Is PC hardware made intentionally obsolete?

[Iropan]

Maybe you guys can settle a debate, I think every once in a while PC hardware manufacturers change the standard to make all previous hardware obsolete, like when they changed the standard size for ATX enclosures and nothing was really gained, other than they made a whole bunch of motherboards instantly obsolete (can't think of other examples right now but I have a feeling they've done that kinda thing time and time again).

But my friend says that's conspiracy bull****, and that those changes are only made to upgrade hardware capabilities.

Who's right?

 

[Devballs]

They do not make it intentionally obsolete, it is due to technology advancements. Such as sockets with intel processor sockets, or graphics cards. The G114 or 600 series to the G110 or 700 series. Better advancements/yields with waffer production such as going from the 28nm to 20nm waffers.

 

[hunter315]

The size of an ATX board has been fixed since it was introduced, new sizes have been introduced but the ATX board has not changed in size thus not impacted the cases.

I cant think of any time off hand that resulted in a large portion of hardware being "obsolete", there are lots of times when there is something newer and better out but there tends to be a few year period where both options are still readily available, DDR2/DDR3, PATA/SATA, AGP/PCI-E, in fact you can still get parts for all of those options even though the second one in the pair is far more common, often cheaper, and generally superior there are still parts out there for people stuck with older hardware.

 

[Iropan]

Ok I thought of an example: I have this PC that's 5 years old or so. The fan on the CPU started making this ungodly noise, and the shop I always take my stuff to said those fans are discontinued. The new ones ARE OF A DIFFERENT SIZE an so I have to get a new processor. And thus a new motherboard because it's a different socket type. And thus the RAM memory etc. So one little change in the size of the CPU fan, and you have to buy a whole new system.

 

[hunter315]

The shop you took your computer too just made a buttload of money because you didn't do your own research...

Yes, new sockets are a different size thus there are different fans for them, but that doesn't mean the old ones ceased to exist.
Newegg has coolers supporting sockets all the way back to 478(first gen P4).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008000%20600035326&IsNodeId=1&name=Socket%20478