THE ULTIMATE

Strap in as we divulge the first 20 tips on how to become the next master PC builder

By Zak Storey

HERE AT MAXIMUM PC, we’re specialists when it comes to, you know, building PCs. It is our bread and butter, and we’ve been doing it for a heck of a long time now. This journalist alone has logged no less than 63 separate build logs in these hallowed pages, and built many more. Along the way, we’ve picked up a ton of tips and tricks to make the process as painless and seamless as possible.

It’s this knowledge, these ingrained subtle refined notions and ideas that have turned even the most challenging of concept system builds into paltry, simple, and easy-to-produce machines of mayhem. They can be crafted on a whim, and knocked out in less than a few hours. Here, we’ll be divulging all that information to you.

Yep, we’ve scoured the team’s collective brains and come up with no less than 41 tips and tricks to really max out your next build, or at least make you think about tidying up your current one. Whether you’re a novice or a pro, a gamer or a 3D renderer, there’s something for everyone in Maximum PC’s 2024, occasionally annual, Builders Manual.

[01] PREPARATION, PREPARATION, PREPARATION

Nothing is more important in life than a good solid plan—Sun Tzu once said, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be defeated.” An extreme example, but this is absolutely correct, no matter where you apply it. Our enemy today is the humble system build laid out before us. It is our target, our goal, our challenge, and with it comes a plethora of considerations we need to take into account before committing one single cent to that basket of parts.

We can’t stress enough that research is going to be your best friend. Identify your budget, and what performance you’re looking for. Every build is different, and every budget equally so. The value of the dollar is always going to change for you, depending on how much of it you have available for your build. The less you have, the more important it is to spend each and every dollar wisely to ensure you get the most relevant performance out of the components in question.

[02] BUDGET BEFORE BEAUTY

It’s that last part that we need to emphasize first. If you’ve followed our most recent builds, you’ll see that we’ve embedded a new measurement into our benchmark tables at the end, and that’s ‘Core Price’. Simply put, this is the cost of all the key components that are generating performance, including the motherboard. Your processor, RAM, SSD, graphics card, and mobo all sit on that list—basically, anything that makes your system tick. Why is that important? Because this really ought to be where you’re spending the majority of your cash.

Take issue 224. That build, complete with Core i9-14900K and RTX 4090 overall, costs less than the following issue’s build with a Core i5-14600K and RTX 4080, despite those two components outclassing the others. This was down to the extra expenditure on fancy Corsair QX fans, lighting, and cases with displays built into them.

They do look great, but think of them as extra frills; things you can come back to and add later. They can wait— what matters most is the performance you see on screen, not the light show going on in your chassis.

[03] PRIDE COMETH BEFORE THE FALL

Third on the agenda is the acknowledgment that you don’t need that $2,000 GPU. It’s easy to get swept up in the hype of your pals buying ridiculous hardware for their next builds, but don’t fall prey to peer pressure if you’re not going to benefit from the hardware in question. Don’t just buy it; setting out a core spec and the performance you want is a great place to start.