What do you wish you knew before delving into the PC world, that may have even made you feel stupid for not knowing?

[LienusLateTips]

4 minutes ago, ChetwoodJ96 said:

I think the PSU is the one thing that I, personally at least, could comfortably skimp on. Leave enough room for upgrades if you're wanting to do that down the road, but I don't think more would be better. That also depends on the budget though.

As long it has good electricial performance...

 

Literally there is no reason to skimp on it past a CX450/CX450M since they are like $30

[SupaKomputa]

4 minutes ago, ChetwoodJ96 said:

I think the PSU is the one thing that I, personally at least, could comfortably skimp on. Leave enough room for upgrades if you're wanting to do that down the road, but I don't think more would be better. That also depends on the budget though.

That is what i use to think. Get more rooms for upcoming hardware.

But after several years, no other slots is occupied other than the pcie 16x.

Dual GPU is meeh, never had money to buy one.

[Mira Yurizaki]

My first "dumb person" mistake was installing a Voodoo2 driver, thinking it'd do something to the GPU in my crappy HP budget PC that didn't have a Voodoo2. In my defense, I found out how to get rid of it.

 

The other was thinking a Radeon 9200 was part of the R300 family and recommended that to someone who was on a budget over something that might've worked better.

[Froody129]

To not listen to your friend that “knows what he’s talking about”

 

We all had that friend, that’s how I ended up with a shit 700w PSU for a locked i5 system with a 1060. And the 6600 when the 6500 is the same thing but cheaper. 

 

We all had that friend (I think)

[ChetwoodJ96]

2 minutes ago, JDE said:

As long it has good electricial performance...

 

Literally there is no reason to skimp on it past a CX450/CX450M since they are like $30

I have a 650w PSU for a 429w system and I haven't felt like it's overkill yet. But given that I save money until a budget isn't a problem, I'll probably get one with a stupid capacity when I find a decently rated RGB PSU. Gotta have my rave colors.

 

[asus killer]

don't just buy any monitor 

[ChetwoodJ96]

1 minute ago, asus killer said:

don't just buy any monitor 

I'm using my 32 inch TV because I haven't found one for a reasonable price that is good and aesthetically pleasing lmao

[Nosfy]

45 minutes ago, ChetwoodJ96 said:

I'm curious to see how alike, or how differently we all think about these kinds of things. Misconceptions that you wish were cleared up, or things that you found out on your own through good fortune or trial and error.

The biggest one I can think of for myself definitely has to do with power cords. I currently have 2 6+2 pin connectors into my 1080ti, and it took me about 30 minutes to figure out that was actually what I was supposed to do. I had thought that there were always going to be connectors made specifically for each connection setup, and I spent the majority of those 30 minutes looking in my PSU box looking for two solid 8 pin connectors. Also something I learned recently was that the extra cable coming out of said 6+2 pin, can be plugged into the second port and I don't even need the 2nd cable.

 

This makes me feel extremely stupid but it's been a few months, so I'm ready to talk about it and find out what made other people feel stupid.

That I would spend enough money on PC components that would allow me to buy a decent car. 

[Mooshi]

YOU DON'T NEED EVERY FAN SPOT OCCUPIED.

 

I've managed to make a Fractal Define R4  loud.

[ChetwoodJ96]

3 minutes ago, Mooshi said:

YOU DON'T NEED EVERY FAN SPOT OCCUPIED.

 

I've managed to make a Fractal Define R4  loud.

I wanna get a bunch of stupid RGB fans for my Be Quiet! Pure Base 600 but I'm worried that it'll get loud

[tatte]

The word "cache". I'm from Finland and the first time I had to pay attention to that word was when the IT person of my high school was telling me the address of our proxy server. The average Finnish pronounciation prowess didn't help either, I was completely baffled and couldn't figure out what he was saying. It wasn't a fun situation for either of us, he ended up having to type it himself (it wasn't like we were going to spend ten minutes figuring it out, he repeated it maybe three times and things needed to carry on). It's not even that peculiar word, at the very least I should have picked it up from the context, but I didn't.

 

At that age, the school is a place where you easily long for any and all approval from teachers and other faculty that are in any way related to the subjects you like. That really hurt my childish "yeah, I know this stuff" -ego. It'd be easy to solely blaim his pronounciation, but in retrospect I think it was just fine, I wasn't sharp enough. (At least I never forgot that address.)

 

#childhoodtrauma

[RyanEsau]

Well... I did quite a bit of research, watching build guides, reading articles, and so forth.

 

One thing I wish I knew though...

