The PC building landscape has changed a lot in the past decade. What used to be common sense for PC enthusiasts in the mid-2010s often doesn’t hold up anymore, but that's not because those habits were necessarily incorrect. The hardware world has evolved continually, and many of these old "best practices" are either unnecessary, or just plain counterproductive for today's builds.
Prioritizing huge chassis
Cases have become smaller these days
If there's one thing that screams "2015" in a PC build, it'd be an oversized case. Massive chassis with large drive cages, room for optical drives, hard disk drives, and large side panel fans for extra airflow. Mid-towers and smaller cases did exist, but it definitely wasn't the norm.
Today, small-to-mid towers are much more common, and they're probably the preferred size by many PC enthusiasts. There's not really any downside airflow-wise, and while you might lose expansion space elsewhere, most PC builds today will have storage that is installed directly on the motherboard anyway. Personally, I have a full-sized ATX tower case, but that's purely because of my obsession with great airflow.
Overpaying for premium thermal paste
The performance delta isn't what it once was
Thermal paste discussions used to dominate PC hardware forums. Everyone had very strong opinions on which brand of thermal compound was best, with IC Diamond and Arctic Silver 5 being the two that I remember buying with my allowance. The funny part was: it actually did matter at that time. Over the stock thermal compound, you could easily see multiple degrees shaved off of your temperatures under load.
Today, thermal compound quality is usually measured by how long it can be effective. Most pastes or pads worth their salt are going to be able to cool just as well as the next, Longevity is really what enthusiasts are after today, not pure thermal performance.
Avoiding prebuilt PCs entirely
Prebuilts have merit, but there is a catch
In 2015, "prebuilt" was a dirty word among PC enthusiasts. It usually meant either buying from an OEM who's using proprietary parts, or a system integrator, where you'd likely be paying hundreds on top of the cost of the components.
While there are certainly some diehard enthusiasts today who would rather be six feet under than ever buy a prebuilt, there are valid arguments for why one might want to purchase one. Saving time is a big one, but sometimes the parts you want are really only available through buying a prebuilt, especially when it comes to GPUs.
Avoiding BIOS updates
No need to be afraid anymore
Flashing a BIOS update used to be spooky stuff. Suffering power loss mid-update would brick your board, and as someone who's personally gone through that, I totally understand the old approach of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Today, BIOS updates aren't nearly as scary. UEFI environments, dual-BIOS protection, and USB Flashback utilities make updating nearly foolproof. Modern updates bring critical fixes for memory compatibility, CPU microcode, and PCIe stability, which can all directly impact performance.
Buying large HDDs for game librarys
Games belong on solid state storage
Back in 2015, it made total sense for every build to have a large HDD alongside a much smaller SSD. Your spinning platter would be for game storage, while your SSD would be for your OS and programs. SSDs were far too expensive for them to be the only kind of storage in your rig, and large capacities were exorbitantly expensive.
SSDs still aren't a dime a dozen, but they're way cheaper than they used to be. Even a QLC NAND, DRAM-less drive is so much better than having an HDD hold all your games. Game load times, patching, and shader compilation all benefit massively from solid-state storage. HDDs are still fine for backups or cold storage, but they have no business in a modern gaming rig.
Using a discrete sound card
The integrated one is just fine
Audiophiles used to swear by dedicated sound cards like the venerable Creative Sound Blaster Z. They offered cleaner output and better signal-to-noise ratios compared to onboard solutions of the time. On-board audio was just starting to get better in 2015, but it was still worth buying a sound card if you had the dosh for it.
Today’s motherboards feature excellent DACs and isolated audio circuitry, often with high-end codecs like Realtek ALC4080 or even ESS Sabre chips. Unless you’re running studio monitors or professional audio equipment, onboard sound is indistinguishable from discrete cards.
Running a RAID
Just...why?
Running HDDs in RAID 0 was once a staple of a "baller" build in 2015. Even RAID 1s, which have largely disappeared today, were popular for those that wanted some sort of redundancy.
Today, RAID is mostly dead for consumer hardware. A single NVMe drive outperforms any RAID 0 HDD setup by an order of magnitude, and reliability is higher without the complexity. For those looking for redundancy, you're much better off running some sort of external NAS that's running ZFS than you are running a RAID on your main setup.
I can't wait to see what 2035 has to offer
If you built PCs a decade ago, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic about some of these habits, as they were part of what made the hobby so exciting. Progress has rewritten the rules; the hardware is better, the firmware is smarter, and everything is so much more efficient than it was 10 years ago. My own personal PC builds have evolved so much since 2015, and I can't wait to see what the next 10 years have to bring.