With so many components to buy and so much money involved, it is normal to worry about which components to put in your new PC. Here are five things I always consider, and five mistakes you should avoid, when building a new PC.
Buy the Right RAM
RAM is often an afterthought when building a PC. After all, as long as you get DDR5 it’ll fit in any motherboard.
However, neglecting your RAM specs is a mistake that can cost you money, time, and performance.
Pick the Right Speed
The slowest DDR5 available runs at about 4,800MHz and the fastest runs at around 8,200MHz. With such a wide range, how do you know which to pick?
For AMD Ryzen 7000 or 9000 processors, the answer is pretty direct: aim for 6,000MHz. That’ll work well on the overwhelming majority of RAM, CPU, and motherboard combinations, and you don’t need to mess with the potential instability that comes from aggressive overclocking.
You might see marginal performance gains if you go higher, but you also dramatically increase your cost, and you have to contend with overclocking instability.
Intel processors are a bit less particular than AMD processors when it comes to their RAM preferences. As a general rule, 6000MHz still offers a good balance between cost, performance, and stability, but you’ll probably see more gains from faster RAM when paired with an Intel processor than an AMD processor.
You still need to be mindful about overclocking, though. Even if you can get better performance with faster RAM on Intel doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be easier to keep it stable.
Don’t Ignore EXPO and XMP
EXPO and XMP are the RAM overclocking technologies employed by AMD and Intel respectively. In practice, they basically do the same thing: automatically overclock your RAM.
Unfortunately, just because they serve the same purpose doesn’t mean that they are fully compatible. You may be able to throw RAM that is certified to work with XMP in on an AM5 motherboard, and it’ll work just fine, or you may experience weird instability issues that you can’t fix without manually tweaking your RAM. The same is true of EXPO certified RAM on an Intel motherboard.
My experience has been that the less extreme the overclock, the more likely you are to find that XMP and EXPO are interoperable on current-generation motherboards. However, you can avoid the issue entirely. Every motherboard manufacturer has a list of approved RAM (usually called a Qualified Vendor List or QVL) and it is easy enough to pick RAM from that list. Is it strictly necessary? No, but 5 minutes of reading could save you an hour or two of troubleshooting later.
Buy the Right Amount of RAM
Just as you need to pay attention to your RAM speed, you also need to make sure you buy the right amount. In previous years, 16GB was considered adequate for most applications, and it still is if you’re just building a PC for casual use or some legacy gaming.
However, if you want to play the latest, most demanding games, you should buy at least 32GB. Most AAA games released in 2025, and plenty of indie games, recommend that amount.
If you do intensive video editing, modeling, or other demanding creative activity, you should opt for at least 64GB, ideally in just two sticks. Those applications can be absolute RAM hogs and will usually use up as much as you’re willing to give them.
Credit: G.SKILL
Skip the All-In-One Liquid Cooler and Buy a Good Air Cooler Instead
Liquid coolers were all the rage for a while there, but the unfortunate reality is that most AIOs, especially the smaller ones, just don’t offer a large enough performane bump over a good air cooler to justify the extra cost.
Not only are AIOs typically more expensive for the cooling they provide, they also have some pretty drawbacks.
They Take Up Too Much Room
The radiators on AIOs are usually pretty large, and you may find they make your case aggravatingly cramped regardless of where you put them. My previous PC was built with an AIO, and the radiator’s thickness made getting at the power ports near the top of the motherboard very annoying.
The cramped conditions can also make routine maintenance even more of a chore.
If you spend enough time in PC building communities, you’ll eventually encounter a PC case that had to be chopped up to fit an AIO radiator at the top. On the other hand, unless you buy both a very narrow case and a particularly thick air cooler, you’re not likely to wind up with an problems fitting everything neatly in your case.
AIOs Can Leak
All water coolers can leak, but if AIOs don’t provide a large cooling benefit over air cooling solutions, why take the risk?
Even if the AIO uses a non-conductive liquid (usually de-ionized water with some other stuff), so your PC won’t experience a damaging short in the event of a leak, absolutely no one wants a quarter cup of liquid all over the inside of their case. Once an AIO fails, there isn’t much you can do to fix it—it is either a paperweight or garbage.
Credit: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek
On the other hand, when an air cooler fails, the fan just makes an annoying noise until it stops spinning completely. Then, just pull it off the problem fan and replace it, usually without even touching the heatsink. There is no potential mess to clean up.
Save yourself some money. Buy a nice air cooler instead of an AIO. Not only are they less prone to failure and easier to keep up with, they’re also easily repairable, which gives them a much longer lifespan. I have an air cooler in my server that has been running almost continuously for more than 10 years and shows no signs of slowing down.
Buy The Most CPU You Can Afford
Central Processing Units, or CPUs, usually age pretty gracefully. It isn’t uncommon to see mid-rnage 5-year-old CPUs chugging along happily in even AAA games. As a result, you should buy the best CPU you can afford. Here are the things I considered when upgrading.
