Theseus's PC: Eight Years of Changes to One Man's Machine

Since building my first PC back in 2017, I've been slowly swapping out the parts. Now, eight years later, the PC is almost completely unrecognizable, which reminded me a bit of the paradox of the Ship of Theseus. So, I figured I'd write about that! The Life of a PC Builder As many of you might know, I built my own PC. This is not really a niche thing anymore. A lot of people do this, and many of you reading this might have done it as well. In fact, if you've only ever bought something prebuilt, I would encourage you to consider building your own. It's really not that difficult, and it can be a lot of fun to personalize. With that said, I've realistically only built two PCs in my life. I built my first PC back in 2017 with some of my first paychecks out of college. Then, sometime later, I built my wife's PC. Of course, the main benefit of building your own PC is that you know what's inside it, and you can control what you put in it. For me, that meant eventually considering upgrades, like expanding storage with larger hard drives. Unfortunately, PC building isn't quite as flexible as you might like it to be. For example, if you ever need to upgrade your motherboard for a new feature, like NVMe or DDR5 support, then you're probably going to have to shell out for a new processor. After all, CPU architectures change over time and require new sockets. I personally had to do this in 2022 when I wanted to upgrade my graphics card but couldn't afford it on a grad student salary. So, I opted instead for a CPU upgrade and a motherboard to match. Then, earlier this year on my lecturer salary, I finally decided to gift myself a birthday present by upgrading my 1070 to a 4070. While this was a massive upgrade for my system, it's obvious that I still haven't shelled out for a 4080 because they're still pushing a grand even with the 5080 out. Naturally, like getting your first tattoo, I couldn't stop upgrading. For instance, I recently removed all my SATA drives, which included a mix of old school HDDs and a couple SSDs as well as a literal DVD drive, and replaced them with a couple M.2 drives. Finally, to round out the current setup, I moved the entire PC into a brand new case. This is the first new case since I built the PC in 2017. The only thing that I can think of that's from the original build is the power supply, something that I probably ought to swap out soon. The Current Build Given this history, you might be wondering what the current setup looks like. Here's a quick breakdown of all the parts with the usual Amazon links (#ad): ComponentDescription (#ad)MotherboardMSI PRO Z690-A WiFi DDR4 ProSeries MotherboardCPUIntel Core i9-12900KGPUASUS The SFF-Ready Prime GeForce RTX™ 4070 OC Edition 12GB GDDR6X Graphics CardMemoryCorsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) x 2StorageSAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD & Samsung 990 EVO Plus SSDPower SupplyCorsair HXi Series, HX750iCPU CoolerCooler Master Hyper 212 Black EditionCaseLian Li LANCOOL 217 Genuine Walnut Wood Computer CaseMonitorAcer G257HU smidpx 25-Inch WQHD (2560 x 1440) Widescreen Monitor & LG 34GN850-B 34 Inch 21: 9 UltraGear Curved QHD (3440 x 1440) 1ms Nano IPS Gaming Monitor I really badly want to upgrade the RAM in my PC next, but I know that's going to force me to buy a new motherboard to support DDR5 and a new CPU, so I opted for a new NVMe SSD as my boot drive and a new case. Perhaps I will eventually swap out the RAM. Theseus's PC Until I swapped out the case, no matter how many parts I swapped out of the computer, I would have argued it was the same PC—much like regular repairs on a car. Of course, now it even looks different. This got me thinking again about the famous Ship of Theseus paradox: is this the same PC I built back in 2017? I am not much of a philosopher (despite what my degree says on it), and I even find the Ship of Theseus problem sort of silly. However, my PC has been such a core part of my personal identity over the last eight years that it's hard for me to think of it as a different PC despite (almost) all of its parts changing. The trickier bit with the PC as well is that the data is more-or-less the same since 2017. I still have files from back then, and the operating system is still intact. The aspects of the PC that I interact with on the day-to-day are virtually indistinguishable from 2017, maybe aside from changes to the UI. Therefore, having briefly looked at the Wikipedia article for the Ship of Theseus, I find myself falling into the "continued identity theory" camp, where small changes over time allow the entity to maintain its identity. With that said, I think there might be an argument that could be made around the significance of a change over time. In other words, how different can a "thing" be over time before it is no longer that "thing"? For example, people change over time—sometimes even drastically. Is there ever a time where we might say they're not the same person any more? I think that's actually a common phrase. Not to go too far off on a tangent, but the Ship of Theseus problem also proposes the idea that I could theoretically assemble my original computer from the old parts, assuming I still had them. Which computer would then be my PC? To make matters even worse (and I promise this is at least somewhat related), I keep asking my students if they would participate in teleportation if it existed, and they often immediately jump to yes. I'm bothered by the idea because it's generally argued that you would need to be disassembled and rebuilt at the new location. Is that you, or is the person on the other side a clone? Could that same teleportation technology be used to make clones of you? These kinds of questions form the basis of plot points in many cyberpunk universes. For example, in Altered Carbon, a similar technology to teleportation could be used to store "you" in a device, so you can be moved between different bodies or—like in the world of Cyberpunk 2077—digitized completely. And speaking of Cyberpunk 2077, this issue of identity crops up again where enough "chrome" will literally give you cyberpsychosis: Those afflicted with cyberpsychosis are known as cyberpsychos, individuals who have existing psychopathic tendencies, enhanced by cybernetics, and as a result have lost their sense of identity as a person, either to themselves or others. cyberpunk.fandom.com I don't have the answers to these problems, but I am fundamentally weirded out by the ideas. I don't want to be cloned. I don't want to move my consciousness. I like being me, and I like the continuity of others being them. While I don't really believe in the concept of a soul, there is something unsettling about these ideas as they pertain to identity. In fact, it's this fundamental idea of identity that is really interesting to me. It comes up again and again, and I'll often get stuck in a sort of existential loop thinking about it. Needless to say, those thoughts spun up again as I was moving my motherboard into its new case. At any rate, I think I've gone far to deep down the rabbit hole on this one. Let's go ahead and wrap things up! As always, here are some relevant pieces for you to consider: The Renegade’s Guide to PC Building The Renegade’s Guide to PC Building: Unveiling Version 2.0 No, Generative AI Is Not Just Another Innovation Likewise, you're welcome to show a bit more support by heading over to my list of ways to grow the site. Otherwise, take care!