacBook Pro 13” as the “Kitchen” computer.
I have a Raspberry Pi that I use as a dedicated Digital Photo Display, driving a 50” 4K monitor, running a Python script I wrote. It also runs Z-way software, and HomeBridge, so I can use Siri to turn my lights on and off.
I am a gamer but I’m not hung up on getting a solid 60FPS at all times. Every few years if a game starts making my system chug too much I’ll upgrade the processor for whatever is around $100 and buy a motherboard and RAM to go with it, or upgrade the video card.
Current system:
ASUS M5A99FX PRO motherboard
AMD FX-8350 8-core processor
8GB RAM
Probably 6TB of storage spread over 4 drives
Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti Windforce OC 4GB
LG 25UM58-P 25-Inch 21:9 UltraWide IPS Monitor
Win7 64-bit
1980’s vintage IBM Model M keyboard
Mionix Naos 7000 mouse
5.1 headset
5.1 Creative Labs speakers
The GTX 1050Ti is the newest thing in my system, bought it last October. Motherboard, CPU, and RAM are from 2015.
I play Arma 3, Ghost Recon Wildlands, GTA V, Battlefield 1, Elite Dangerous, Civilization 5 and 6, Divinity Original Sin, Skyrim, and many other games with good performance. I really like the 21:9 monitor even though there are a couple games that give me problems on it. Like Fallout 4 took some fidgeting, but some games that are 10 years old work fine.
Only thing I really want right now is more RAM, 16GB would be nice.
I count its beginning to a bare bones system I bought in 1999 that was essentially an AMD K6-III 400, a motherboard, some memory, a new hard drive, and a mid-tower case. I kept my old monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, and one of my hard drives. Since then, I’ve upgraded parts, but no more than the motherboard, memory and processor at any one time. I think I’ve gone through six processors and five motherboards, and lost count of the hard drives and other peripherals.
Right now, I’m on the original mid-tower case still, the fourth power supply (an EVGA 650 watt modular one), a Gigabyte GA-990FXA UD3 motherboard, an AMD FX-9950 processor (upgraded from an FX-6300 about a year ago), 16 GB of DDR3 1333 RAM,
a Radeon R9 380X graphics card/accelerator, and about 5 TB of assorted hard drives, 1 TB of which is actually a RAID 1 (mirroring) array. I also have a 22" Viewsonic monitor, some kind of Dell laser printer, an Anker gaming mouse, and a brand new Logitech K840 mechanical keyboard.
And I’ve got you beat by a mile. From a 10MHtz XT clone to currently an AMD Ryzen 5 1400 four-core, 8 threaded beast with a 500GB M.2 drive and a new PS. All by upgrading here and there. (The case itself is the oldest part. Maybe 15 years since I got it but I bought it used.)
The newest component is a 6TB HD I got by buying an external drive on sale and shucking it. I’m never going to have delete anything ever again!
My main PC is a gaming PC with three monitors (4K, 100 Hz 3440x1440, and 120 Hz 4k), an i7-8700, a RTX 2080 ti, and assorted high-end peripherals.
I have two HP Microservers - one is a spare.
I have two backup PCs, each with a Pentium D and a decent GPU.
I have an old Shuttle SB51G transportable.
I think I have two others packed away.
HP Hunk of Junk with minimal specs that I bought for $200 at Walmart because I needed a computer NOW. When I get some money I’m getting it seriously upgraded, because damn.
Mine: i5-8600K @ 4.8GHz, 16GB RAM, GTX 1080 GPU and an assortment of solid state and HDD drives inside. 27" 1440p Gsync monitor. Gaming and internet use 99% of the time.
Family: i7-860 @ 3.8GHz, 12GB RAM, R9 290X GPU. 27" 1080 monitor. This was my old computer until early 2018 when I built the above one. Still works fine and although I wouldn’t expect it to perform great on the very latest titles, it can still play 99% of my Steam library without a hitch. It’s retired to family duty and my kid mooching off Steam family sharing.
In the corner: i3-580 @ 2.8GHz, 8GB RAM, GTX 550Ti GPU. Some tiny trash monitor. I rebuilt this one out of spare parts mainly for the heck of it. Runs Win7 off a cheap store brand SSD. I once threw it on Craigslist for $80 with monitor which was maybe $40 more than the new SSD I had put into it but no takers. So it sits in a corner of the family room unused. It’d actually be a fine internet/homework style computer but I don’t have much use for it to bother putting it anywhere.
I don’t have a smartphone. I have a mini-tower and a laptop. Both of which allow me to play my 30-odd year old N.F.L. simulation, which, aside from sending and receiving e-mails is just about all I care about when it comes to computers.
I have a three-year-old Cyberpower PC (3.5GHz or so, with three hard drives - a 1 TB SSD (just installed), a 250 GB SSD (which was the boot drive), and a 2 TB mechanical), and a ten-year-old iMac that appears to be pretty much at the end of its upgradeable lifecycle.
99% of my work is done on the PC; the only real reason for the Mac is to develop iPhone/iPad apps.
Work computer: HP Pavillion, i7 @3.2gHz, 9GB of RAM, 1.5TB of storage, shit sound and graphics
Laptop: 2010 Toshiba Satellite. No idea on the specs, I literally only use it as a dumb terminal for watching video at night.
TV/Torrent/Media server home-built box: 2009 build, Intel i7, tons and tons of storage, OK video, pretty good sound, really nice power supply and motherboard. I forget the specs. It’s “Old” and still works a treat!
