400 million PCs will need to be replaced to support Windows 11 $2.42 billion in gold could be recovered from waste PCs PC shipments rise due to Windows 10 EOS New research has looked into the possible environmental impacts of the upcoming Windows 10 end of life , which will see millions of devices needing to be upgraded. With 400 million PCs globally set to retire due to a lack of hardware support for Windows 11 (and 14.4 million PCs in the UK alone), we could face huge challenges to recover 12.