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Since computers became accessible to regular people, building custom versions that live up to your expectations has been a hobby. It’s a lot like customizing your own car. But if it’s your first time doing this, there are a few things you need to watch out for.
5Double-Check Part Compatibility Before You Buy
Choosing parts of a gaming PCcauses so many headaches for so many first-time builders. A lot of people get so wrapped up in their parts research and specs for them that they might miss one tiny, but massively impactful oversight—whether or not all of the parts they are considering are compatible with one another. Each part might work on its own, but they might not work together. This tends to happen the most with motherboards, coolers, and processors.
If these three components don’t work well together, they can cause a lot of other issues down the road. Graphics cards and SSDs can fail to work properly. So it’s really important to check all the specs of your parts carefully. Motherboards only support one type of CPU socket, for instance. Older motherboards may not have support for M2 SSDs. Smaller PC cases might not have enough room for a larger motherboard.
One oversight while picking a component can make your entire build nonviable, and if you didn’t catch it in time, you won’t know that until you’re trying to put everything together. Undoubtedly, the most important part of the building process is compatibility. Best practice is to pick your CPU and GPU first, then go from there, checking socket compatibility and slot numbers at every step of the selection process.
4Don’t Worry Too Much About CPU and GPU Performance Mismatch
It’s often advised toselect a CPU and GPUthat have similar performance when building a PC. Now, this is pretty solid advice. You don’t want to limit the performance of a powerful CPU or GPU by pairing it with a much weaker counterpart. But it’s not the end-all-be-all, and you don’t have to stress out about it too much, especially if you’ve already secured some of the parts you intend to use.
Let’s be real, a gaming PC is never really “done” anyway. They’re always being improved, and having a bit of a mismatch is totally fine as long as it’s not getting in the way of your intended outcome. For example, if you want to play a lot of CPU-heavy games that don’t need a powerful GPU, it would make sense to prioritize CPU performance even if it leaves your GPU behind. Likewise, if you want a really good GPU but can’t afford a CPU that can take full advantage of it, there’s nothing wrong with selecting a weaker CPU to tide you over.
After all, you can always upgrade to something better later on. It’s nice to have your CPU and GPU at similar performance levels, but it’s not mandatory, and there’s no point stressing about it if you can’t make it happen right away.
3Pay Attention to Your Case Airflow
It’s easy to overlook airflow when you are building a PC for the first time. It doesn’t seem as important on the surface as motherboards and CPUs. But the truth is, airflow can make or break your entire build, allowing your components to work to their fullest potential or hopelessly crippling them. Overheating can cause all sorts of problems, from mere performance loss to complete system shutdown if things get too hot in your case.
Admittedly, most PC cases are designed to allow enough air to get to your most important components. But there are a few out there with some problematic designs that might cause airflow issues. It can be kind of tough to tell which cases might give you trouble online, but in general, you’ll want to look for cases with a built-in exhaust and high porosity.
When it comes to actuallydecking out your case with fans for airflow, it’s possible that the fan slots that come with it might not be filled. You don’t need to fill every single one of them. In general, you want to aim for a decently positive pressure airflow, which you’re able to achieve with two intake fans and one exhaust fan in most traditional setups. If your case is unconventional, you’ll probably want to check the manufacturer’s guide ot see how you should set things up.
Antec F12 Series Case Fan 5-Pack
This Antec F12 case fan 5-pack is an affordable way to add RGB flair to your PC while keeping it cool. Featuring a combination of sleeve and fluid dynamic bearings, these fans are reasonably quiet, and their vibrant RGB lighting won’t disappoint.
2Shell Out For Fast Storage Right Away
There are a lot of things you can cheap out on and save for later when building a PC. You might be tempted to do this with storage, since that’s usually an easy upgrade, but you’re honestly better off getting as much as you need right away. No one likes running out of storage. No one likes their computer taking forever to start up. Who wants to constantly uninstall and reinstall their games to make room for stuff all the time?
In 2025, 500GB of storage goes really quickly, even without gaming. If you do game, that space will disappear in the blink of an eye with how huge games are these days. I really can’t recommend going lower than a 1TB boot drive from the jump these days, and to be honest, the price difference between 500GB and 1TB isn’t that much in most cases.
You don’t want to finish your epic custom PC build, only to feel the pain of slow storage or no storage. So just go ahead and give it the biggest boot drive you can, and preferably one witha DRAM cache. That way, you can have the speed and space to make the most of your PC as soon as you’ve built it.
1Don’t Build Without Considering Future Upgrade Paths
This is true for all PCs, but especially important for gaming PCs. It’s really easy to build yourself into a corner in this industry because, unfortunately, manufacturers don’t always clearly specify which components are part of which family, and sometimes, even parts within the same family aren’t viable for an upgrade from one to the next.
A good example of this are Arrow Lake CPUs of the Ultra 200 series. They use an LGA 1851 socket, but Dell stated that their future Arrow Lake CPUs will use an LGA 1954 socket instead. So if you bought an Ultra 200 series Arrow Lake CPU, you’d haveno direct upgrade path within-socketto the newer CPUs Dell will put out.
Now, it’s impossible to predict when a manufacturer will make a big change like that. You never know when they’ll make the next series of parts completely incompatible with the current one. But if you aren’t already buying the most advanced, cutting-edge parts on the market, ensure you do your research and determine what the future of upgrading your PC might look like. You want to build a PC with parts that can be upgraded in the future, not ones that are already at a dead end.
Honestly, building a PC is pretty tough even for veterans, and there are a lot of possible mistakes you can make. Picking out parts is usually the toughest half of the process, but there are all sorts of things to take into consideration. If you’re really set on building your own PC, make sure you do a lot of research to prepare. But if the idea is daunting you a little bit, you can alwaysconsider a pre-built PC instead.
NZXT H6 Flow
The NZXT H6 Flow PC case is a unique dual-chamber case that puts the power supply in a rear chamber for a cleaner build. It offers panoramic tempered glass, a sleek design, and enough room for a 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler.
