Are Expensive PC Parts Worth It

**Building the Perfect Gaming PC: A Guide to Choosing the Right Components**

When it comes to building a gaming PC, there are many factors to consider. One crucial component that's often overlooked is the power supply unit (PSU). In this article, we'll take a closer look at the Cic's Prime TX 1000, a high-performance PSU that's perfect for gamers and enthusiasts.

**Cic's Prime TX 1000: A High-Performance PSU**

The Cic's Prime TX 1000 is an excellent choice for anyone building a high-performance gaming system. With its 80+ Titanium rating, it's one of the most efficient power supplies on the market. This means that less power is wasted, and you can be confident that your components are being powered with maximum efficiency. The PSU is also fully modular, making it easy to upgrade or replace individual components as needed. Additionally, it features hybrid fan control and fluid dynamic bearings, which reduce fan noise and increase overall reliability.

One of the standout features of the Cic's Prime TX 1000 is its industry-leading 12-year warranty. This gives you peace of mind knowing that your PSU will be supported for many years to come. So, if you're looking for a high-quality power supply that can keep up with your gaming rig, look no further than the Cic's Prime TX 1000.

**The Importance of Wattage: Is More Always Better?**

When it comes to choosing a power supply, one question that often arises is "how much wattage do I need?" The answer is not always straightforward. While it may seem logical to choose a PSU with as many watts as possible, this is often unnecessary and can even be counterproductive.

The truth is that most power supplies are most efficient when running at around 50% load. This means that if you're building a system with a high-powered GPU, a good rule of thumb is to look for a PSU that's rated for at least 20-30% more than your system's peak power draw. For example, if your system draws 500 watts at full load, consider a PSU with an 800-watt or higher rating.

However, this doesn't mean you need to choose the largest PSU available. In fact, choosing a PSU that's too large can be wasteful and even increase your electricity bill. Additionally, newer ATX 3.0 power supplies have improved significantly in their ability to handle transient spikes in power draw, making it less necessary to choose a PSU with excessive wattage.

**The Importance of Build Quality: Power Supplies Are Not Just About Wattage**

While wattage is an important consideration when choosing a power supply, it's not the only factor. The quality and build of the PSU are just as crucial. Cheap power supplies can be notoriously unreliable and may even explode under heavy load. On the other hand, high-quality power supplies can last for many years with minimal maintenance.

When choosing a power supply, look for reviews and ratings from reputable sources to ensure that it's built to last. Additionally, pay attention to the PSU's certifications, such as 80+ Titanium or Gold, which indicate its efficiency and reliability.

**Motherboards: The Backbone of Your PC**

The motherboard is often referred to as the backbone of your PC. It connects all the various components together and provides a platform for installation. In modern times, motherboards have evolved significantly, with many featuring advanced technologies such as high-speed buses and robust power delivery systems.

When choosing a motherboard, there are several factors to consider. First and foremost, ensure that it has enough slots, headers, and ports to support the components you'll be installing. Additionally, pay attention to the chipset, which is responsible for handling much of the data that flows between different parts of your computer.

While high-end motherboards with advanced features such as liquid cooling or high-speed networking may seem tempting, they're often unnecessary for most users. Unless you have specific requirements or plans to overclock your system, a mid-range motherboard should suffice. However, if you do plan to use these features, it's worth investing in a high-quality motherboard that can support them.

