Many people, when choosing a PC, proceed from a kind of pre-prepared scenario that takes into account certain aspects that are theoretically very important for the right decision. It’s a good idea, no idea, but there’s a problem, and that’s that this type of script they usually contain errorsand in many cases it ends up giving excessive meaning to things that really should be more in the background.

Even for the most technically skilled people, the less important details can be difficult to appreciateand for this reason, we wanted to give the form of this guide, in which we explain in an understandable and detailed way five things about the PC that we attach too much importance to, and which in reality are not only not that important. , but they can also lead us to the wrong decision.

In many cases, this overemphasis is because we tend to blind us with characters, so we believe that more always means that something is much better, even though in reality the opposite can happen. So, for example, there are components that may seem much better than others, but as a result have a very bad value for the price / performance ratio, and it ends up being a bad buy.

Continuing with the previous example, even in cases where these components can affect performance, we find that eventually the difference is usually smalland may occur in applications or tools that we will not actually use. I think the main point of this guide is clear, so let’s dive in and look at these five things.

1.-Working frequency of the processor

It’s been a long time the race for MHz is over, but there are still people who believe that the speed of work is still one of the most important aspects when choosing a new processor. This is not true and can lead us to make very serious mistakes because we will leave out other much more important things to prioritize this one.

Processor duty frequencies refer to the rate at which the processor clock generator is capable of producing pulses. These pulses are used to synchronize the operations of its components, and although they indicate the speed of the processor (clock cycles per second), are just another indicator of your performance and not the most important.

The performance of the processor depends mainly on Number of cores that you have, of IPC (Instruction Per Clock), from the quantity processes and threads that he can do it in total and finally at the clock frequency he has. A processor with a low IPC and a high operating speed will offer significantly lower performance than a processor with a high IPC and a low operating speed.

So, The most important thing about a processor is IPC and cores., followed by the total number of threads (processes and threads) and finally the operating frequency. This point is the least important of all, contrary to the popular belief that some still get carried away with.

2.-Premium graphics card designs

It’s a very tricky topic because it’s true that a poorly designed graphics card with poor cooling or a faulty assembly can cause serious problems. However, this is not a problem limited to the cheapest modelsI’ve seen premium design graphics cards cause temperature issues due to poor contact between the heatsink and the GPU and/or graphics memory, and I’ve also seen budget models offering excellent temperatures.

Ultimately, placing too much importance on the design of the graphics card can make us pay a lot more money for a model that doesn’t really offer much of an advantage over another seemingly inferior model, and at a much cheaper price. For example, Radeon RX 6900 XT can cost us €1,049 with a good design (Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT SE OC GAMING) and perfectly functional, which will not cause us problems with temperature, but it can also cost us €1,471.58 with a premium PowerColor Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT design that really won’t make any major difference despite the huge price difference between the two.

They will offer the two graphics cards we named in the previous paragraph virtually identical performanceand they will work with perfectly safe temperatures, but the second one will cost us 400 euros more than the first one. These additional costs are not justified in any way, so it is clear that the said graphics card would not be a good buy.

The conclusion we have to draw from all this is quite clear, namely models with premium designs they have no real difference to justify their high priceand therefore it is better to opt for more modest designs that are perfectly functional and much cheaper.

3.-RAM memory latency

I know that some of our readers will throw their hands up and think that this is very important, but the truth is that it is not, because today the differences in the level of latency between the RAM memory sets that are commercially available, are usually minimal and that is ultimately also the difference in performance be very small.

In most cases, one set of RAM running at the same frequency as another but with slightly lower latency will make very little difference in performance. Today it is normal to have DDR4 kits that run at speed between 3200 MHz and 3733 MHz, with oscillating latencies between CL14 and CL18. Practically identical performance will be offered by a kit at 3,200 MHz CL14 and another at 3,200 MHz with CL16 latencies.

latency can be important if we are talking about very large differencesor if we encounter very high latency on RAM kits running at very low speed, But it’s not normal in the kits that are currently on the market, because most have minimal differences in the level of latency and these will not mean a significant increase in performance, quite the opposite.

If we have two sets of 16 GB DDR4 RAM at 3600 MHz with latencies CL17 and CL16 with a price of 80 euros and 105 euros respectively, the first would be a good choice because It’s cheap and works almost as well as the other one. Mind you, I’m not saying there’s no performance difference between the two, but we’re talking nothing at best and two to three more FPS in games.

4.-Sequential SSD speeds

You may have raised your eyebrows again, but there is an explanation for that too. The biggest performance improvement of SSDs over HDDs is not in sequential read and write speed, but in access times and latency. A hard drive has mechanical parts and suffers from a fragmentation problem, which means that for something as simple as opening a game, it has to:

• Activate the head and move it to find the plate and the area of ​​the plate where the file is located.
• Perform a read operation and, if necessary, find where the rest of the necessary files are located, which may be “scattered” due to fragmentation.

The access times we have with HDDs are very slow and latencies are high. With an SSD, the opposite of what we said will happen, and that’s a huge difference, so much so that it’s key to achieving that feeling of absolute fluidity and that the device is “flying”.

Sequential read and write speeds are not that important, as any current SSD is already running at values ​​that are good enough for a satisfactory experience. It is true that an SSD that reaches 7 GB/s will be faster than another that works at 3.5 GB/s, but in the end lthe actual performance difference in apps and games will be minimal. We’ve already talked about this in our guide to SSD myths. In it, we also tell you that there are very specific scenarios where these speeds can make a significant difference, such as when we need to move large files, but this is not common.

5.-Size of the cooling system

Bigger is better, a statement that is not always true and in fact is wrong on many occasions. We tend to think that fitting a large cooling system is necessary because it will better cool the device or component it is attached to, but the reality is that It’s not as important as we think.

I’ve seen and tested cooling systems with huge heatsinks and two fans that ended up with worse temperature readings than others with a smaller heatsink and one fan, and there are also plenty of fans made in China that look attract users based on this ideabut eventually they have very poor thermal performance.

A good cooling system is not defined by the size of the radiator or fans, but by the size heat transfer which he is able to achieve the density of the radiator fins az Static pressure which can be generated by the fan. This explains why a huge cooling system can be worse than a more compact one, which is why we have to be very careful when choosing, because, as we have just verified, appearances are deceiving.

The same thing happens with AIO liquid coolingand it is that the quality of these ultimately greatly affects the performance, so much so that we can find 280mm kits that are able to offer almost identical or even better performance than other 360mm kits. The Corsair H115i RGB Pro XT kit is one of the best examples as it offers fantastic performance and comes second to other kits that appear to be better sized but really aren’t.