Your business PC is five years old, getting slow, making concerning noises, and the boot time has crept from 30 seconds to three minutes. The repair quote comes back at $400. Replacement would be $1,200 for a decent business PC, or $1,800 for a good laptop.
Repair or replace? Here's the framework we use with clients — and the specific 2026 context (Windows 11, productivity costs of slow machines, support lifecycles) that should weigh into the call.
The 50% rule (with caveats)
The traditional rule: if a repair costs more than 50% of a replacement, replace. A $400 fix on a $1,200 replacement is right at the threshold — borderline.
But the 50% rule has a problem. It doesn't account for two things that matter more than the dollar figure:
- The cost of the productivity you're losing every day
- How much longer the repaired machine will actually last
Let's look at both before getting to the verdict framework.
The productivity cost most people ignore
If a slow PC adds 30 minutes a day of waiting (boot time, application loading, file open delays, browser sluggishness) to a staff member earning $40/hour, that's $20/day, or roughly $4,800/year in lost productive time.
Even at half that — 15 minutes/day — you're looking at $2,400/year. Suddenly the $1,200 replacement looks cheap, and the $400 repair on the slow machine looks expensive.
The productivity cost rarely shows up in "repair or replace" spreadsheets because it's diffuse and uncomfortable to estimate. But it's real, and it's the single biggest factor most small businesses get wrong.
What's the repair actually fixing?
This is the part most repair quotes don't spell out. The same $400 could be:
- Replacing a failing hard drive with an SSD — this can genuinely restore a 5-year-old PC to feeling like a new machine. The single best $200 repair you can do. The CPU and RAM in even older business PCs are usually still fine; spinning hard drives are the bottleneck.
- Adding more RAM— turns out a lot of slow PCs are slow because they're running with 8GB and trying to do Microsoft Teams, Chrome with 30 tabs, and accounting software simultaneously. Doubling to 16GB for $80–$150 is often transformative.
- Replacing the power supply or fan — these are straightforward repairs that extend life by years.
- Replacing the motherboard or CPU— these repairs almost never make sense on an older machine. If the motherboard's gone on a 5-year-old PC, replace it.
- "General service / clean install"— wiping and reinstalling Windows can dramatically speed up a PC that's accumulated years of cruft. But you can do this yourself for free (with proper backup) if you're comfortable.
The point: $400 to put an SSD into a 5-year-old PC with a healthy CPU is great value. $400 for a new motherboard on the same machine is terrible value. Make sure the repair quote specifies exactly what's being done and what's being replaced.
2026-specific factors
Windows 11 minimum requirements are the floor
Windows 10 reached end-of-life in October 2025. Any business PC still running Windows 10 in 2026 is unsupported, doesn't get security patches, and is a meaningful security risk.
Windows 11 has hardware requirements that genuinely matter: TPM 2.0, supported CPU generations, secure boot. Many PCs older than 2018 will not officially upgrade to Windows 11. There are workarounds, but running an unsupported config in a business environment is a risk worth avoiding.
If your PC can't run Windows 11, the "repair" decision is largely made for you. Replace it. The productivity and security cost of staying on an unsupported OS is too high.
SSD is no longer optional
If your business PC is still running a spinning hard drive in 2026, it's the dominant cause of slowness, full stop. Modern software — Windows 11, Microsoft 365, Chrome, Teams — is built assuming SSD storage. Spinning drives create a constant bottleneck.
A $200 SSD upgrade on otherwise-capable hardware (8th-gen Intel Core i5 or newer, 8GB+ RAM) is almost always worth doing. On older or weaker hardware, just replace.
Cloud storage changes the calculation
If your business uses OneDrive, Google Workspace or Dropbox properly, replacing a PC is now a 2–4 hour job, not a 2-day ordeal. Files sync automatically, browser bookmarks restore from sign-in, most applications are cloud-installable in minutes.
This reduces the "hidden replacement cost" that used to make repair more attractive. If you're still keeping all your work on a local C: drive, your replacement is genuinely painful — but that's a separate problem you should be solving anyway.
The decision framework we actually use
Replace if any of these are true:
- The PC can't officially run Windows 11
- The repair needed is a motherboard, CPU, or multiple major components
- The repair quote exceeds 50% of a replacement and the remaining lifespan is unclear
- The staff member using it is being slowed down meaningfully every day (15+ minutes/day in waiting)
- It's already on its second or third major repair
- You're still using a spinning hard drive AND the rest of the hardware is older than ~2018
Repair if all of these are true:
- The PC can run Windows 11 (and is currently on it, or able to upgrade)
- The repair is a single component (SSD, RAM, power supply, fan)
- The repair cost is under 30–40% of a replacement
- The staff member using it would not see massive productivity gain from a new PC (light usage, mostly email and one cloud app)
- The CPU is 8th-gen Intel Core or newer, or AMD Ryzen 2000 or newer
For everything in between, the decision usually leans replace, because the productivity math wins.
What a sensible business PC costs in 2026
- Entry business desktop (Intel Core i5/Ryzen 5, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, Windows 11 Pro): $900–$1,400
- Mid-range business laptop(i5/i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 14" screen, Windows 11 Pro): $1,400–$2,200
- Higher-end laptop (i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD): $2,300–$3,500
- Mac equivalents (MacBook Air M3/M4): $1,800–$3,000 for business-grade configurations
Mid-range business hardware in 2026 has caught up enormously. A $1,500 PC today will outperform a $3,000 PC from 2019 across almost every metric.
One thing to budget for either way
Whether you repair or replace, plan to spend $100–$300 on either a clean reinstall (if repairing) or proper setup and data migration (if replacing). The PC is one cost; getting it working properly with your accounts, email, software and files is another. Don't skip this — a new PC dropped on a desk without proper setup creates more friction than the old one did.
If you're in Bankstown or South-West Sydney and weighing the repair-or-replace call on one or several business machines, our IT support service covers both — including straight advice on which is the right call for your actual situation. Get in touch via the contact page.
The shortcut answer
If you remember one thing from this article: a $200 SSD upgrade on an otherwise-capable PC is almost always worth doing. It's the highest-ROI repair available, and it buys most business PCs another 2–3 years of useful life. If the SSD upgrade alone won't fix it, the decision usually swings to replace.