Avoid These PC Build Mistakes

so I've built a lot of PCS from your basic gaming builds all the way up to the most Overkill or compact water cooled systems that you could imagine I even had a chance to build a PC for this guy and while most of the builds went to plan I've had my fair share of mistakes and even dead Parts along the way so today let's talk about that the worst mistakes that you're most likely to make when building a PC the first and by far most common mistake that I've seen is unfortunately mishandling the CPU and the motherboard socket whether that's bending the pins on the bottom of an AMD ryzen CPU or damaging the pins on an Intel or thread gripper motherboard all it takes is a simple lapse of focus and you can count on some pretty dead Hardware I myself have killed a handful of CPUs and a couple of motherboards too simply by not paying enough attention granted building PCS is kind of my job and some of these boards have seen probably upwards of 100 CPU swaps but this is for sure one of the biggest newbie mistakes that I've seen as well usually it's a first time PC Builder who's way too nervous and ends up dropping something or someone who simply hasn't researched the proper method of CPU installation because it is different depending on what CPU or motherboard you're using so just be really extra careful when installing your CPU do your research on what specific socket you have and you won't have any issues next up is the most common cause that I've seen for those blue screens of death on a modern system and that's simply unstable memory this mostly affects AMD ryzen 1st Gen 2nd gen and third gen to some degree as well but you'd also be pretty surprised to see how frequent this happens on the current gen systems that use a ddr5 so if you've just built a fresh PC build and it's blue screening out of the box then unstable memory is most likely why the first thing that you can try if you encounter this is updating your motherboard's bios for one your new motherboard likely didn't ship with the most recent update and two memory compatibility is usually the biggest Improvement that you'll see with the newer bios versions if that doesn't work instead of using the default XMP profile for your memory you can try lowering the memory clock slightly increasing the voltage and also loosening the timings to get things stable now another common cause that I've seen for those blue screens and system errors and just bad performance in general is if you've used the same boot drive from a different PC without a fresh install basically this would be taking the Windows boot drive from one PC sticking it into your new system and pressing the on switch like that's not a problem for most system upgrades you should be doing a fresh install now sure most of the time your new motherboard and CPU will technically accept your previous boot drive and make it work and if you're switching within the same platform and generation then you'll probably be okay but if you're switching between different sockets widely different CPU Generations or especially if you're switching between AMD and Intel or vice versa then a fresh install is always the best way to go speaking of doing a fresh install make sure that you have your motherboard's Wi-Fi and land drivers on a USB ready to go most motherboards don't have these drivers pre-packaged onto the board and that means that your fresh PC build won't actually have any internet at the same time you don't want to install all of the bloatware and junk that your motherboard manufacturer recommends it really blows my mind how much useless motherboard software is out there just download the relevant drivers and get out of there now mistake number five is also a pretty common one and that's not using the correct fan headers on your motherboard sure they all look the same and they technically work when you plug them in but the pre-configured operation of them is entirely different plugging your CPU fan header into an AIO pump header for example that will result in way higher fan speeds than you'd expect you'll also want to double check in the Bios whether your fans are set up for pwm or DC operation and then actually set that for whatever type of fan you've got plugged in three pin fans are DC and 4 pin is pwm make sure that you've got that set up correctly in the Bios otherwise you'll get some really funky fan operation now number six is an ultra newbie mistake but let's just get this out of the way and that's plugging your monitor's display cable into your motherboard and not your GPU if your CPU has integrated Graphics you'll probably think everything is fine until you build up a game and wonder why it's running at just like 2 FPS another newbie mistake is compulsively overthinking thermal paste application it's commonly said that less is more but that couldn't be further from the truth in fact it's better to apply just a little bit more Pace than you think you need your heatsink will squash it all down and the excess will just spill off the edges of the CPU spreading the paste out is also completely fine you're not going to be creating any destructive bubbles or anything like that what is definitely important though is how you mount your CPU Cooler and you want it to be as evenly as possible especially if it's a large heatsink over tightening one side before evenly