Buying a GTX 1080 just before the RTX 2070 came out. I had a 1060 and saw the price of the GTX 1080 on eBay had come down, so i bought it… but the 2070 ended up releasing around the same price.
Missed out on DLSS and (albeit not highly performant) ray tracing.
Also I bought a laptop instead of upgrading, which actually made sense at the time I bought it but now a few years later I’m also sorta regretting that as well…
NotJustBibbit
Bought a prebuilt for £400 a few years ago. It had a GT 730, 8GB DDR3 can’t remember MHZ RAM, an ITX mobo in a MATX case, and an I5 2400 with a stock cooler. Oh and a 500W chinese knock off fire hazard
Prodding_The_Line
Rebuying the same motherboard model 3 times and have every single one fail within a year. Should’ve moved on and bought a different model (Asus A7Pro).
holger_svensson
Fortunately none. I spent 1 month reading/watching here and in YouTube all I could suck in. Checked 3 times all measurements/compatibilities. Read the Mobo manual beforehand, etc
Mayoo614
570 SLI
Got between -5% and 3% gains. Yes, some games worked better without it.
Interloper_Mango
Buying steelseries prism caps.
Not because they are bad but more so because I ended up not linking the feel of them. RGB looked great though.
J16180
Not while choosing but while building, the motherboard power cable from the power supply was a long double row of pins, with an additional little 2×2 square, I thought the 2×2 was just for motherboards with more pins and that since I wasn’t using it there I could use it in any other 2×2 hole, it was tied to the main wire with a net. Still, I just pushed it back and plugged the little square in another port that was a little further away, then when I was finished and I turned it on . . . it literally caught fire, I don’t know what it was but it was so badly connected that one of the little capacitor things was incandescent. I had to buy another motherboard and power supply, luckily nothing else got damaged.
Dr-Sloppenheimer
Bought a 5900x when it came out and tried to justify it saying I’d use the extra cores on more productive work. A few months later the 5800x3D came out and up until that point, I only used the PC for gaming
Embarrassed_Ad7499
4x8gb instead of 2×16
CharlieMWY
Going with a ton of small drives for storage, instead of a few big drives, especially now that prices have skyrocketed for SSDs.
I have accumulated many drives over the course of a few years. My main PC has 3 1TB NVMe SSDs, 2 1TB SATA SSDs and 1 4TB HDD. I wish I would’ve just bought a 1TB NVMe for my boot drive, a 4TB NVMe for my games and another 4TB NVMe for all my media.
El_Mariachi_Vive
When I got back into PCs it was my first build in over a decade. I didn’t know anything about where the industry was or what was what. Anywho, my AM5 7700x build with my 1660ti are doing well thank you. 🥲
SeiferLeonheart
Bought a FX-8350 because I believed the promises that would improve over time, and had however many cores, etc.
Dead socket, pretty much zero upgrade path. Competitor platform would be same price or cheaper with improved upgrade paths and performance.
Bought 7700k because I was burned out with AMD after the FX8350. And how that turned out? Well, dead socket, pretty much zero upgrade patch…
GredoraYGO
Not the biggest deal, but I had “RGB” fans that could only do one color at a time for the longest time. (The fans that came with Corsair’s Spec-Delta case). Upgrading my ram to an RGB model made me want to also get new fans. I also wanted to get more use out of SignalRGB. I already thought about just moving away from RGB builds, but I’m already in too deep.
SlapBumpJiujitsu
Over buying my motherboard. In the past, I always bought the highest end chipset because I thought it would perform better. In reality it just had more features I didn’t need. I don’t do that anymore.
ImpossibleMongoose77
Reading PCMR after I bought a pre built. All the things that seemed overwhelming still seem overwhelming and making me second guess myself.
GenderGambler
Bit of a timing mistake – built a brand new PC with a Ryzen 2600 (soon before the release of the 3000 series) and at the height of DDR4 prices – bought a single stick of 8gb 2400mhz ram for the same price I bought a 2×16 3200mhz kit a couple months ago.
Fragrant-Comment-884
3050 back on the gpu shortage
alezcoed
back when i was still a noob builder, ordering an sfx psu into a mid tower build
have to buy extra cables for that
sarmstrong1961
I built an rgb pc because I never did before only to realize that I hate rgb and the software that goes with it.
KylePhoe
1300W PSU…
EddieValiantsRabbit
Picking a 14th gen intel cpu.
evilgingivitis
It’s a toss up between the time I bought an intel celeron back in the day and buying a 14th gen i5 earlier this year.
Alesisdrumuser
probably taking contradicting product advice from every pc expert out there
Penstemon19
my budget
Creative_Emotion4014
Choosing intel
The4th88
I bought a 23.8in, 1080p monitor.
Screen size meant that while it might have been a 1080p panel, the edges of the screen were under the bezel. Functionally it was a 1680×1050 monitor.
HighMarshalSigismund
Installed two SSD’s and a HDD that almost never gets used so idk why it’s in my rig I should probably remove it but it’s not hurting anything. I am always hurting for storage space but installing a nvme just feels like doing surgery. Even though I really need more storage.
Also a different AIO. I like CoolerMaster but I’d love a three fan setup.
Remote_Fisherman_469
First build was a mini itx. I got the cheapest case I could, the Thermaltake Core, and cooled an i7-13700k with a 120mm aio… Let’s leave the past as the past…
InvestigatorFit4168
That I went with 5900x instead of 5950x, not knowing the next gen cannot upgrade without replacing whole mobo
TehWildMan_
Cheating out on a power supply. Lucky it died mildly spectacularly but without taking anything else with it
Economy-Knee2295
Probably not choosing the ryzen 4070
LivePond
Tried keeping a rebuild cheap by not replacing the AM3(+) CPU and RAM but ended up buying a $400 (new) motherboard when the used ones were out of stock despite the site saying otherwise (refurbished would have been $180).
