Building a gambling Personal computer can be difficult and stressful. There are a thousand things that could go wrong, and any one of them could wind up costing hundreds of dollars. And yet we do it anyway. Why? Lord solely knows.

Last summer, I processed building and fine-tuning a new gaming PC. I had a great deal of fun, but the process could also be pretty annoying. Now, I'm going to list the ten worst things about edifice a new gaming PC.

Live on week I chronicled what were the ten best things about building a new PC. If you require positiveness, that's the place to run short. But now: Bitterness! Electronegativity! Complaining! Here we go.

1. Sharing anything astir your new PC with other people who soma PCs.

People WHO make PCs are wild and knowledgable. Those bathroom both be good attributes. But if you make the mistake of telling other Personal computer-builders anything about your intended build, they will mirthfully to tell you that what you'atomic number 75 doing is wrong, and that they know a better elbow room.

You shouldn't have chosen that CPU. Information technology's a Haswell chip, and Haswells run too hot. You shouldn't have gotten those GTX 770s, because Nvidia is obviously going to reveal the 800 series shortly and those will be much quicker. You shouldn't have gotten that heatsink, because a H2O ice chest will let you overclock practically more. You shouldn't have gotten that Monitor, you shouldn't use that keyboard, and you shouldn't have gotten the RAM with the heatsinks, because nowadays your cooler fan won't go in your causa.

You are bad at this. You chose poorly. Your PC will be slower than it could've been. Sorry.

2. Disbursal $100 on a new Windows license.

You could steal a lot of things for a hundred dollars. You could in all likelihood buy a nice new pair of pants, or a unmanned car, operating room at the very least an exorbitant collector's variant of some game you want. But not this hundred dollars. You'll cost disbursal this hundred dollars connected Windows, the operating system that no same likes.

Also read: The 10 Sunday-go-to-meeting Things About Building a New Gaming PC

See, the last time you built a PC, you bought an OEM system builder's rendering of Windows. You could lonesome usance it at one time, and it became tethered to your motherboard. "No big wheel," you thought. "It'll be a patc until I build another PC."

It was indeed a while until you built another PC. Information technology took precisely the amount of time from then thus far, and now here you are, yet again blowing c fucking dollars on a new Windows licence.

You start to cogitate about how Apple made their OS free, you said it the operating system happening an Xbox One is free, and why the hell hasn't Microsoft merely gone ahead and ready-made Windows free already, and then you clock on your credit bill of fare info anyway because life is unfair and sometimes you just have to pay besides such for something you don't even want because rent's face it, you're not going to get word Linux anytime before long.

3. The anti-static strap.

Anti-static straps are profound. They soil you and discharge the atmospherics electricity that's collective up from each that time you spend sliding over your carpets in your socks, which keeps you from blasting your tender PC components like Emperor Palpatine.

According to common wisdom, if you touch anything on your motherboard without wearing an opposed-static strap, your entire PC will blow up, burning away your eyebrows and setting fire to your home. And yet you will constantly forget to wear it, because humans are flawed, and our memories are garbage.

This metre around, I took my anti-static strap so badly. Notwithstandin, one out of every seven times I touched something in my case, I'd realize oh god damn it, I'm non wearing the god damn whip. And I'd hastily put off it back on, and Leslie Townes Hope that the cosmos hadn't noticed.

While I understand that you don't really need a strap, and that as long as you regularly equal the case to ground yourself you'rhenium plausibly nongranular, my doubts footle. Every time my PC doesn't quite an work same it's so-called to, a tiny parting of Maine wonders if it's because of that one time I jiggled the video card without wearing the strap. I'll ne'er know.

4. Screws.

When you first open your new PC character, a huge bag of screws wish fall out. This will probably comprise followed by some other minute box, which also has some screws in information technology. If your case is like mine, it'll also have a small "toolkit" built into the lowermost, which also contains some screws.

You will start the process of building your PC by enumeration and sorting your screws. You'll do this by matching them rising with the diagram at the beginning of the instructions. You have 8 copies of the 12c screw, which is the narrower Phillips-head that is a bit longer than the shorter 11c. You've got the 6b nut, and the 13xab washing machine, and you had wagerer count all of them to make sure they'rhenium all here. You'll probably have some extras of each, which will make you wonder wherefore, and whether you counted improper.

And then you follow the instructions and realize that you'll have to keep going spine to page one to make for sure you're using the right-wing screw for apiece thing, and sooner or later you'll kind of depart faking it anyway. You will go to extraordinary lengths to keep your screws organized and tidy, but if you'Re care me, you will sample to do this by using dwarfish bowels from the kitchen and you won't have enough, and then you will accidentally criticize a big bag of screws onto the floor and almost lose an much number of them into an air vent.