**Conclusion**

Choosing the right components for your PC is a complex task, but with the right information, you can make informed decisions that will ensure your system runs smoothly and efficiently. From power supplies to motherboards, there are many factors to consider when building or upgrading your PC. By following our guide and considering your specific needs and budget, you'll be well on your way to creating a high-performance gaming system that meets your requirements.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: endoes more money always mean better performance when it comes to computer components let's take a tour through some of the most important components of a computer and figure out when you should pay for more RAM capacity more CPU cores and more watts on your power supply or when it might just be a waste of money let's start out by talking about Ram is it more important to have higher speed or more capacity while both can affect performance you should prioritize higher capacity up to to a point and this kind of intuitively makes sense Ram is your computer's working memory where your PC stores data it's currently working on so more capacity means your computer can work on more at the same time meaning larger amounts are helpful if you play demanding games create content or just like having an ungodly amount of browser tabs open at once for a general purpose machine we'd recommend 16 GB of RAM in 2024 while 32 is a safer bet for gamers streamers and anyone else that needs extra power right now going higher than 32 gigs typically is only useful for things like intense content creation such as video editing and animating or modeling work on the lower end you can get away with 8 gigs if your PC is mostly a browsing and typing machine but regardless there isn't much Point getting more RAM Than You'll reasonably use it's like buying a house with 10 extra rooms when you're living alone and it's easy to add more RAM later if it turns out you do need extra or you want to have roommates but although capacity should be your primary concern it doesn't mean you should ignore speed and latency completely for certain games and applications like video editing rendering and streaming it can make a difference especially depending on exactly what CPU you have if you'll be doing any kind of heavy lifting with your computer it's a good idea to check and see how the games and applications you're planning to use interact with different Ram speed and CPU Combos and where the sweet spot is with frequency and timings AMD ryzen CPUs in particular have historically been a bit more sensitive to the frequency and timings of your RAM though this seems to be less true for their 3D vcash models also remember that trying to run Ram rated for very high speeds can actually cause instability we're talking system crashes since you're technically overclocking regardless if you're on a budget and choosing between more RAM and faster Ram remember that too little fast Ram is a lot worse than a efficient amount of slow Ram let's move on and talk about your CPU although the clock speed can affect performance in certain games and applications the raw frequency number of a CPU isn't as important as it used to be in fact some CPUs higher in a product stacked can have lower frequencies so that they'll stay within power and heat limits as the manufacturer adds more cores and because chips are fairly well optimized these days there's even been less of a focus on overclocking with many enthusiasts preferring to undervolt their CPUs instead instead to achieve similar performance while using less power but one thing that can matter is core count in general more cores are better than fewer cores all things being equal but there are two things to consider before you go out and buy the highest core count CPU you can afford first just like with ram there's no point in buying more cores than your programs are realistically going to take advantage of anything more than six cores is probably overkill for a strictly gaming PC while more than eight probably isn't necessary if you're gaming and streaming higher core counts tend to be useful if you're doing work that can be easily parallelized video rendering is a good example of this as the workload scales better in terms of being able to be spread across multiple cores on the flip side if you're just using the PC for basic tasks four course will likely get you by just fine but here's a second thing you need to consider architecture because plenty of applications especially games are significantly affected by single-threaded performance you can see real differences in reviews when you compare different processor generations and especially when you compare AMD and Intel depending on the workload a newer CPU with fewer cores can outperform a several year old CPU with more cores think about it this way the PlayStation 4 had an 8 core CPU but you obviously wouldn't expect it to run modern games as well as a current gen six core desktop processor also remember that hybrid CPUs are common these days where some of the cores you're getting might be less powerful efficiency cores or E cores so check before you buy we're going to talk about another component that's very easy to overspend on right after we thank seic check out cic's Prime TX 1000 wat power supply it's a great choice if you're building a high performance system and it features an 80 plus titanium rating which means less power gets wasted plus it's fully modular and features hybrid fan control and fluid dnamic bearings to reduce fan noise best of all is their industry-leading 12year warranty learn more at cic.gc.ca should you actually be looking for while more is better in the sense that it'll allow you to install more and more powerful Parts in your rig going with a model rated for too many watts is not only unnecessary it can actually end up costing you a little bit extra on your power bill each month most power supplies are most efficient when they're running at somewhere around 50% load so for example for an 800 wat PSU that would be a 400 W load every model of power supply is different so Peak efficiency may not be a at exactly 50% but the point is it's more efficient to buy a PSU that gives you some Headroom that being said that might be cost prohibitive if you have a relatively powerful GPU installed let's say you have a gaming rig that draws around 500 watts at load you may not want to drop a ton of coin on a th000 watt power supply in