"Upgrade" or "Replacement" - when do they occur?

[BicycleMafioso]

Something I've been thinking about lately.
Where is the line between replacing a computer and upgrading it?

What needs to have been done before it qualifies for having been "replaced"?
The guts? Everything? The case? The storage?

I've been pondering upon this, when I thought to myself the other day, about upgrading to LGA2011 (or if AMDs Bulldozer match them).
It apparantly will need quad-channel RAM, so, a lot of things will need to be replaced. I'm also looking into going CrossfireX (or adding another 460 for SLi) meaning GPU will most likely be replaced as well.
Although I intend, at least for now, to keep my case, SSD, HDDs, ODD and non-modular PSU and peripherals.
To me, this is an upgrade, not a replacement.

Where would you draw the line?

[dotOrion]

I would say "upgrade" refers to one or two parts at most, otherwise it's replacing.

Like if you just shove a better gfx card in, that's upgrading.
I would call your example a replace, even though you kept a lot of the old parts.

That's just my interpretation though.

[Deleted]

Replacement generally occurs when a component is sufficiently out of date that its incompatible with current equipment. Mostly it occurs when trying to upgrade processors - as old motherboards generally don't work with new processors, or if swapping brand.

A motherboard replacement in turn, not infrequently also requires upgrading RAM - as older motherboards in most peoples cases are DDR2 compatible, not DDR3, and new motherboards aren't DDR2 compatible.

In addition - in some cases the power supply needs to be upgraded as well in order to cope with the equipment. This is more common if the previous machine was a prebuilt, or just equipped with a low end power supply though for some users the new machine is actually less demanding on the power supply.

At this point, almost everything in the system has been replaced. Storage device and storage readers are generally not considered part of the specifications as such, nor are optical drives and peripherals. All of these are purely optional and none are required for the system to operate.

[nwo]

In my opinion, getting a replacement means replacing everything inside the case as well as the case itself.

If you are going to replace the motherboard, CPU, graphics card, power supply, and RAM, that pretty much qualifies as replacing though because you're better off starting from scratch and putting your old PC to some alternate use or even selling it.

[BicycleMafioso]

My example was just that, an example.
To show what set me in the thought of where you draw the line.

I intend to gut the computer and replace those parts, yet I view it as an upgrade.
I'm merely curious about your opinions in general, and not about my example ^^