This Old PC Advice Aged like fine MILK! BEWARE! 

Something I learned early on, was that Windows Defender is really all you need in terms of virus/malware protection if you're not an idiot. Once I stopped using a 3rd party anti-virus, I noticed significantly better performance.

Timestamps and advices: 1:00 - stock CPU coolers are OK if you're not planning to push your hi-end system to the maximum and beyond. Even more OK if you're living in a colder climate with a lower ambient temp in your room. 5:30 - DO NOT defragment your SSD. HDDs still require defragmentation (my personal note: nowadays windows by default launches defragmentation automatically every week so you still don't have to do it manually) 7:34 - there's no point arguing about the fan types (airflow or static pressure), most fans are hybrid now, so you should pay more attention to things like loudness, aesthetics, motor design, anti vibration pads etc 10:43 - PSU efficiency bell curve changed to be more smooth at higher loads which means the efficiency doesn't drop so quickly after the 50% load so you don't have to buy a 1600W PSU for a 800W system. But it's still recommended to have some head room, so buy a 800W PSU for a 600W system 16:00 - Do not use powered USB-hubs for things like 4K webcams, Elgato stuff and other devices which transfers a lot of data, because it all goes through a single USB-port which may not be able to handle this much data. And also device's own software may not work properly when using a hub. Using a hub for just power is OK

Excellent content. As an older enthusiast, (60) I've been in and out of computers as a hobby since i was a kid, depending on my where my finances were at any given point. Kids are expensive.😂 Its been ten years since I've dealt with new hardware, so this was a great quick refresh, as well as a reminder at how fast old computer knowledge can become obsolete. Thanks for this!

I've built 3 computers over the years and typically do a new build every 7 to 10 years on average. Everytime I go for a new build I have to look things up again because everything is out dated...

I've been out of the PC game for close to 10 years and just started out again in early 2021. I really appreciate your channel and all the easily digestable information you are supplying. Thank you! My PC wouldn't look as well if it wasn't for this channel. Greetings from Austria!

I love how this channel remembers to talk to new PC users. So many channels just cover the higher end stuff. I've been working with computers longer than Jay - And I still like to hear this newer advice. Remember that things change and skills from the past need updating too!

The thing is with defrag is that most operating systems will automatically defragment eligible drives for you. Windows actually doesn't allow you to defrag an SSD and instead you'll see an option to optimise or trim the drive.

I've built 11 systems as a hobby... but aside from some moderately basic Laptop upgrades I haven't really dabbled in any builds for 10-ish years. Thank you SO much for this video which has helped me catch-up on improvements and variations in the art! Very informative and helpful video! 😁 More, please?

fun fact about SSDs and defrag, during the earlier SSD days you had to specifically tell windows NOT to defrag it, As sometimes windows would automatically defrag your drives. Today the OS knows you stuck an SSD in there and turns off that feature of automatic action.

Another benefit to custom coolers: noise level. That could be a reason to upgrade as well.

For people who wonder what trim is, it's basically a cache clearing command that's deleting remnants of already deleted files and unused sectors that are temporary

Note - in areas where mains is 240V, many power supplies still do have a much more pronounced bell curve of efficiency.

When you talked about stock coolers, you left out one important reason many people still like to upgrade, that is for silent PC builds for studio and lab use which use an oversized cooler and fan then run it at half capacity. Combined with a high efficiency PSU and SSDs, you can get close to total silence.

I upgraded about a year ago. The technician had good laugh because I wanted my CD/DVD drive installed. "You won't need that because everything is online and you get just download it" 1 week later: "I was so glad you kept that driver. My internet kept interrupting the download and caused improper installation errors. I was able to use a physical copy to get it running". So yeah, just because everything's online, doesn't mean it's reliable.

Jay's explanation about the 80+ ratings on PSUs was awesome and I'm sure we all understood him. However, I just want to rectify one thing from his calculation of how many watts are needed to be pulled from the wall by an 80%-efficient 1000-W PSU to provide max output. It's actually 1250W, not 1200W. Just wanted to get that out there. 😁 Anyway, I've learned and am learning so much from this channel, and I'm very grateful. More power to JayzTwoCents! 👍

This has absolutely stopped me making a couple of errors on my first ever build. I had a lot of uni mates who made computers back in the day and this covers a lot of what I retained from them. I've even swapped out the PSU in my shopping cart for one with a bit more headroom than it had. Thanks for the advice!