In the end, I could’ve upgraded to an AM4 build for the same cost.
The next runner-up would be building 2 Intel systems and then finding about the 13th/14th gen issue. Luckily, I went with 12th gen to keep it cheap anyhow.
32 Comments
Buying a GTX 1080 just before the RTX 2070 came out. I had a 1060 and saw the price of the GTX 1080 on eBay had come down, so i bought it… but the 2070 ended up releasing around the same price.
Missed out on DLSS and (albeit not highly performant) ray tracing.
Also I bought a laptop instead of upgrading, which actually made sense at the time I bought it but now a few years later I’m also sorta regretting that as well…
Bought a prebuilt for £400 a few years ago. It had a GT 730, 8GB DDR3 can’t remember MHZ RAM, an ITX mobo in a MATX case, and an I5 2400 with a stock cooler. Oh and a 500W chinese knock off fire hazard
Rebuying the same motherboard model 3 times and have every single one fail within a year. Should’ve moved on and bought a different model (Asus A7Pro).
Fortunately none. I spent 1 month reading/watching here and in YouTube all I could suck in. Checked 3 times all measurements/compatibilities. Read the Mobo manual beforehand, etc
570 SLI
Got between -5% and 3% gains. Yes, some games worked better without it.
Buying steelseries prism caps.
Not because they are bad but more so because I ended up not linking the feel of them. RGB looked great though.
Not while choosing but while building, the motherboard power cable from the power supply was a long double row of pins, with an additional little 2×2 square, I thought the 2×2 was just for motherboards with more pins and that since I wasn’t using it there I could use it in any other 2×2 hole, it was tied to the main wire with a net. Still, I just pushed it back and plugged the little square in another port that was a little further away, then when I was finished and I turned it on . . . it literally caught fire, I don’t know what it was but it was so badly connected that one of the little capacitor things was incandescent. I had to buy another motherboard and power supply, luckily nothing else got damaged.
Bought a 5900x when it came out and tried to justify it saying I’d use the extra cores on more productive work. A few months later the 5800x3D came out and up until that point, I only used the PC for gaming
4x8gb instead of 2×16
Going with a ton of small drives for storage, instead of a few big drives, especially now that prices have skyrocketed for SSDs.
I have accumulated many drives over the course of a few years. My main PC has 3 1TB NVMe SSDs, 2 1TB SATA SSDs and 1 4TB HDD. I wish I would’ve just bought a 1TB NVMe for my boot drive, a 4TB NVMe for my games and another 4TB NVMe for all my media.
When I got back into PCs it was my first build in over a decade. I didn’t know anything about where the industry was or what was what. Anywho, my AM5 7700x build with my 1660ti are doing well thank you. 🥲
Bought a FX-8350 because I believed the promises that would improve over time, and had however many cores, etc.
Dead socket, pretty much zero upgrade path. Competitor platform would be same price or cheaper with improved upgrade paths and performance.
Bought 7700k because I was burned out with AMD after the FX8350. And how that turned out? Well, dead socket, pretty much zero upgrade patch…
Not the biggest deal, but I had “RGB” fans that could only do one color at a time for the longest time. (The fans that came with Corsair’s Spec-Delta case). Upgrading my ram to an RGB model made me want to also get new fans. I also wanted to get more use out of SignalRGB. I already thought about just moving away from RGB builds, but I’m already in too deep.
Over buying my motherboard. In the past, I always bought the highest end chipset because I thought it would perform better. In reality it just had more features I didn’t need. I don’t do that anymore.
Reading PCMR after I bought a pre built. All the things that seemed overwhelming still seem overwhelming and making me second guess myself.
Bit of a timing mistake – built a brand new PC with a Ryzen 2600 (soon before the release of the 3000 series) and at the height of DDR4 prices – bought a single stick of 8gb 2400mhz ram for the same price I bought a 2×16 3200mhz kit a couple months ago.
3050 back on the gpu shortage
back when i was still a noob builder, ordering an sfx psu into a mid tower build
have to buy extra cables for that
I built an rgb pc because I never did before only to realize that I hate rgb and the software that goes with it.
1300W PSU…
Picking a 14th gen intel cpu.
It’s a toss up between the time I bought an intel celeron back in the day and buying a 14th gen i5 earlier this year.
probably taking contradicting product advice from every pc expert out there
my budget
Choosing intel
I bought a 23.8in, 1080p monitor.
Screen size meant that while it might have been a 1080p panel, the edges of the screen were under the bezel. Functionally it was a 1680×1050 monitor.
Installed two SSD’s and a HDD that almost never gets used so idk why it’s in my rig I should probably remove it but it’s not hurting anything. I am always hurting for storage space but installing a nvme just feels like doing surgery. Even though I really need more storage.
Also a different AIO. I like CoolerMaster but I’d love a three fan setup.
First build was a mini itx. I got the cheapest case I could, the Thermaltake Core, and cooled an i7-13700k with a 120mm aio… Let’s leave the past as the past…
That I went with 5900x instead of 5950x, not knowing the next gen cannot upgrade without replacing whole mobo
Cheating out on a power supply. Lucky it died mildly spectacularly but without taking anything else with it
Probably not choosing the ryzen 4070
Tried keeping a rebuild cheap by not replacing the AM3(+) CPU and RAM but ended up buying a $400 (new) motherboard when the used ones were out of stock despite the site saying otherwise (refurbished would have been $180).
In the end, I could’ve upgraded to an AM4 build for the same cost.
The next runner-up would be building 2 Intel systems and then finding about the 13th/14th gen issue. Luckily, I went with 12th gen to keep it cheap anyhow.