It would be more efficient to replace a computer on a 5 or 10 year cycle rather than a 1 or 2 year cycle, but then you'd have a high end computer for a much lower percentage of the time.
for example, 4790K + GTX 980 is a 8 year old computer. a high end PC from 6 years ago has a GTX 1080 in it, look up how much that costs still
you'd be crazy to throw something like that away instead of selling it for about 400$ or giving it away to friends or family
>It would be more efficient to replace a computer on a 5 or 10 year cycle
if you only use it to check emails and procrastinate on the internet, then yeah. but people who buy 2000$+ worth of hardware usually do something more productive or entertaining than that. and like I said, when they do buy it, whatever they had before is usually sold off to recoup part of the new hardware cost. that's how it worked with hardware for as long as I can remember
you know what does go into landfills? disposable garbage phones, designed to be resistant to repair and maintenance, and made unbearably slow by forced software updates when it's time for you to consume the new product. and I find it very ironic that these zealots we're talking about have a great affinity for the products from that particular company
Look up PUE for data centers. Because I work for Google, I recall, for example, that we build very efficient data centers:
https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/
Ie. just 10% overhead.