Key Takeaways
- Spending more on the CPU than the GPU and not installing an SSD resulted in an underpowered gaming rig.
- Choosing an underpowered PSU made switching to a high-end GPU impossible.
- Picking an 8-core CPU just for gaming wasn’t money well spent.
- Forgetting to connect a crucial power cable resulted in my PC not powering up at all.
While it’s common to make some mistakes if you’re building a PC for the first time, you don’t expect to commit blunders when you consider yourself a fairly experienced builder. But that’s exactly what has happened to me time and again. Whether it was due to lack of funds during a budget build or lack of sleep making me forget crucial details, I’ve had my fair share of horrible “mistakes” that took things too far.
These aren’t your standard missteps like installing RAM in the wrong slots or not removing protective covers before installing the CPU cooler. At worst, these blunders completely ruined some of my PC builds in the past, and at best, they ended up costing me significant performance losses. Here I attempt to reconnect with my past, trying to decipher what I was in these fateful moments.
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1 Spending more on the CPU than the GPU
GTX 1050 Ti with Ryzen 5 1600, anyone?
Almost everyone knows that the graphics card is the single most important component of a gaming build. It’s also what you should allocate the biggest chunk of your budget for, as long as you’re not skimping on any important component. But, when I built a budget gaming rig back in 2017, I somehow ended up with a GTX 1050 Ti paired with a Ryzen 5 1600. The 1050 Ti wasn’t a horrible card per se, but the balancing of the build was completely messed up.
I overspent on the CPU and ended up with an underpowered GPU.
The first-gen Ryzen processor cost me around $200 while the 1050 Ti was only around $140. I overspent on the CPU and ended up with an underpowered GPU, something that could have been easily avoided. At the very least, I should have stretched for a GTX 1060 6GB, going with a cheaper CPU instead. But, the platform longevity of the new AM4 socket was enough to keep me hooked to the Ryzen platform. I used this build as-is for around two years before upgrading to a GTX 1660 Ti.
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2 Picking an HDD over an SSD
In my defense, SSDs were crazy expensive back then
This again takes me back to the 2017 build. And I know SSDs weren’t as common back then, but for a gaming-focused build, going HDD-only was a big mistake. Maybe it was the premium I had to pay for the best SSDs or the fact that I had never used one, so I didn’t know what I was missing, but for the next two years, I kept struggling with loading times. Of course, I didn’t know exactly how much performance I was losing. But I now realize that I should have opted for a 120GB or 250GB SSD from the start.
And that’s what I did eventually. A year after I built that system, I bought a 250GB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD for around $50, which was still expensive. But, I instantly realized why adding an SSD is the best upgrade for an old PC. The Windows boot time, game load times, and general responsiveness of my PC seemed like it went through the roof. Even though it seemed like a small compromise, missing out on an SSD was one of the biggest mistakes I made with this build.
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3 Choosing an underpowered PSU
I was on a budget
It seems I did nothing right with my 2017 gaming build. The next mistake deals with power supply choice — I chose a 520W Seasonic PSU which was more than enough for the 1050 Ti and Ryzen 5 1600. But what I failed to account for were the future upgrades I was going to make to my system. Barely recovered from the 1050 Ti blunder two years later, I was planning a huge GPU upgrade, but the 520W PSU meant I had to limit my choices.
If only I’d accounted for the new GPU purchase and given a small buffer when picking out the power supply, I could have switched to my desired graphics card.
So I ended up with a GTX 1660 Ti even though I’d wanted an RTX 2060. Across Reddit, it was clear that the 60-series RTX card worked best with at least a 600W PSU. If only I’d accounted for the new GPU purchase and given a small buffer when picking out the power supply, I could have switched to my desired graphics card.
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4 Choosing an 8-core CPU just for gaming
I couldn’t control myself
This one might not seem like such a big deal compared to the fiascos I dissected above. But, by shelling out more to upgrade to an 8-core CPU on one of my latest PCs, I sacrificed a lot of other things without gaining much in terms of gaming performance. For this gaming build, I had roughly $1,500 to spend. This was in mid-2022 and the GPU crisis was still very much there. Still, I was fortunate to grab an RTX 3080 Founder’s Edition at MSRP.
I couldn’t resist the temptation of having an 8-core CPU for the first time.
But the choice of CPU was unfortunate. I couldn’t resist the temptation of having an 8-core CPU for the first time. The Ryzen 7 5700X didn’t seem too expensive either, so I made the choice. But, the added cost compared to, say, a Ryzen 5 5600X could have been better spent on a bigger and faster SSD or a better AIO. I had to pick a 1TB SSD and a budget 240mm AIO liquid cooler. And what for? It’s not as if the 8-core chip did me any favors in gaming FPS. It was all for my vanity.
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5 Forgetting essential PSU connections
Yes, this happened!
So this actually happened on the most recent build I did for my brother. It was late in the night, we had been struggling with a few case fans and ARGB headers, and we desperately needed to sleep. This perfect storm made me completely forget the EPS power connector on the power supply side. The jumble of cables near the PSU combined with the wrong belief that I had already connected every power cable resulted in this blunder.
When we tried to power the system on, it didn’t even blink. There were no signs of life on the newly built $2,000 gaming PC.
Naturally, when we tried to power the system on, it didn’t even blink. There were no signs of life on the newly built $2,000 gaming PC. All the excitement my brother had about finally playing Cyberpunk 2077 in all its glory went out the window. The hopeful joy that came from the gorgeous Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti AERO graphics card was replaced with the dreadful feeling that something was horribly wrong with the build. After failing to spot the unplugged EPS connector, we gave up and went to sleep.
It was only the next day when we were fully in our senses and looked at everything from a fresh perspective that we spotted the small EPS connector dangling near the PSU. Cursing ourselves, we finally connected it and powered the system on to ear-piercing shrieks.
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6 Installing the AIO heatsink incorrectly
This one gave me a huge scare
On the same build I talked about above, there was something else going horribly wrong. After launching any game, the PC was turning off within seconds. Idle temps were slightly high but nothing alarming. CPU fan speed was also not the issue here. But by observing HWiNFO right at the moment a game was launched, I saw CPU temps touching 100 degrees. The CPU was thermal throttling.
I realized that the problem was that I wasn’t applying enough pressure when installing the heatsink.
I removed the AIO heatsink and reapplied the thermal paste, thinking maybe the stock application was at fault. But, the results were the same. That’s when I realized that the problem was that I wasn’t applying enough pressure when installing the heatsink, due to which it wasn’t making proper contact with the CPU. I installed it correctly this time and voila, the throttling issue went away, and even the CPU load temps improved drastically.
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Easy to overlook, incredibly annoying to fix
One might assume that a decent mid-range motherboard would have enough fan headers to accommodate all the case fans as well as the AIO radiator fans. One would be wrong. This happened to me on the latest build (yes, again) where I failed to plan ahead and ended up with a few extra fans and nowhere to plug them into the motherboard. Had I looked at the motherboard headers closely before the build process, I could have avoided hours of frustration.
I had to order a fan hub and wait a whole day before the build could be completed. This was one of those little things that are often easy to miss but can quickly become a huge pain in the ass when you spot them.
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PC building is fun but can sometimes be stressful
Some of my fellow writers might believe that PC building is an exercise in wellness, but I wouldn’t go that far. I agree that it’s one of the best activities to indulge in and can be incredibly rewarding. But it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. Things can and will go wrong almost every single time. They might not always be blunders like the ones above, but something or the other is bound to mess up your perfect therapy session. But, with enough planning and precautions, you can keep mistakes like mine to a minimum.