This is a PSA: Please stop abusing your SSD. Mistreating it is easier to do than it might seem. We all do it to some extent, but if you do it too much, it'll eventually backfire.

I love PC building. Really, I do, and I have for 20 years. But why do we, PC owners, just have to go from one market disaster to the next?

The way hardware ages can be difficult to judge. You may be using a 10-year-old PC and feeling satisfied, or you may be running last-gen hardware and already looking at another expensive GPU to upgrade with—it's all a matter of mindset.

Let's face it: This wasn't the best year to buy a GPU. It's not been quite as bad as 2021, but it was still bad.

Desktop or laptop, you don't want to be unprepared when you need to fix or upgrade something.

If there's one component that gamers spend too much money on, it's the CPU.

If there's one single PC component that's always outrageously expensive, it's Nvidia's RTX 5090 graphics card. It launched at $1,999, but good luck finding it for less than $2,300, and some models hit over $3,000.