Ever since computing became more modular and standardized, I've loved building PCs. I've built ones with no real upper budget, ones that are as barebones as you can get, and everything in between, and they've all been enjoyable to put together. I've always tried to make a solid core that could be upgraded part by part afterward, usually by getting the best CPU I can and building around that.

But even if my build planning went well and I was happy with the initial build, I always had the itch to add new components or peripherals. Most of the upgrades went pretty well, but there were some that I regret, not because they were bad components (mostly), but mainly because they didn't immediately boost my PC's performance, smoothness, or capacity. Plus, even if some components get good reviews, that doesn't mean they're the right ones for you or your build, and that's been a hard lesson for me to learn.

Every time I've gone for AIO cooling

It might look nice, but it never lives up to the expectations of better cooling

I've been building PCs for a long time, and not all that time needed much CPU cooling. Low-profile, low-cost fan CPU coolers were all you could get in those days, and all I needed to keep thermals in check. Not that there was much in the way of airflow either with the boxy chassis every PC came in, and nobody cared in those days because you couldn't see inside your case anyway.

So when I returned to building PCs after a stint as a laptop user, I built with the stock cooler that came with an Intel Core i7-4790K, as that's what I was used to. That lasted all of about a day before I realized I needed more cooling, fast, and ordered an AIO watercooler to use. This began a run of terrible luck, and I would have been happier with a tower fan cooler. The first AIO didn't securely clamp to the CPU, so it went back to the store. The second AIO was much more expensive, so I figured it would work better.

It didn't, and four replacements later (it had a design fault that made it leak), the replacement got shelved, and I picked up a Noctua NH-D15 that I still have, nearly a dozen PC builds later. I've built fully-custom water-cooled builds that I've been happy with, but AIO coolers and I just don't get along.

(Almost) every time I've bought new fans

I've had my fair share of noisy, broken, or useless case fans

I've used dozens and dozens of PC case fans, from preinstalled ones that do nothing but drive the cost up to premium models, and almost every time I've bought new ones, I've been disappointed with the results. RGB and A-RGB fans look nice, but the wiring needed is a pain to hide, and I've not had a single set of RGB fans whose lighting hasn't died on at least one fan after a few months.

Some fans promise silent running, but sound terrible when mounted horizontally for exhaust purposes; some sound terrible anywhere you mount them, and others barely move air. And some are very *ahem* creative with their specifications, and I only wonder what measurement tools were used because they don't resemble anywhere near real-world use. Because of this, I will only buy fans from a few brands now because every other model I've tried has been disappointing.

My first PCIe 5.0 SSD

I expected more of a difference in everyday tasks

I've been an early adopter of every generation of SSD, including the ill-fated hybrid SSHDs, and only one generational leap has left me underwhelmed. That's the latest PCIe 5.0 SSDs, which do come with super speedy straight line copying ability but nothing else, and that doesn't really affect any of the workloads that I do on my computer.

The jump from a 5,400 RPM hard drive to even the slower SATA SSDs of the time was immense, zooming through game loading screens and making my computer feel snappy while editing documents and images. Then came the jump to Gen 3 NVMe drives, which wasn't as immediately apparent but still made things feel faster on the desktop. The jump to Gen 4 NMVe wasn't that large, but I appreciated the speed of transferring stuff across the network between two PCs with NVMe inside.

And using Intel Optane drives was a revelation, both as system cache or as a boot drive with incredibly fast random access times. But Gen 5 SSDs failed to wow me outside of the few minutes spent running sequential speed tests, as for smaller files or random access they didn't perform that much better than the cheaper Gen 4 drives. Plus, they tend to overheat, and I've had BSODs from some models overheating during benchmarks, which makes them difficult to recommend to others.

Upgrading to an AMD R9 Fury X

It wasn't that much better than my previous card, but it was far noisier

My first discrete graphics card in the PCIe era was a Founder's Edition Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, that I eventually took apart and repainted bright yellow to match the accents on the MPower Z97 motherboard I was using at the time. It was a great midrange GPU, probably one of the last models that had price and performance at the right balance, and it was a perfect pairing for the 1080p 144Hz TN gaming monitor I had then.

But I got the itch for upgrades, didn't quite have the budget to go for flagship GPUs, so I ended up with an AMD R9 Fury X. If only this beautiful GPU played games as well as it looked, because the AIO cooling system was prone to coil whine, it didn't really manage to cool the GPU core down enough, and the 4GB of HBM memory wasn't enough for playing at 4K resolution as AMD had marketed it. It was a beautiful failure, and while I loved it, I was also bitterly disappointed at how badly it missed the mark for performance.

Upgrading past 32GB of RAM

I didn't need 96GB but I did it anyway

As my computing workloads have increased over time, I've steadily increased the amount of RAM my main PC has. My old gaming PC with DDR3 and Intel Core i7-4790K had 16GB of memory, which was a lot for the time, but I went up to 32GB during the DDR4 era and to 64GB of DDR5 on the PC that I use as a test bench. I've now got 96GB of 8,000 MT/s DDR5 in my main PC, and I'm not sure I need it. It doesn't make my PC any faster; I've not come anywhere near filling it up (even with dozens of Chrome tabs), and I could have stayed at a lower amount and been happy.

The only time it uses more than 32GB is when playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, where it will happily stuff things into active memory while there's empty space. If this was the computer that I used for WSL or Docker, I'd consider the 96GB adequate, because running VMs and containers soon eats up available memory. But I don't, because I find containers easier to manage on Linux and have a second PC for those tasks. I have just started playing with local AI models, though, on a Strix Halo Mini PC with 128GB of unified memory, but that's a very niche use case, and I wouldn't run those workflows on my main PC anyway.

Not every PC upgrade is worth it

These aren't the only times I've been disappointed by upgrading a peripheral or PC component, but they are the ones I was looking forward to the most, and all fell flat. It just goes to show that expectations aren't always aligned with reality, and that some components are tricky to research to determine if they're worth the upgrade.