 

If I remember correctly, I think I ran into needing a fan extension and my unaware newbie selfie somehow thought "What about this connector here going into the front I/O? Looks similar! *yank*"  It was the connector for the case lights around the i/o shield which are certainly nice/useful but no more after that. I felt so stupid after pulling it, I was like "Oh wait... this isn't...  Why did I think it would be? I need to think more and not just act... sigh " Still haven't managed to get that tiny freaking connector back in, even trying with tweezers and what not. Pain in the ass... Don't really need the lights anymore though, so whatever.

 

Also despite my all extensive research, would've loved to known that that some (if not all/most) power supplies have a switch on/off. I spent a few hours putting my system together just to set it up and get no response as I pressed the power button. Immediately I thought I fucked up and redid the front i/o connectors (power/reset) and when they didn't work I redid all the cables if I remember correctly once or twice over...  Only after that I happen to notice the freaking switch. Argh.

[This kid builds pc]

7 minutes ago, RyanEsau said:

Well... I did quite a bit of research, watching build guides, reading articles, and so forth.

 

One thing I wish I knew though...

 

If I remember correctly, I think I ran into needing a fan extension and my unaware newbie selfie somehow thought "What about this connector here going into the front I/O? Looks similar! *yank*"  It was the connector for the case lights around the i/o shield which are certainly nice/useful but no more after that. I felt so stupid after pulling it, I was like "Oh wait... this isn't...  Why did I think it would be? I need to think more and not just act... sigh " Still haven't managed to get that tiny freaking connector back in, even trying with tweezers and what not. Pain in the ass... Don't really need the lights anymore though, so whatever.

 

Also despite my all extensive research, would've loved to known that that some (if not all/most) power supplies have a switch on/off. I spent a few hours putting my system together just to set it up and get no response as I pressed the power button. Immediately I thought I fucked up and redid the front i/o connectors (power/reset) and when they didn't work I redid all the cables if I remember correctly once or twice over...  Only after that I happen to notice the freaking switch. Argh.

Why would you just "yank" on a wire that you don't know what it does? Also, you did all that research and didn't figure out the switch thing on PSUs?

[Jumper118]

playing games is so boring compare to pouring cold things on your pc till it goes really fast. all that time i wasted playing games. 

[itsdeonLOL]

Making sure the PSU switch is switched to the "on" position before pushing the power button... I literally took my PC apart & realized half way when I looked at the PSU switch it was in the "off" position... Those were not fun times man...

[Andreas Lilja]

Not wasting money on pre-builts, especially my first one which sucked as a gaming machine, even if I didn't game much in college.

[RotoCoreOne]

My joy for gaming petered out around the time that I bought the 1080 ti. What do I do with it now minus mining lol

[Mail me to the Moon]

Don't plug in power cables when the computer is on.

[AntiTrust]

I wish I knew how important RGB lighting is to PC health

[dcgreen2k]

1. If your friend has done extensive research in something, it might be a good idea to trust them. My friend got worried when I said that I'd reboot his PS3 because he thought I'd break it.

 

2. Sometimes, cheap =/= low quality

 

3. Don't always trust people who talk trash about your hardware choices. You can run GTA 5 just fine with a GT 740.

 

4. Unless you do something really dumb, you aren't going to break your hardware. Just 2 years ago, I handled everything in my PC extremely gingerly because I thought even the slightest bump would make everything blow up and would cost hundreds of dollars to replace.

[Hiitchy]

9 hours ago, Mooshi said:

YOU DON'T NEED EVERY FAN SPOT OCCUPIED.

 

I've managed to make a Fractal Define R4  loud.

Unless you're me. There isn't a case I've built in where I've managed to occupy fan spots no matter where they were. They could be on the cable management side of the case and I'd find a way to make it work somehow lol. 

[Tsuki]

10 hours ago, JDE said:

gpus are more important than cpus for gaming

generally thats true, but it really does depend on what games you play.

[LienusLateTips]

45 minutes ago, Tsuki said:

generally thats true, but it really does depend on what games you play.

minecraft at the time tbh

[Takeya Saito]

17 hours ago, NinJake said:

Don't flick the switch on PSU's to 230v if you're in the US.

i did the opposite once on accident, while it was on and facing my leg, sparks flew out and i lost a few hairs, fun times

[Napascj]

Don’t follow the advice that certain hardware will perform at a consistent level across all games. A common phrase I always read online “A GTX 1070 and above is overkill for 1080p” “Waste of money”

 

Wrong. Not all categories of games are equal. I use a lot of flight simulators at 1080p ultra settings and, albeit with the expensive high quality aircraft, don’t pull in 60fps with my overclocked 1070 Ti. So basically, don’t listen to people who presume one GPU meets the needs for all games.