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- Generic power supplies are not only a safety hazard, but also do not provide the same level of consistent power.
- Quad-core CPUs are no longer a viable option, as pretty much every application now requires a higher core count.
- Hard disk drives are still the cheapest storage option, but they do not perform nearly as good.
PC components have seen lots of upgrades over the years, and the trend keeps going. This usually happens when a better alternative becomes far more affordable after a while of its release and is now accessible to the majority of people around the world. Moreover, the change in the requirements of the applications to run smoothly also plays a key role in labeling something obsolete. Such as modern games specifically asking for an SSD instead of the old hard disk drive. The list doesn’t end with the hard disk drives, as there are other components as well.
Cheap & Generic Power Supplies
Many people still fall for the cheap power supply scams, thanks to their availability on the major online and offline retailers, such as Amazon. These power supplies use the cheapest components that can’t even stand a few power surges, and on top of that, when they do get fried, they take your PC components with them. Simply because neither do they have any efficiency certification, nor do they come with any safety features to protect your PC components.
This is one of the key reasons why reliable and high-quality power supplies cost more, as they serve you better in the long term and make more efforts to save your PC. So, it’s always recommended to invest in a good power supply to keep things running smoothly.
Stock Coolers
While the high-end CPUs have abandoned stock coolers, many budget series CPUs still come with a stock cooler to get things started on the go. Sure, it saves you some bucks, but they don’t really perform well, especially if you’re building a PC for gaming or professional work. You’re better off replacing it with an aftermarket cooler, even the cheaper ones offer miles better thermal performance and headroom for some tweaks if needed.
The setup also gets relatively quieter as the aftermarket doesn’t have to work as hard as the stock one. Meaning the stock cooler is just a waste in most cases, and companies should stop bundling them even with the budget-tier CPUs.
Hard Drives
Hard drives are still the cheapest storage options for PCs, and they offer a much higher capacity for the same price as an SSD or an NVMe drive. But that doesn’t make them nearly as good as them, simply because of how painfully slow hard drives are compared to SSDs.
Moreover, most applications and games are now built specifically to run optimally on the SSD drives, so that’s another point that throws hard drives into the obsolete category.
Though it’s still pretty useful on the server or NAS side, it’s done for good at gaming PCs. Moreover, the SSDs, be it SATA, Gen4, or Gen5, have become quite affordable now, so it makes more sense to buy them instead.
GPUs With 8 GB VRAM
There was a time when 8 GB VRAM used to be considered plenty for pretty much everything. However, now, this perspective has changed, and the 8 GB VRAM isn’t cutting it anymore, whether it’s for gaming or professional work. The games have drastically become more demanding with high-resolution textures, advanced physics, and various other elements, contributing to a higher VRAM requirement. So, when the VRAM gets full, you start experiencing texture pop-ins, stutters, and even crashes in some instances.
What’s more unfortunate is that graphics card manufacturers are still making 8 GB variants of their GPUs to this day. The most examples of them are the RX 9060 XT from AMD and RTX 5060 from Nvidia. You can see the difference in Hardware Unboxed’s video, where he compares the 8 GB and 16 GB variants of the RX 9060 XT. The video shows how much the 8 GB variant suffers in performance compared to its 16 GB model, even if it’s running on a higher PCI Expansion slot.
Quad-Core CPUs
The last thing that needs to no longer exist is a quad-core CPU. While they’re not in the majority now, they are still available for PC builds. Not only in the PC builds, but they are very much present in laptop machines as well. Considering how 6-core CPUs have become the new baseline, the quad-core CPUs just don’t make sense, as they struggle hard to run productivity applications as well as games smoothly.
Moreover, these quad-core CPUs don’t save you much in terms of cost, compared to the 6-core CPUs. So, it’s better to just spend a little more and get something that will actually serve you fine.
Way To Move Forward
At the end of the day, building or upgrading a PC is about getting the best performance and reliability for your money. Some parts that once made sense, like cheap power supplies, stock coolers, hard drives, quad-core CPUs, or even GPUs with just 8 GB VRAM, simply don’t cut it anymore. Holding onto them only limits your experience and risks wasting your investment. The good news is that better alternatives have become more affordable and widely available, so there’s really no reason to stick with outdated components.
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Zain is our hardware expert, known for deep-dive reviews and round-ups on motherboards, CPUs, RAM, GPUs, and cooling systems. He focuses on performance and value, skipping the marketing hype to give you honest, no-nonsense advice.
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