Core Counts Matter
Modern operating systems will basically use as many cores as you’re willing to give them, and applications have made huge strides towards taking advantage of the extra cores on modern CPUs, too.
I’d suggest aiming for 8 at a minimum, regardless of whether you buy Intel or AMD. Both the Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series X have 8 core CPUs, which means games are increasingly designed with that many cores in mind. Even if the game you’re playing doesn’t use 8 cores, or use them fully, the extra processing power will ensure that background applications and other things you might be doing, like a streaming app or a browser, run smoothly.
When you’re shopping for Intel CPUs, it is important to look at both the E-core count and the P-core count. E-Cores are efficiency cores, which are optimized for low power background tasks. P-cores, on the other hand, are designed for maximum performance. They excel at more demanding jobs, like games, video editing, or 3D modeling.
Though they don’t call them P-Cores, all of AMD’s CPUs are basically P-Cores.
Intel offers CPUs with up to 24 cores (16 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores) and AMD’s top-shelf model has 16 cores.
X3D Is Great For Gaming
Some of AMD’s CPUs are “X3D,” which just means that they have extra memory integrated into the CPU (specifically the L3 cache). That extra memory allows you CPU to store more information where it can be quickly retrieved, more quickly than even your PC’s RAM.
For a lot of things, that bit of extra memory doesn’t matter. However, it often nets you a double-digit performance increase in games.
It is impossible to ignore that perk, so if you’re building a PC primarily for gaming, definitely just pick up an AMD X3D CPU of some kind—it is worth the premium.
Don’t Undersize Your Power Supply
Power Supply Units (PSU) are often an afterthought when building a PC, but it shouldn’t be. Your PSU provides power to every single component in your PC, which cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
As a rule of thumb, you should add up the total power demand of all of your components in your PC and then multiply that number by 1.2 or 1.3. So if you added up your CPU, motherboard, GPU, RAM, and hard drives, and got 540 watts, you’d want to buy a power supply rated somewhere between 650 and 700 watts.
If you can’t find one that falls in the range you calculated, just size up a bit. From my example, if I couldn’t find any power supply rated between 650 watts and 700 watts, I’d just opt to buy a 750 watt power supply. In this situation, you are always better off with a bit too much than a bit too little.
Credit: Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
A PSU That Fails Can Damage Components
Even though power supplies don’t have any moving parts (besides switches) like mechanical devices, they do wear out with time and use. The harder they run, the more likely they are to die prematurely.
Most of the time when a power supply dies your PC just won’t turn on, or if it does, you’ll just get some error lights on the motherboard. The fans might spin.
Rarely, however, a catastrophic failure can cause permanent damage to other components in your PC, including extremely pricey items like the GPU, motherboard, or CPU. It isn’t worth the risk—just buy a PSU that has some margin built in and you’ll decrease your risk significantly.
Additionally, try to stick to reputable brands. I once had a power supply from a non-reputable brand that spent a few days zapping people before literally going up in a puff of smoke and sparks.
I’ve had good luck with Seasonic and typically use of their PSUs when building a new PC for myself or someone else. However, like with all things, look for reviews for the specific model if you can find them. Even the best brands occasionally have manufacturing issues or design flaws.
Don’t Overspend On Your Motherboard
Despite how essential a motherboard is, I don’t recommend “spending up” on motherboards unless you have a very specific need.
Credit: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek
Premium motherboards come absolutely loaded with USB-C ports, high-speed Ethernet ports, the latest Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Standards, fancy metal heatshields strategically attached everywhere, and other luxuries. The only problem is that most of it is going to be wasted.
Consider the ASUS Crosshair x870E hero, which costs $700.
It has two USB 4 ports, eight USB 3.2 1×2 ports, five PCIe M.2 slots, a SlimsAS connector, four SATA ports, one 2.5Gb Ethernet port, and one 5Gb Ethernet port. It has extra headers on the motherboard for an extra four USB 3.2 1×2 ports, four extra USB 3.2 1×1 ports, and two more USB-C 2×2 ports.
Is there ever a situation where you expect to need 20 USB ports? Are you going to buy three PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives and two PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives? Probably not.
You’re better off spending less on a motherboard and rolling that money into a nicer GPU or CPU instead.
Count Your PCIe Lanes
Every CPU has a limited number of PCIe lanes. PCIe lanes are used by high-speed components, like your GPU or NVMe drives, to send and receive information. Unfortunately, it feels like there aren’t quite enough. Each NVMe drive will use 4, and your GPU will use 16, though it might only need 8 in reality.
Regardless of how much you spend on your motherboard, be sure to keep in mind how many NVMe drives you want and how many PCIe lanes are available on your CPU and motherboard.
If you don’t have enough, you’ll wind up accidentally throttling one of your components. If you’ve paid top dollar for NVMe drives and a GPU, that lost performance is a painful experience.
As with any big purchase, make sure to try and find specific reviews for the item you’re buying. Brand name recognition is one thing, and not totally useless, but when hundreds or thousands of dollars are on the line, it almost literally pays to do your homework.