that case it's fine to get a smaller one rated for 600 or 700 Watts as long as you're sure your system won't flirt with that maximum number when you're really pushing it and although newer ATX 3.0 power supplies can deal with transient spikes in power draw past their rated wattage better than older units could you still don't want a situation where you're continuously drawing too many watts and if you do get a lower wattage but still adequate power supply you may not get Peak efficiency but it won't be too much worse than what you'd see closer to the half load as long as the PSU is good quality and on that note as long as the wattage is sufficient the power supplies build quality is far more important than the raw number of Watts there are cheap power supplies out there that are notoriously unreliable and can even explode on you literally explode but well-built ones can last for many years even if you push them so read reviews and don't go for bargain units just because the wattage number is what you want finally let's talk about something that's a little harder to put a number on your motherboard which acts as the spine of sorts of your PC and that it connects everything to everything else it used to be that your choice of motherboard could have a real effect on the performance as buses that connect different components could operate at different speeds and the power Delivery Systems for CPUs were built very differently between models meaning some motherboards were far better at overclocking for example than others in modern times though most motherboards tend to have fairly overbuilt CPU power delivery except on the very low end and the functionality of the once crucial front side bus has been integrated into the CPU itself so does it make sense to spend more on a more premium motherboard the answer should mostly depend on what kind kind of features you want make sure it has enough slots headers and ports to support the components that you'll be installing and also pay attention to what chipset it is the chipset is a separate chip responsible for handling much of the data that flows between different parts of your computer and different chipsets support different numbers of ports some even limit what kinds of overclocking you can do so is there really a point on splurging on one of those super high-end motherboards some of them can offer really esoteric features for really extreme overclocking like with liquid nitrogen or something equally exotic you might even be able to get support for more bleeding edge standards but it only really makes sense to go for a motherboard like this if you have parts that you know can use the extra bandwidth we've even seen high-end boards with built-in water blocks if you're planning to pair them with a custom Loop but the bottom line is that unless you have some hypers specific use case it's probably unwise to blow gobs of money on a motherboard you're going to need that extra money anyway when you find out how much DLC costs these days but we're out of time time even though we know that there are other parts where you need to make important buying decisions such as your storage drive and graphics card so let us know if you'd like to see a followup is it worth it video in the future in the meantime check out our explainer on RAM timings if you'd like to know more so thanks for watching guys if you like this video hit like hit subscribe and hit us up in the comment section with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the futuredoes more money always mean better performance when it comes to computer components let's take a tour through some of the most important components of a computer and figure out when you should pay for more RAM capacity more CPU cores and more watts on your power supply or when it might just be a waste of money let's start out by talking about Ram is it more important to have higher speed or more capacity while both can affect performance you should prioritize higher capacity up to to a point and this kind of intuitively makes sense Ram is your computer's working memory where your PC stores data it's currently working on so more capacity means your computer can work on more at the same time meaning larger amounts are helpful if you play demanding games create content or just like having an ungodly amount of browser tabs open at once for a general purpose machine we'd recommend 16 GB of RAM in 2024 while 32 is a safer bet for gamers streamers and anyone else that needs extra power right now going higher than 32 gigs typically is only useful for things like intense content creation such as video editing and animating or modeling work on the lower end you can get away with 8 gigs if your PC is mostly a browsing and typing machine but regardless there isn't much Point getting more RAM Than You'll reasonably use it's like buying a house with 10 extra rooms when you're living alone and it's easy to add more RAM later if it turns out you do need extra or you want to have roommates but although capacity should be your primary concern it doesn't mean you should ignore speed and latency completely for certain games and applications like video editing rendering and streaming it can make a difference especially depending on exactly what CPU you have if you'll be doing any kind of heavy lifting with your computer it's a good idea to check and see how the games and applications you're planning to use interact with different Ram speed and CPU Combos and where the sweet spot is with frequency and timings AMD ryzen CPUs in particular have historically been a bit more sensitive to the frequency and timings of your RAM though this seems to be less true for their 3D vcash models also remember that trying to run Ram rated for very high speeds can actually cause instability we're talking system crashes since you're technically overclocking regardless if you're on a budget and choosing between more RAM and faster Ram remember that too little fast Ram is a lot worse than a efficient amount of slow Ram let's move on and talk about your CPU although the clock speed can affect performance in certain games and applications the raw frequency number of a CPU isn't as important as it used to be in fact some CPUs higher in a product stacked can have lower frequencies so that they'll stay within power and heat limits as the manufacturer adds more cores and because chips are fairly well optimized these days there's even been less of a focus on overclocking with many enthusiasts