Summary
- Don’t spend any more on a motherboard than you need to for the CPU, GPU, RAM, and connectivity options you want. It’s going to become irrelevant the next time you upgrade your CPU.
- Your power supply should include a little overhead wattage, but there’s no need to splurge on kilowatt-plus figures unless you’ve got an RTX 5090 as your GPU.
- 4K OLED monitors are visually stunning, but expensive, with diminishing returns. Native 4K gaming demands a high-end GPU to match.
I’ve been in PC gaming for many years and at many levels. As of this writing, I bought my latest laptop just a week ago, and in the past, I’ve built my own custom towers. It’s not a cheap hobby, as anyone will tell you, but there are a few advantages. The hardware cost is offset by less expensive games than consoles, and you get an absolutely amazing work machine. On my new system, Photoshop might as well be MS Paint for how smoothly it runs.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is how to spend strategically. PC and component makers will gladly charge you a fortune for the best of the best, to the point that some systems can cost as much as a high-end PEV. But as with e-bikes, price doesn’t necessarily translate into better performance, which is the thing that really counts for both work and play. With that in mind, here are a few price traps to avoid if your PC budget isn’t infinite.
1
Top-end motherboards
Don’t buy more than you need
When building a tower system, it’s absolutely essential to pick a motherboard that supports the CPU you want, the GPU you want, and the quantity and speed of RAM you want. You should also think about USB, Ethernet, and wireless connectivity — skimping on that could come back to haunt you in a few years. When I was picking up my new machine, I refused to budge on Thunderbolt and Wi-Fi 7 support, since that’s going to keep my peripheral options as open as possible.
Perks like RGB lighting might sound nice, but motherboards are actually one of the most ephemeral parts of a PC.
Beyond those factors and room for GPU upgrades, you shouldn’t spend a dime extra. Perks like RGB lighting might sound nice, but motherboards are actually one of the most ephemeral parts of a PC — they become irrelevant the moment you want to switch to a CPU with a different socket architecture. When a motherboard feature isn’t strictly necessary, you’re better off buying separate components that will remain useful for a long time, or can be swapped out without gutting the core of your system.
2
Gigantic power supplies
Buy headroom, but not too much
The power supply you choose is just as important as your motherboard, if not more so, since a PC with a weak supply may not boot at all. Ultimately, you need a unit with enough wattage to handle all the components in your computer, no matter if they’re running at full tilt. Let’s say you’ve paired an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor with an Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti graphics card. In that case, you’ll want a 750W power supply at a minimum, and probably 850W to provide a little headroom. At the extreme, an RTX 5090 demands at least 1000W. That’s right — we’re entering the kilowatt era.
Short of buying a 5090, there’s no need to look at the 1200W, 1300W, or 1600W power supplies out there. All that overhead is going to go to waste, and kilowatt supplies can be huge, consuming precious tower space. It may be worth buying high if you want a unit that can carry forward to next-generation GPUs and CPUs, but even 1200W is liable to be overkill for most RTX 60-series cards.
3
State-of-the-art 4K OLED monitors
Diminishing returns
The value of 4K itself is questionable. While it does let you cram a lot onscreen at maximum sharpness, 1440p is usually sharp enough from two or three feet away, and native 4K can be intensely demanding if you want to play games in high detail. Realistically, you’re looking at a state-of-the-art GPU with 12GB or more of VRAM, whereas 8GB is enough for 1440p. For many of us, it’s only AI upscaling technologies that make 4K gaming plausible.
OLED, meanwhile, enables excellent contrast, including HDR support, but the benefits of HDR on a monitor are usually low — speaking as someone who’s seen it in action. And when you combine that technology with 4K resolution and high refresh rates, the result is a fantastically expensive piece of kit. A “cheap” 4K OLED monitor can cost upwards of $630, and the best models are well over $1,000.
I guarantee you that you won’t have any complaints about playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a 1440p LCD monitor as long as your GPU can push enough polygons, and the display offers 120Hz-plus refresh rates with low response times.
4
Deluxe liquid cooling systems
It’s a computer, not a street racer
If you’re only using your PC for web browsing and light productivity apps, cooling doesn’t matter much. Under those circumstances, built-in fans are adequate. Some laptops are actually completely fanless, relying exclusively on heat sinks and heat pipes. They also tend to be underpowered, mind — 3D gaming might as well be a fantasy, unless perhaps you’ve got a MacBook Air, in which case the limited number of Mac games is the bigger problem.
There’s just no need to spend over $150 on an AIO cooler, and frequently, you can find a quality model for under $100.
The moment you step up to a gaming PC with a dedicated graphics card, cooling becomes vital. Internal temperatures can easily climb to about 140 to 185F (60 to 85C), and the higher they go beyond that, the more likely they are to impede performance or cause component failures. Some sort of additional cooling system is virtually de facto on high-end rigs. Many gamers gravitate towards AIO (all-in-one) liquid cooling, which merges a pump, fans, and radiator into a single package.
Here’s the thing — there’s just no need to spend over $150 on an AIO cooler, and frequently, you can find a quality model for under $100. Even many of these low-cost coolers have RGB lighting and/or LCDs, and there’s not much limit to what they can handle, unless perhaps you pair a 120mm model with a top-end PC. You should outright skip coolers that focus on large displays for animated GIFs.