By the time you close your case you'll lul have an entire sports stadium full of screws that you didn't use, which were apparently included to permit for opposite parts that you didn't receive. You will put these screws in a baggie, place them in the box your motherboard came in, and put it down in the cellar, never to be spoken of again.

5. The thing you need but don't have.

You thought you had everything you would need. You were so careful—you successive it all online and cautiously timed it so that it would all arrive at formerly. You even ordered a new PC carpenter's kit because IT was ridiculously cheap on Amazon and you figured that maybe there are extraordinary new types of screws since the last meter you made a PC, so what the underworl.

And then here you are: It's midnight, you're elbow deep in your new machine, and you've realized that you don't have a part that you need. Maybe it's a jockey. (Information technology's in all probability a shaft.) Maybe it's a wrench, or a specific sort of tiny screwdriver. Perhaps it's a certain type of rubbing inebriant that you need to remove thermal glue. Maybe IT's an arranger for your power render that you thought was included simply manifestly wasn't.

Whatever it is, you don't give it. You will and then go through The Five Stages of Needing a Thing and Not Having It:

1) Demurrer. "I know I have it. I even remember seeing something that looked wish it. In that location's no way I assume't experience it. It's probably in the box or something."

2) Anger. "Are you kidding ME?? I paid a thousand dollars for this block! I spent hours shopping online! Tonight's the night I sustain free to finish! All the stores are closed! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME."

3) Bargaining. "Perhaps I tin can get it to work in any event. Maybe I can just run away my GPU with a different screen out of power cable. Possibly I don't need to screw that parting down pat. It seems okay just loose corresponding that…right? Here, I'll google it."

4) Depression. "I'm non going to last this PC tonight. I'm never going to culture IT. Tomorrow Kate is coming in from out of town and we already made plans to go come out of the closet after work, and I'm non even sure when I'll go around out to bargain what I need. I should just give up."

5) Acceptance. "Fine. It's alright. Preceptor't cud in the inopportune sort of mogul. You did that once when you were in college and you fried the board, and that was a lot worse than scarcely waiting. Go find what you need, start it overnighted, and it'll seed to you. You've waited months to rising slope your PC. You can wait a day or two more. It's okay. Postulate your time and acquire it right. In the meantime, you've earned a beer."

6. Thermal paste.

Fuck thermal paste. There may be nobelium more divisive, infuriating, doubt-infecting substance in completely of applied science. How does one better apply thermal paste? How toilet it be screwed up? What happens if IT's applied wrong? How can you tell?

Lots of things about PC-building are pretty straightforward. This thing plugs into the other thing, this carte slides into that slot, these screws line awake with the have it away-holes and you tighten them down. Thermal spread is an annoying bastard because it's loose, it oozes, it essential be applied, and thence it is eminently possible to screw IT raised.

If you employ likewise little spread, your heatsink won't pull heat off of your C.P.U. effectively. If you implement overmuch, information technology'll actually cause your CPU to run hotter. The stakes are high.

No indefinite agrees about how best to implement thermal paste. If you look at (literally) any thread about Central processor chilling, you will see somebody telling someone other that they've probably applied their thermal paste wrong.

Some mass say that you should unload a blob the size of a pea connected the center of the Central processing unit. Different people say the blob should be the size of a lentil, not a pea plant. Others say to use a lin card to cautiously pass aroun it around before applying the heatsink. Calm others propose exploitation a plastic baggie to smear the thermal spread over the top of the CPU.

Here's the other thing virtually thermal paste…you can never really know if you got information technology right. Energy glue is one of Rumsfeld's identified unknowns; sandwiched there 'tween your CPU and your heatsink, in that respect is no way to inspect it without removing the heatsink entirely, which testament force you to fastidiously remove and re-apply the existing thermal paste. I did this, three times, later repeatedly becoming convinced that I'd installed my Cooler Victor heatsink falsely.

Seldom have I mat up dubiety equivalent I felt, and still feel, more or less my thermal paste. Delight assume't spill to me about my thermal paste. I'm serious.

7. Those little breast-LED cables.

PC building has gotten easier over the last ten long time. Almost everything is now bigger, more distinctly marked, and more standardized. Everything, that is, except for those little tiny plugs that connect your case's ability switch and battlefront-panel LEDs to your motherboard.

I have a feeling that these plugs are singlehandedly responsible for more than a couple potential Microcomputer-builders deciding that, you know what, I assume't have what it takes to do this after all. They'rhenium so tiny, then easy to ping loose or secure in falsely.

You commence to ballyhoo in the cables, realizing center through that you've got the polarities reversed and need to start over. Then you'll be doing something else and realize that you accidentally unplugged i, and don't bon which one, surgery where it goes. You'll bend one of the tiny wee argentiferous prongs, and own to pose roughly tweezers out to desexualise it.

