When new PC users enter the fray, hoping to avoid the most common PC building mistakes, they're susceptible to dodgy advice. From CPUs and GPUs to motherboards and storage, the PC community has no dearth of opinions for the novice PC builder. While most of this advice is well-intentioned, some myths surrounding PC hardware can be harmful to the average user, especially their wallet. Here are the myths you should keep an eye out for if you're new to PC building.

Never cheap out on the motherboard

Go ahead and do that, I assure you!

On the surface, this appears like sound advice. After all, should you ever cheap out on any component if you can help it? Well, it turns out there are some components that you can realistically save money on without endangering the reliability or performance of your new PC. The most surprising of them all is perhaps the motherboard, often called the foundation of any build.

Unlike popular opinion on many PC hardware forums, buying a cheaper motherboard will not have any negative effects on your other hardware, as long as you're not gunning for the coolest temps or most extreme overclocks. Sure, there are terrible motherboards on the market once you start dipping into the sub-$150 segment, but you also get value-for-money offerings that are perfectly fine for most builds.

There are enough quality motherboards in the $130–$150 range, especially from brands like ASRock, that feature decent VRMs, plenty of Gen4 M.2 slots, onboard Wi-Fi, and respectable I/O. Most people don't really need Gen5 M.2 slots, support for the fastest RAM, overkill VRMs, or dozens of USB ports. You shouldn't be pressured to waste money on an expensive motherboard, especially if it doesn't benefit you in any way.

Budget PCs are a waste of money

Budget gaming is still alive

Budget PC hardware might not be in the best state right now, but building a decent budget PC is still easy, even in this market. The price of entry might have crept closer to $1,000 rather than $800, but that budget gets you into 1440p gaming territory. With GPUs like the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RX 9060 XT 16GB, and CPUs like the Ryzen 5 7600, you're pretty much set for the near future.

Saying that spending $1,000 on a PC is a waste is shortsighted. Of course, $1,500 would get you a better experience overall, but you can always upgrade your budget PC over time. A mid-range GPU after 2–3 years, and a new CPU after 5 years, will keep your PC going well into the future, while also allowing you to stagger the total cost over time.

At a time when consoles have touched the $700 price point, adding $300 to build a more powerful and versatile PC is far from wasteful. The best part is that a slightly pricier $1,200 PC will catapult you into 4K gaming in most titles (at MSRP, of course).

High-end gaming requires high-end CPUs

It's rarely true

What if you're not building a budget gaming PC at all? New builders who have the money for a high-end rig might believe every single component of their PC has to be expensive. However, except for the graphics card, you can realistically pick mid-range or even budget components in all other departments, and still enjoy a top-tier gaming experience.

New builders often feel compelled to pair a high-end CPU with their high-end GPU to "balance" the configuration. They're either afraid of bottlenecking their graphics card or feel that a budget or mid-range CPU has no place on a high-end gaming rig. The reality is that overspending on the CPU rarely increases your gaming performance.

Unless you're pairing a Ryzen 7 9800X3D (or better CPU) with the RTX 5090, you can make a case for a modern 6-core CPU alongside your RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, or RX 9070 XT. A faster CPU will fail to justify its premium on most gaming builds, doing little more than making you feel better that you own a high-end and "future-proof" processor.

Intel CPUs are still better than AMD CPUs

At rallying rabid fans, sure

There was a time (long ago) when Intel CPUs were clearly ahead of AMD in gaming. Intel's chips led the way in single-core frequency, AMD's Ryzen architecture didn't exist, and Ryzen X3D CPUs were still further into the future. Today, however, the writing's on the wall — AMD is at the top in gaming CPUs or otherwise, Intel's chips are struggling to justify their prices, and stability woes have rocked the company inside out.

Still, some people on the internet continue to defend Intel chips as if their lives depended on it. They believe AMD's popularity is just a clever marketing stunt, cultivated by paying YouTubers and producing gaming CPUs that are good for nothing else. It's funny how fast Intel fanboys moved the goalposts when it was AMD's turn to shine. A lack of competition is good for no one, but new PC builders should make the smarter choice in any market, which at the moment happens to be AMD.

An Nvidia GPU is the only real option

More like the most powerful and expensive

This particular myth is a relatively new entry to the list, since for the longest time, Nvidia was the best option when it came to discrete GPUs. With AMD's recent RDNA 4 GPUs (and even RDNA 3 and RDNA 2), the GPU market has seen a resurgence. Don't get me wrong: Nvidia still rules in terms of market share. However, users have a lot more to choose from now, especially after Intel's second-gen Battlemage GPUs revitalized the budget segment.

Over the last few generations, AMD GPUs struggled at the high-end, with additional concerns around drivers and operating temperatures, and Intel wasn't even on the radar. Today, the RX 9000 series has some of the best mid-range GPUs on the market, and Intel seems to be the only one trying to put out fantastic budget offerings. Nvidia still has the most powerful GPUs on the market, but they're getting increasingly out of reach of most consumers.

Nvidia's mindshare is so strong that new PC builders usually forget that there are three players on the market, not one. Fortunately, budget and mid-range gamers alike now have legitimate contenders to Nvidia's offerings. If only the prices of AMD and Intel GPUs were closer to the MSRP, they would make for the perfect choice for the sub-$600 and sub-$300 segments, respectively.

Research the market instead of believing every Redditor

The best thing new PC builders can do before buying components is to invest the time and effort in gauging the pulse of the market. Instead of being lazy and trusting everyone on the internet for build advice, watch some reliable creators and read trusted publications to form your own opinions. It's not hard to build a PC in 2025; what's hard is avoiding harmful advice masquerading as foregone conclusions.