tightening the other side can lead to uneven pressure across your CPU and therefore uneven Cooling and hot spots one of the most harmful and destructive mistakes that I've seen though it would have to be mixing power supply cables even though you might have cables and plugs that might fit from a different model maybe a nice sleeved kit that you really want to use that's a one-way ticket to potentially frying some of your Hardware now there are technically some power supply units that share the same pinouts even from different brands but if you're not 100 sure then simply use the cables that were provided to save any damage now when it comes to the component side of things one of the most common mistakes that I see people do is overspend on the CPU I don't know who needs to hear this but you simply don't need an i7 or an I9 or a ryzen 9 CPU when it comes to just gaming pairing an i5 13600k with a powerful GPU might sound like a bad idea but it's actually extremely practical when it comes to a gaming PC as we've seen time and time again you don't get any gaming performance from those extra cores and these CPUs are never fully utilized anyway when it comes to gaming so background tasks they're just not an issue by overspending on the CPU you're taking away budget from other important components that will actually give you more performance like of course your GPU and although overclocking was pretty rewarding in the past there really is little practical benefit of doing so with your current gen components especially CPUs which have extremely good boosting algorithms these days you can manage very high single core clock speeds just out of the box on the GPU side of things as well you're at most getting around a six to eight percent boost when it comes to gaming performance but at the same time raising the already very high power consumption another pretty common mistake which I've seen cause massive headaches when it comes to troubleshooting is simply seeding your power connectors properly at best your PC won't boot if you haven't got a cable fully installed and you'll be left to figure it out yourself but at worst you could be looking at some very damaged components so double check that those connectors are completely seated before powering your system on now mistake number 14 that's not using PC part picker to plan out your build PC part picker will check for incompatibilities between CPUs and motherboards cases and power supplies and even cases and graphics cards no matter how experienced you are that compatibility filter is super underrated for planning out PC builds and I still use this tool today especially for the different range of CPUs motherboards and socket types that are relevant in today's market you'll also be able to see what local shops have the lowest prices which is pretty cool and when it comes to ddr4 memory not only is The Sweet Spot in terms of pricing right around 3 600 to 3 800 megahertz but that's typically where the best performance lies as well with memory kits Beyond those speeds you actually have to run it desynced with the cpu's memory controller which often results in lower performance for example if you have a ryzen 5000 CPU the infinity fabric can only run in sync with a memory kit around 3600 to 3800 megahertz beyond that the ratio is no longer one to one very similar to Intel as well where Gear 1 refers to an ideal one-to-one ratio between the memory and the memory controller now if you have no idea what I just said long story short a ddr4 3600 megahertz kit is typically The Sweet Spot 4000 megahertz plus kits are pretty enticing but there's really no performance benefit next one is not really a mistake but a bit of a pro tip I guess forget the Super Bowl bulky wireless antenna that ships with your motherboard and grab a set of these tiny ones instead they're so much cleaner I use them for pretty much every build recently and it's just really nice to use you no longer have that massive cable and dongle hanging from your PC and performance wise I haven't noticed any difference also super nice if you have a compact gaming PC it just suits it a lot better and I'll leave the specific ones that I've got here linked down below and the last mistake is not using an external fan controller like NZXT cam to control your case fans it's crazy to me that we're almost in 2023 and motherboard bioses can't control the fan speed based off of GPU temperature realistically for every gaming PC the GPU is what needs the most cooling especially with today's components with mzxt's Fan Hub you can easily base your fan curves based off of GPU temp which is exactly what you want it's by far the most practical and logical way to approach cooling your gaming PC another alternative to this is Argus monitor which I use for my own system it doesn't require any external fan Hub which is nice it's completely software based but it does require a very small fee which is totally worth it in my opinion and that's pretty much it hopefully these tips helped you out good luck for your next PC build and I'll see you all in the next one

Channel: Optimum Tech

Views: 427,485

Keywords: pc build mistakes, worst pc build mistakes, gaming pc build, pc build tips, best pc build tips, optimum tech, best ram speed, intel vs amd, rtx 4080

Id: 0L7SBpZXnsE

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2022