Is it me, or did PC gaming used to move faster? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a graphics card could feel outdated within a year, and major platform jumps arrived so often that upgrading became part of the hobby. Today, things are different.

According to a recent PC Gamer reader survey, 47% of respondents said they wait at least five years before upgrading their PCs, while only a tiny minority start thinking about the next upgrade almost immediately after finishing a build.

That shift makes sense. You could argue modern CPUs and GPUs "last longer" than they used to, or at least that many gamers are still perfectly happy running hardware from several generations ago because it's good enough for most tasks and games. Rising component prices have also changed the equation. GPUs have become significantly more expensive, and more recently RAM and SSDs have given in to ongoing supply issues tied to AI infrastructure demand, making full-system upgrades harder to justify.

At the same time, enthusiast culture is very much alive, it has just evolved. Some users upgrade GPUs every generation but keep the same platform for nearly a decade. Others hold onto a desktop forever but replace laptops every few years. And then there are the tweakers who upgrade one part at a time until the original PC no longer technically exists.

So here's this weekend's question: what's your usual upgrade cycle these days? Do you replace GPUs every few years and stretch CPUs longer? Wait for major platform shifts like new sockets or DDR generations? Or are you the type who still gets the itch to upgrade the moment new hardware is announced?