Are you overspending on certain PC component?

 Just recently I wrote an article about picking right PSU for your build. But a lot of times people pick bad PSU not because of their knowledge(or lack of), but because of their limited budget. It is very easy to spend more money than it was needed to on certain components, resulting in shortage of money for other components, which in turn means bad selection of other components. But there is solution to this too. 

First step to finding the solution to any problem is to identifying the problem itself. So here are the common ways people end up overspending in some areas.

CPU cooler

It might seem like the odd one because a lot of the time people are suffering from overheating issues because they didn't pick a proper CPU cooler. But that's also the main reason people overspend on CPU cooler. If you are active on PC communities online(Facebook groups, forums, reddit, etc.), You'll see a lot of people asking for help because their CPU temperature is 90-99 degree Celsius. So a lot of people decide that they wont make the same mistake and buys top of the line cooler. That's perfectly fine if you have the budget for it. But it's not fine if you are compromising in other area. 

For example, you don't need Noctua NH-D15 or Corsair iCUE H150i for a Core i5-13600K. They're indeed one of the best options if you're overclocking, but for everyone else, something like Deepcool AK400 or Cooler Master Hyper 212 Halo is sufficient. 

Motherboard

It is another area where people either underspend or overspend. Take i5-13600K again for explaining this scenario. I saw a lot of builds where people paired it with motherboards like MSI B760 Tomahawk or Asus ProArt B760 Creator. These two are excellent motherboards, but, in India they cost around ₹22-25,000. If you are getting B760 motherboard then you can get something like Asus Prime B760M-A, MSI B760M-A, Gigabyte B760M Aorus Pro, etc. under ₹20,000 and are excellent budget choice. Or if you are spending 25k on a motherboard, why not a Z790 motherboard?

Storage

Another area where it is easy to overspend. Specially when we are bombarded with SSDs with terms like "Super fast", "blazing fast" gen 4 speeds. Be realistic, unless you are a professional video editor who works 5k or 8k raw footage from professional cinema grade cameras on daily basis, you don't even need gen 4 drives. Of course if you have the budget for it, go for gen 4 drives. But don't compromise on other components for a gen 4 drive.

Even with gen 3 drives, people still make wrong choices. I still see people opting for Samsung 970 Evo Plus. It is without doubt an excellent drive with DRAM, but you wont notice a difference in everyday tasks between a 1TB ₹5000-6000 Samsung 970 Evo Plus and a 1TB ₹4000-4300 Crucial P3. So you need to seriously ask yourself the question, do you REALLY need to spend that extra money on that "faster" drive?

PC Cabinet/Case

If I weren't given a budget restraint, I'd pick Lian Li Lancool 216 any day because certain features of it caught my eyes. Similarly someone else might choose NZXT H5/H7 Flow, or corsair 5000X, etc. All these are excellent PC cases, but these aren't cheap. If you aren't limited by budget then sure, go for any case you like. but if you are doing a budget build, say under ₹1,00,000, then these cabinets will eat up 10-20% of your total budget.

Yes the budget cases aren't as good quality as these are, but they're  good enough. Take Ant Esports ICE-110 for example, comes with 4 RGB fans, spacious enough to support standard height tower coolers and even triple fan GPUs. Sure the fans aren't ARGB and it doesn't come with a fan hub/controller, but cabinets with those features typically cost twice as much. The money saved can be used to upgrade other component. 

CPU

That might seem like a surprise to many but yes, people are overspending on CPUs. Specially after Ryzen 5000 and Intel 12th gen series launch. Modern processors are much more powerful now, i3-12100F is a perfect example of that. It matches the performance of a core i5-10400F and even beats older i7 processors like i7-7700K that was once considered flagship. I know i7-7700K is nothing to be impressed about in modern games and software but the fact that a modern entry level processor beats an older flagship is the point here. Why am I raising that point here? Because a lot of people still go by the old formula "i3 are for home pc, i5 are value allrounder, i7 for serious users". You don't need an i9-13900K for video editing unless you work for a big studio. i5-12600k can handle average user's 1080p-4K video editing.

Now comes another group of users:  the gamers. All gamers know that if you don't want to compromise even 4-5fps then you should get the fastest CPU on market. But what people fail to realize that it is only applicable when you are getting top of the line GPU like RTX 4090 or RX 7900 XTX, there is a thing called CPU-GPU scaling. If you're only using a RTX 3060 or RX 6600 then there wont be any noticeable difference in performance of a i5-12400 and i9-13900k or a Ryzen 5 5600X and Ryzen 7 7800X3D. So unless you are getting at least RTX 3070 or better performing GPU for 1080p gaming(higher resolutions closes the gap further), there is no point is going beyond Ryzen 5/i5 class.