Building a PC is still one of the best ways to build a machine exactly how you want it. You get to choose every single component, have total control over the aesthetics, and can save a few bucks compared to buying a pre-built PC. If something goes wrong, it's your fault too, but at least it's a great learning experience.
Over the last 20 years, PC building has obviously undergone profound changes. The state of desktop PC hardware is no longer what it used to be, many users have been priced out of the market and innovative products are few and far between. However, that's not what this article is about. I'm about to discuss six different ways PC manufacturers are doing things differently today than they did 20 years ago – adapting to the rapid evolution of PC hardware and modern technological awareness.
6 Overclocking was expected with every CPU
Modern processors are delivered as delivered
Back in the day (early 2000s), when I was a teenager, it was common practice to overclock the processor – it was basically a sin not to do it if you were an enthusiast. Of course, users like me, who built their first PC years later, never knew or cared about it. But when building your own PC back then, it was quite common to overclock the CPU to squeeze out every last MHz of performance.
Today's CPUs largely perform close to their full potential at default settings, and there is very little to be gained by investing hours of overclocking.
The thing is: if you then ignored overclocking, you would have left a significant amount of performance on the table. However, today's CPUs tend to run close to their full potential at default settings, and there is very little to be gained by investing hours of overclocking. Overclocking is no longer the niche phenomenon it once was, with modern CPUs running close to their thermal limits even at default settings. Pushing these CPUs significantly further requires enthusiast-grade cooling systems, which most users don't have or don't even want to consider.
5 PC cases have been largely ignored
The focus on appearance wasn't as strong
Even though the PC case is the first thing that catches your eye when you look at a PC, about 20 years ago it was the interior that builders were concerned about. There are countless buildings with the most incredible components of their time, encased in a boring black metal plate. Nobody worried about the placement of intake and exhaust fans, the lack of vents, or making their PCs look sleek and sexy on the outside.
Maybe it was the lack of pervasive social media or great-looking cases, but PC makers happily went about their business, focusing only on building the most powerful PC they could afford. While the mid-2000s brought aggressive designs, LED lighting, and transparent side panels to PC cases, these features took time to make their way across all price ranges. Compare that to today, where even the most affordable PC cases are all about looks.
4 We rarely replaced the stock radiators
The aftermarket cooling was anything but a given
Unlike today, where standard coolers are barely sufficient for anything other than most barebones processors, they were pretty much the standard in the 2000s. The first two PCs I built in the mid-2000s only ever had standard coolers. And they were enough for everything I did with these devices – low-end gaming, casual browsing and media downloading.
Aftermarket CPU coolers slowly gained traction as PC building became mainstream and more users began building their own systems. From the simplest air coolers to high-performance liquid coolers and custom cooling circuits, PC cooling has evolved from an afterthought to one of the most serious considerations when building a PC. These days, inadequate cooling can instantly throttle your processor, limit performance, or ruin your otherwise silent gaming PC.
3 We played fast and loose with power supplies
Awareness of the PSU was comically low
If you have been part of the community for a while, you will have noticed the increasing awareness of the importance of using a quality power supply. This only started about ten years ago, when the average PC builder barely cared about what power supply they bought. As long as it was from a brand they had heard of once or twice, they were happy. Researching PSU tier lists, efficiency ratings, and looking at reviews was unprecedented.
After several cheap PSUs started blowing up and developers started reporting the scandal, the general community began to take PSUs seriously.
If you look further back, third-party and no-name power supplies were common in many models unless it was an enthusiast model or a model built by an experienced user. PC manufacturers have given up valuable components to questionable power supplies without thinking about it. After several cheap PSUs started blowing up and developers started reporting the scandal, the general community started taking PSUs seriously.
2 SSDs were practically non-existent
We were never interested in loading times
The SSD era only began in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when prices began to fall and a larger user base became aware of the significant benefits of switching from hard drives. Previously, SSDs were too expensive for the average manufacturer to consider. Someone building a $1,000 gaming PC around 2015 was happy to install a 1TB spinning hard drive and call it a day, reserving most of their budget for the GPU and CPU.
When we only had hard drives for PC storage, there was no reason to think that Windows would start way too slowly or that games would take forever to load. Sure, long loading times may have been a hot topic as larger and larger AAA titles came out, but most people didn't even know there was an alternative. For a long time, SSDs and HDDs coexisted in consumer systems.
It wasn't until the cost per GB of SSDs dropped significantly that PC gamers finally considered ditching the hard drive altogether.
1 Purchasing a GPU was easy
VRAM was the only thing many users saw
Choosing a graphics card for your gaming PC has never been more complicated than it is today. You need to read tons of reviews and benchmarks not only on the performance of your shortlisted GPUs, but also on their thermals, noise levels, and overclocking potential. Additionally, if you're not buying $1,500 or $150 GPUs, there are tons of options to consider in between. You'll even have to decide how much you care about ray tracing so you can justify spending more on an Nvidia GPU.
There was no need to worry about insufficient VRAM, sub-60 FPS, low bus width, high power consumption, or shady tactics from Nvidia or AMD.
Let's go back to the early or mid-2000s, when most users probably only cared about graphics memory when purchasing a GPU. At the time, the GeForce 7800 GTX with 256MB of VRAM was a high-end GPU. There was no need to worry about insufficient VRAM, sub-60 FPS, low bus width, high power consumption, or shady tactics from Nvidia or AMD. You can simply choose from a handful of GPUs and buy what you can afford.
Graphics cards have now become luxury items, with manufacturers charging whatever dollar amount they can think of. Users have also been conditioned to pay if they want playable frame rates at higher resolutions. There is little chance that graphics cards will ever return to reasonable price levels. Something else that has changed is that we now have a third competitor in the ring as Intel has re-entered the desktop GPU market.
What will PC construction look like in 10 years?
There are a number of trends that can predict where PC building will go from here. Nvidia and AMD's focus on AI billions instead of their gaming GPU customers could give way to a decade of stagnant performance and low consumer interest. Will the appeal of PCs wane as consoles become more powerful thanks to new CPU and GPU architectures and offer stable, cutting-edge, high-resolution gaming experiences?
Even game exclusivity is quickly becoming a thing of the past and the lines between PC, PlayStation and Xbox are blurring. Microsoft has not been interested in fighting the console war for years, instead focusing on becoming a gaming services company. It will be exciting to see how these and other trends impact how PC manufacturers respond and adapt once again.