And yea, if you give an Asus motherboard, you'll get a nifty elfin Q-connector that lets you connect everything outside of the case. Salubrious. That mustiness be super great. The rest of United States will glucinium over here, squinting and biting our tongues, pushing and praying.

8. The games that still don't run smoothly.

The greatest joyfulness of a new gaming Personal computer is the satisfaction of firing up games that gave your familiar PC a rough sledding and suppression them like bugs. That young frame-rate buffet in the tree of your screen becomes beautiful, perceptible proof that all your hard work has in reality paid dispatch.

And until no…there are always a couple of games, you know? The open-world game that still hitches all time you drive a car, even when you turn down the artwork settings to moderate. The city-building game that would be indeed lovely at 2650x1600 solving, but which can't seem to hit 60fps even at 1080p. The post-apocalyptic adventure that claims to be optimized for Nvidia cards but still runs equal a slideshow on ultra settings.

This is objectionable, you will think. And so you'll driving yourself mad trying to make things better. You'll drop ages in the Nvidia control panel adjusting triple-buffering and testing adaptive V-synchronize and experimenting with forcing cyclic frame renderings 1 and 2. You'll download mods that improve operation merely find that they relieve don't make things as untoothed as you'd like.

Eventually you'll acquiesce and bring dow your in-game settings. But it'll eat at you.

9. Overclocking.

If you're building a new gaming PC, you're belik planning to overclock your hardware. In for, you can run your CPU and GPU at stock speeds like a common person, but you just exhausted all this money on a hot-shit case and with laid up vents and an unlocked CPU and a custom ice chest, so you should probably overclock your stuff, no?

Here's the problem: Overclocking sucks.

For starters, the entire process is assembled on a foundation of awe. The early affair you see when you get down to truly overclock will probably be a terrifying pop-up that reads something like "Warning: You are active to void your warranty. This is not advisable. What is the count with you?"

It's like those signs at Sea Beach in San Francisco:

But, you have it off, give birth fun at the beach!

Hopefully you find a salutary overclocking guide like the ones over at Lifehacker. Simply even then, you're kinda on your possess, at least a bit bit. If you'atomic number 75 overclocking your CPU, chances are your motherboard BIOS will let many weird-ass names for potential that get into't line up with what what your online guide says, and you'll spend an minute or two googling around looking for what to do with your specialised motherboard. Multiple times, you will regard that maybe you just get into't care about overclocking enough, and possibly this whole thing isn't even worth IT.

Once you do overclock your hardware, you can Begin the interminable process of stress-testing and benchmarking. You will watch the Heaven bench mark software run so many multiplication that you will feel the likes of you actually sleep in that lonely unsettled city with the blimp and the flying dragon statue.

But each time you consort it, your score will puzzle a little high. And that will proceed you going. Eventually something weird will happen, like your GPUs will gross out and start registering weird, erratic clock speeds. Or your CPU temperature will empale above 90 degrees. Or your computing machine wish crash. And you'll scare, and question why the hell you're doing this at all.

You'll consider the fact that you could have washed-out the last four hours riding your bike, or reading a Koran, or eating a delicious meatball sub at the place down the street.

Then you'll reboot, tweak your time speeds, and settle in to run another benchmark. And that's because of one thing:

10. The gnawing impression that your PC still isn't fast enough.

In that location will always be a faster PC. There will always beryllium a graphics add-in with a higher number along the side, and there bequeath e'er be a CPU with Thomas More, speedier cores. There will always be games that require more than your Microcomputer can rally, no matter how new your make and how Holocene epoch your hardware.

It'll start as a rustle, rather than you expect:

Merely what about The Witcher 3, it will hiss. That halt volition plausibly involve more mightiness than you have. You'll probably take over to turn off soft shadows, and reduce the draw length. You definitely won't personify able to run at your monitor's native resolution. You'll have to pull round so that water doesn't reflect the sky. You'll have to bump things down until it most looks like...the console version.

Ended time, the whisper becomes a murmur. What if you got a liquid cooling? You could probably get a few more M of CPU speed. Did you pick up that deal Newegg is having on 780 Tis? You could probably get one of those. Or two! Recall about how good it would feel to make your PC faster…just a little faster…

You can't engagement the hunger; you can only slow it down. At much point, you'Ra going to lack to upgrade. You stare at your new PC, sitting there in its spot beside your desk, and realize that it already International Relations and Security Network't atomic number 3 firm as it could be.

Congratulations: You've built a play PC, and bequeath never be contentedness with anything, ever so again. Have fun!

This article was primitively published on Kotaku on 7/17/14, slenderly updated and bumped since because building a Microcomputer is as nerve-racking as IT was then. Republished with permission.