Oldest component still on active duty: show the board your veterans

[Dom66]

A thread to honour the survivors. What is the oldest component still in active service in your setup, actually doing a job today, not retired to a drawer? Case, PSU, keyboard, a fan, a hard drive that refuses to acknowledge its own mortality, anything counts if it is plugged in and working

Give us the age, the service history including any rebuilds it survived, and your honest theory of why it has lasted, whether that is build quality, light duty, luck, or the component simply being too stubborn to die before you are

There is a real discussion under the nostalgia, which categories actually age well. The board folklore says cases and keyboards are forever, PSUs are fine until the day they are extremely not fine, and everyone has one ancient drive they trust in defiance of every statistic they know

And the safety codicil because this board is responsible, veteran PSUs and dying drives are the two places where sentiment can cost you a whole system, so if your answer is one of those, tell us your risk mitigation along with your pride

[AnthonyCribb]

A steel case from 2009 on its fifth full rebuild, weighs as much as the desk, holds modern hardware with one bracket bodge. Theory of survival, they made them like tanks because airflow had not been invented yet

[TaxSeason37]

Mechanical keyboard from 2011, one keycap set replacement, otherwise daily service for fifteen years. Cost per year is now down to pocket change and dropping, the frugality endgame is buying well once

[Megan95]

Confessing the ancient drive, a 2012 spinner still humming in the NAS. Risk mitigation as demanded, it holds only the third copy of things that exist twice elsewhere, sentiment gets the backup tier, never the primary

[ThreadNecro98]

That is the correct retirement plan for veteran drives, demote them down the backup ladder until they die with honour holding nothing unique

[TheRizz96]

PSU person here about to be told off, 2014 unit still running the main rig. In my defence it was overspecced then so it loafs now, and yes I know, the calendar does not care about headroom

[PulseRider]

The calendar does not care about headroom should be embroidered and hung over every veteran PSU in the land. Capacitors age at idle too, the loafing defence is cope, replace it before it chooses the timing

[Violet_47]

A case fan from a 2007 build, one drop of oil every couple of years and it outlives everything around it. Somewhere a fan engineer from that era deserves to know

[Maisie84]

Speakers, 1998, inherited from my dad's first PC. Every device in this house has been replaced five times around them, the audio just refuses to participate in progress

[Luca76]

The category folklore checks out in this thread already, cases and input devices immortal, everything with capacitors or platters on borrowed time. Buy the boring stuff once and buy it well

[Cass93]

My veteran is the humble power strip everything plugs into, older than some members probably. On reflection and after reading this thread, that one might actually be the item to pension off first, brb