Summary

• Overspending on the CPU when building a gaming-only PC is one of the worst mistakes you can make.
• Buying an underpowered power supply will prevent you from upgrading to your desired parts in the future.
• Getting less-than-ideal RAM and SSD made me regret my choices just a few months down the line.
• Pairing an entry-level graphics card with a powerful processor led to a sub-par experience, and more money spent overall.

Building a PC involves a fair number of decisions — which CPU & GPU to pair, which motherboard is the best, how much RAM to buy, how much wattage should the PSU have, and so on. And sometimes, you can mess up one or more of these decisions, even after building PCs for decades. I have had my share of bad PC hardware purchases, from components that were simply poor value to those that were overkill.

To be clear, many of these products weren't bad per se, but they weren't the right buy for the PC I was building at the time. Whether out of budgetary constraints or bad impulses, I ended up with them, and hindsight being 20/20, regretted them only later.

5 Ryzen 7 5700X

Splurging on 8 cores was a mistake

The Ryzen 7 5700X is an excellent processor. Even now, after the Ryzen 9000 series has arrived, the 5700X is more than enough for my needs. The problem lies in the fact that it was much more than enough for me in 2022, which is when I built my current PC. My primary goal was gaming, as always, and everything else I needed to do on the system, such as writing, browsing, and media streaming, didn't actually need 8 cores.

I could have invested the money I saved to get a better CPU cooler, motherboard, or case.

Having never used an 8-core processor in the past, I let my intrusive thoughts win, and went for it instead of making the right choice of picking the Ryzen 5 5600X, or the 5600. I could have invested the money I saved to get a better CPU cooler, motherboard, or case. It's not that I haven't benefited from the 8-core 5700X at all, but I wouldn't have felt any drawbacks had I gotten the 5600X instead.

Moreover, I built this system a month before the launch of the Ryzen 7000 CPUs, as I had a hard deadline. This further made the added investment in the 5700X a bad deal.

4 Seasonic S12II 520W PSU

When being enough is not enough

When choosing a power supply, perhaps the biggest consideration is whether it will be enough for the graphics card, followed by the CPU as a close second. While I was on a budget back in 2017, I decided that a 500+ Watt power supply was enough for my build, which had a Ryzen 5 1600 and GTX 1050 Ti (more on that later). And while it was enough for that build, I failed to take into account future upgrades.

I had to compromise and get a GTX 1660 Ti, losing out on any ray tracing features.

Since the GPU was nothing to write home about, I started feeling the lack of performance in just two years. I wanted to upgrade to an RTX 2060 Super, but the 520W PSU was inadequate, to say the least. Hence, I had to compromise and get a GTX 1660 Ti, losing out on any ray tracing features. The 1660 Ti was a phenomenal card for the price, but it was still not what I wanted. Not adding a buffer to the PSU wattage turned out to be a fatal mistake that ended up really limiting my system.

3 G.Skill Ripjaws V RAM

8GB of 3,000MT/s memory? Think again.

Back in 2017, the amount of RAM needed for gaming hadn't reached 16GB, let alone the 32GB that some people recommend today. So, I felt pretty confident in buying a single 8GB stick of G.Skill DDR4 RAM, with the intention of getting an identical stick down the line. The mistake was in buying RAM rated for 3,000MT/s, instead of a 3,600MT/s one. The price difference wasn't that huge, and I would have gained extra gaming performance with the latter.

Kits rated at 3,600MT/s were indeed the sweet spot for gaming RAM, and something that I should have spent on.

Having already bought a DDR4-3000 DIMM, I was locked into buying an identical DIMM to pair it with. I could finally run dual-channel memory on my PC, but it would have been much better to have spent a little more on faster RAM. With DDR5 RAM these days, getting the fastest kit possible matters less than it did at the peak of DDR4 RAM. Kits rated at 3,600MT/s were indeed the sweet spot for gaming RAM, and something that I should have spent a bit of money on.

2 Samsung 860 EVO 250GB SSD

Buy what you can? I should have waited.

When I built my gaming PC in 2017, I didn't have the budget to spring for an SSD, even a 250GB one. So, I made do with a 1TB Seagate hard drive, hoping to migrate to an SSD later. SSD prices weren't coming down at the pace I wanted, so when my patience ran out a few years later, I just bought what I could: a 250GB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD for around $60. The difference in system responsiveness and gaming load times was night and day, but at what cost?

If I could have waited for just a little while longer, I could have skipped the costly 250GB SSD completely, and maybe bought a 2TB SSD instead.

Just a few months later, NVMe SSD prices dropped into the realm of affordability, and I bought a 1TB Gen3 SSD for around $100. If I could have waited for just a little while longer, I could have skipped the costly 250GB SSD completely, and maybe even bought a 2TB SSD instead. You can't always keep waiting for the next best thing or for prices to bottom out, but in this case, I could have stuck it out with my HDD for a few more months until I could afford the adequate storage capacity.

1 GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

Paring a 1050 Ti with a Ryzen 5 1600

Finally, we come to my worst PC hardware purchase of all time — the GTX 1050 Ti. While a perfectly okay entry-level GPU, it was far from ideal for the gaming PC I bought it for. First, I had a Ryzen 5 1600 which could have easily handled a GTX 1070 Ti. Second, the fact that the graphics card cost was lower than the CPU cost in a gaming build should have sent alarm bells ringing in my head.

If I had bought a mid-range GPU to begin with, I would have saved some money, and more importantly, gotten a superior gaming experience from the outset.

However, my entire focus was on staying under my budget. Even then, I should have made some cuts elsewhere and upgraded the GPU pick to something stronger. As I mentioned above, I had to get rid of the 1050 Ti in two years, getting back less than half of my initial investment from the sale. If I had bought a mid-range GPU to begin with, I would have saved some money, and more importantly, gotten a superior gaming experience from the outset.

You win some, you lose some

I've probably made all the mistakes one can make while building a PC. Using an underpowered GPU, overspending on the CPU, forgetting to install the I/O shield, incorrectly installing the CPU cooler, and running out of motherboard fan headers are just some of them. Some mistakes, you can recover from, but others can haunt you for years. The only thing you can do after is learn from them, and remember the reasons that led to the mistakes.

If you're thinking of finally building a PC this year, take your time learning the ropes, deciding your budget, and assembling the build. There are many overkill components you should stay away from, and don't forget the things you should do after building your PC. Happy building!