preferring to undervolt their CPUs instead instead to achieve similar performance while using less power but one thing that can matter is core count in general more cores are better than fewer cores all things being equal but there are two things to consider before you go out and buy the highest core count CPU you can afford first just like with ram there's no point in buying more cores than your programs are realistically going to take advantage of anything more than six cores is probably overkill for a strictly gaming PC while more than eight probably isn't necessary if you're gaming and streaming higher core counts tend to be useful if you're doing work that can be easily parallelized video rendering is a good example of this as the workload scales better in terms of being able to be spread across multiple cores on the flip side if you're just using the PC for basic tasks four course will likely get you by just fine but here's a second thing you need to consider architecture because plenty of applications especially games are significantly affected by single-threaded performance you can see real differences in reviews when you compare different processor generations and especially when you compare AMD and Intel depending on the workload a newer CPU with fewer cores can outperform a several year old CPU with more cores think about it this way the PlayStation 4 had an 8 core CPU but you obviously wouldn't expect it to run modern games as well as a current gen six core desktop processor also remember that hybrid CPUs are common these days where some of the cores you're getting might be less powerful efficiency cores or E cores so check before you buy we're going to talk about another component that's very easy to overspend on right after we thank seic check out cic's Prime TX 1000 wat power supply it's a great choice if you're building a high performance system and it features an 80 plus titanium rating which means less power gets wasted plus it's fully modular and features hybrid fan control and fluid dnamic bearings to reduce fan noise best of all is their industry-leading 12year warranty learn more at cic.gc.ca should you actually be looking for while more is better in the sense that it'll allow you to install more and more powerful Parts in your rig going with a model rated for too many watts is not only unnecessary it can actually end up costing you a little bit extra on your power bill each month most power supplies are most efficient when they're running at somewhere around 50% load so for example for an 800 wat PSU that would be a 400 W load every model of power supply is different so Peak efficiency may not be a at exactly 50% but the point is it's more efficient to buy a PSU that gives you some Headroom that being said that might be cost prohibitive if you have a relatively powerful GPU installed let's say you have a gaming rig that draws around 500 watts at load you may not want to drop a ton of coin on a th000 watt power supply in that case it's fine to get a smaller one rated for 600 or 700 Watts as long as you're sure your system won't flirt with that maximum number when you're really pushing it and although newer ATX 3.0 power supplies can deal with transient spikes in power draw past their rated wattage better than older units could you still don't want a situation where you're continuously drawing too many watts and if you do get a lower wattage but still adequate power supply you may not get Peak efficiency but it won't be too much worse than what you'd see closer to the half load as long as the PSU is good quality and on that note as long as the wattage is sufficient the power supplies build quality is far more important than the raw number of Watts there are cheap power supplies out there that are notoriously unreliable and can even explode on you literally explode but well-built ones can last for many years even if you push them so read reviews and don't go for bargain units just because the wattage number is what you want finally let's talk about something that's a little harder to put a number on your motherboard which acts as the spine of sorts of your PC and that it connects everything to everything else it used to be that your choice of motherboard could have a real effect on the performance as buses that connect different components could operate at different speeds and the power Delivery Systems for CPUs were built very differently between models meaning some motherboards were far better at overclocking for example than others in modern times though most motherboards tend to have fairly overbuilt CPU power delivery except on the very low end and the functionality of the once crucial front side bus has been integrated into the CPU itself so does it make sense to spend more on a more premium motherboard the answer should mostly depend on what kind kind of features you want make sure it has enough slots headers and ports to support the components that you'll be installing and also pay attention to what chipset it is the chipset is a separate chip responsible for handling much of the data that flows between different parts of your computer and different chipsets support different numbers of ports some even limit what kinds of overclocking you can do so is there really a point on splurging on one of those super high-end motherboards some of them can offer really esoteric features for really extreme overclocking like with liquid nitrogen or something equally exotic you might even be able to get support for more bleeding edge standards but it only really makes sense to go for a motherboard like this if you have parts that you know can use the extra bandwidth we've even seen high-end boards with built-in water blocks if you're planning to pair them with a custom Loop but the bottom line is that unless you have some hypers specific use case it's probably unwise to blow gobs of money on a motherboard you're going to need that extra money anyway when you find out how much DLC costs these days but we're out of time time even though we know that there are other parts where you need to make important buying decisions such as your storage drive and graphics card so let us know if you'd like to see a followup is it worth it video in the future in the meantime check out our explainer on RAM timings if you'd like to know more so thanks for watching guys if you like this video hit like hit subscribe and hit us up in the comment section with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future\n"