While most of the dialogue around PCs and PC hardware revolves around gaming, it's not the only major motivation behind building a PC. Workstation PCs are machines crafted with the intention of performing in productivity applications, professional workloads, and scientific computing. Gaming might be a secondary and infrequent use case on these machines, so it doesn't dictate the hardware choices as much as it would on a gaming PC.

Before picking components for your workstation PC, you should carefully assess your requirements — not limited to the core components, but also the aesthetics and supporting internal hardware. The tips below will help you structure your thought process before you drop cash on expensive hardware for your workstation PC.

7 Understated aesthetics might be a priority

Not everyone likes a flashy PC

Unlike gamers who generally look for an aggressive "gamer" aesthetic, or at least striking designs and flashy RGB, you might want a case that looks stylish yet understated. A minimalist case with an all-white design, infused with natural materials, or having a compact form factor — these are all good starting points when finalizing the look of your PC.

Besides the externals of your workstation build, you'd also want the internals to exude quality without going overboard. Achieving this might mean buying an all-black or all-white graphics card, non-RGB RAM, a minimalist-looking motherboard, and a CPU cooler aligned with the rest of the theme. The look and feel of your PC is, of course, your choice, but most professionals usually don't prefer a flashy PC.

6 Be clear about how much power you need

Don't buy components ill-suited for your workstation

Considering the performance of modern PC components, you might assume that a powerful gaming PC will easily double up as a great workstation PC. However, this isn't always the case, since most gaming PCs are skewed (rightly) toward a powerful GPU, with the rest of the components picked in a way that they don't hold the graphics card back. This makes it necessary to view your workstation build as its own project rather than a gaming build with a new wrapper.

You might need a 16-core CPU for your multi-threaded workloads, something you will almost never see on a PC built only for gaming. Even the fastest gaming CPU in the world, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, is an 8-core CPU, owing its performance to its 3D V-Cache instead of the core count. More advanced users may need workstation CPUs from AMD or Intel that feature 32 to 96 cores, increased PCIe lanes, and tons more cache.

Similarly, simply buying an RTX 4090 and calling it a day might backfire, since, despite being the fastest gaming GPU in the world, it might not be well suited to your use case. Many professional workloads require workstation-grade GPUs for the best performance. This approach isn't just limited to the CPU or GPU; it extends to the rest of the PC components as well. Not paying attention to your specific needs and intended workloads can easily make you buy hardware that's little more than a bad purchase.

5 Research well before choosing the CPU

It's all about the CPU here

The processor is probably the most important component of a workstation PC, even more than the graphics card. This is because most productivity applications are heavily CPU-dependent, whether they leverage the single-core or multi-core capabilities of the CPU. This makes it crucial that you choose a CPU that's perfectly suited to your PC.

6-core and 8-core CPUs are more than enough for gaming PCs, but when building a workstation PC, it pays to have as many cores as your budget can accommodate. If you're a professional and want to save every minute of your time with your dedicated work PC, you should definitely consider higher core count CPUs, such as the Core i9 and Ryzen 9 CPUs from Intel and AMD, or even Intel Xeon or AMD Threadripper CPUs.

Intel is going through a rough year right now, with its 13th and 14th Gen Core series CPUs being riddled with stability concerns. While these issues have mostly been patched after microcode updates, even the latest Core Ultra chips have been reported to be suffering from weird crashes. You can wait for Intel to resolve these issues or go with AMD if you want to build a machine right now. AMD's chips are also much more power-efficient, so you might not need an overkill CPU cooler.

With an AMD AM5 motherboard, you'll also be able to upgrade your CPU down the line without changing the motherboard. If platform longevity is important for your work, AMD holds a big advantage.

4 The GPU is important too

Don't just pick the most famous GPU

Of course, you can't just expect to build a workstation PC without a good GPU. It might not be the single most important component of a productivity machine, but you still need it to support video editing, machine learning, and research workloads. Choosing the right GPU, however, is not as straightforward as it is for a gaming PC.

Any high-end gaming GPU will work for most workstation PCs, but if you frequently run applications suited to workstation cards, you might benefit from going with Nvidia's RTX 4000, 5000, or 6000 professional series GPUs or AMD's Radeon Pro GPUs. Workstation graphics cards use different drivers than those on gaming cards, and are meant to offer the best performance for productivity applications.

If you know you're not going to be dabbling in a lot of machine learning and scientific computing, then you could simply pick one of Nvidia's or AMD's high-end consumer cards to have enough GPU horsepower. You'll still be able to make full use of them in productivity applications like Adobe Premiere Pro, Blender, Maya, and DaVinci Resolve, among others.

3 Workstation PCs love RAM

It's never enough

Having a comfortable amount of RAM is needed on any PC, but while 32GB might be more than enough for gaming PCs, workstation PCs can easily require more RAM, especially for video editing, 3D rendering, game development, and other memory-intensive workloads. With an increase in memory capacity, however, frequency starts to go down in order to maintain system stability.

You'll have to research your motherboard's QVL (Qualified Vendors List), so you buy only those memory kits tested to work on your motherboard. Usually, when you go from 32GB to 64GB, your best bet in terms of stability is a kit rated at 6000-6400MT/s. If you buy even higher capacity RAM or populate all 4 slots on your motherboard, you'll have to run your RAM at even lower speeds to avoid stability issues.

2 You can finally leverage Gen5 SSDs

Those insane transfer speeds can finally be useful

Gen5 or PCIe 5.0 SSDs have been around for years, but are still barely useful for gaming. You won't gain any advantage moving from a Gen3 SSD to a Gen4 or Gen5 one, as far as loading times and boot times are concerned. However, when building a workstation PC, the blazing-fast sequential read/write speeds of Gen5 SSDs can finally be worth the premium.

Gaming relies on random read/write speeds, whereas productivity workloads can leverage high sequential read/write speeds. Any workload that requires moving large amounts of data, such as video editing, 3D modeling, and data analysis will fly on a fast Gen5 SSD. If time is money, you can easily justify spending extra on a Gen5 SSD instead of a mid-range Gen4 SSD, which many gamers are fine with.

Make sure your Gen5 SSD isn't overheating during operations, though, or else its performance might take a dip. It should either come with a heatsink or your motherboard should have one. Some high-end Gen5 SSDs have elaborate heatsinks, vapor chambers, and fans to keep them cool when they're under heavy load. These drives might cost you even more, so check reviews and benchmarks to see if they're really better than regular Gen5 SSDs.

1 You might need an advanced audio setup

Don't underestimate the importance of dedicated audio hardware

If you're a content creator, creative professional, or involved in sound mixing and engineering, the default audio hardware on your motherboard might fall short. Onboard audio on motherboards is prone to picking up interference from the multiple electrical components inside the PC case, which can muddy the audio signal you receive on your speakers or headphones.

To remedy this, enthusiasts and advanced users prefer a discrete sound card or external DAC (Digital-to-Audio Converter), both of which isolate the audio signal from noise, to varying degrees. You might also want to explore high-fidelity headphones, monitor speakers, and high-quality microphones. Instead of spending more on expensive motherboards claiming to offer better sound than regular models, try investing in dedicated audio hardware for the best return on your money.

Build a workstation that's right for you

Instead of chasing components that everyone seems to be talking about online, try doing your own research to finalize the hardware that's best for your workstation needs. Maybe the latest high-end CPU or most powerful gaming GPU might not be right for your PC, so look for hardware that's able to power your workloads well, and gives a good return on investment.