Just to expand on your comments on defragging a drive, Jay: Defrag on a hard drive was to move sectors that were written and rewritten to be together - i.e. make sure all the data that should be together, is, so that the head on the drive doesn't have to seek any more than it absolutely needs to in order to access your data. On an SSD this is not needed, as there is no physical head to move and it doesn't actually matter what data is stored in what sector.

Just a side note here. On Windows 10/11 if you go into the disk defragmenter and try to defrag a SSD it actually executes a trim instead.

my first build was with a ryzen 7 2700x with a wraith cooler, I overclocked it like 4.2-4.4. the wraith cooler handled it like a champ. I loved it.

Damn so I can't say "sorry, I have to go home and defragment my hard drive" to people anymore

For power supplies I always say it's the one item in your pc you absolutely shouldnt skimp out on Cause it's really the ONLY part that could not only take out your pc but your entire house depending how bad the short is

In Windows 10, the "Optimize Drives" now runs TRIM on solid state drives instead of defragmentation.

Also just to add to the PSU thing: headroom matters more for high end systems because high end GPUs have massive power draw spikes. RTX 3090 was notorious for throttling on PCs with PSUs that were supposedly enough, according to regular wisdom! I think I remember reading somewhere that the RTX 3090 can spike beyond double it's rated TDP quite regularly

Ahhhh the good old old PC days, i used to be a real computer nerd 20+ years ago, building and upgrading desktops as well as learning everything i could about component hardware as well as program software, times and technology have certainty moved on heaps and bounds. There is still great fun in building a new computer today, some things have just become confusing and over complicated, computer and PC component companies have kinda sapped the enjoyment out of PC building for a lot of people, who are either wanting to make their first new desktop etc, or haven't built one in a long time like myself. JayzTwoCents is a great guy and RU-vid channel who always offers good, constructive and sound advice to his audience, no matter whether you are a computer pro, semi pro or newbie, he offers something for everyone. I got very interesred in computer building again about 6 years ago and came across JayzTwoCents RU-vid channel which appeared in the recommendation feed, I've learnt so much from him since and watch his videos when he is discussing a PC topic that I'm interested in. Keep up the good work JayzTwoCents 👍😉

Something you missed that I think should be pointed out: On newer versions of Windows, disk defragmenting(and trimming and garbage collection for SSDs) is carried out automatically. So even if someone is running Windows off a mechanical drive, there is almost never a reason for them to defragment it themselves, it's most likely already been done recently in the background.

Regarding power supplies: I still have to explain to a surprising amount of people that their PC is not going to pull all the power the PSU can provide all the time while it's on No Steve, your PC does not pull 650W when all you're doing is viewing a word document on an i3 and integrated graphics, do i have to tell you that for the 800th time?

I've gotten a few people to switch to PC during my time in the Navy, helped a few build their first tower and i always reference them to your vids. Thanks a lot and keep it up ^^

Thank you it’s hard to believe it was actually almost 10 years ago I first learned how to build a pc, and this channel was a big part of that!

6:59 Defragging on an SSD shouldn't be possible with current Windows versions of defrag (basically Windows 8 and newer). If you now run defrag on an SSD, it will instead run the TRIM command on the target SSD. Crucial has a very good explanation of what TRIM command is and how it works on their website that is worth a read.

Personally I would still swap out a stock air cooler with a 120mm air cooler simply because those stock coolers can be loud AF sometimes.

Built a PC in 2012, took it out of the shed and it started up like a champ! Phenom 6 X-2 12 Gig RAM Cas L. 9 Solid champ, paired with a 660Ti

Wow, great information. It's been years since I checked into this kind of stuff (too much horrible work burning out my brain). Definitely following your channel to get my knowledge up to date.

Small nit pick: Defragmenting isn’t about drive “health” per se for spinning drives, it’s about performance… reducing the need for random access of related sectors, minimizing track head movement. When the OS writes data it defaults to “first fit” allocation. When you defrag, you’re reallocating to “best fit”, trying to line up as many sectors that are related to each other as possible. The irony is that modern file systems ( ntfs included ) operates on the principle that sectors in the FS are allocated sparsely to give you consistent performance, so defragging theoretically shouldn’t have done much for performance anyway on modern windows systems. But of course your main point is absolutely true: there is no point at all to defragging an SSD. All you’re doing is reducing the life of your SSD

Jay I used your videos from 2019 and 2020 to learn from and begin my research on how to build my own computer and find the right parts. In July of 2020 I finally built said computer and going off your advice I am still reaping the rewards of the PC that I built. Just wanted to say thank you for those videos back then and all the content you are still producing! Keep it up my dude!

I am watching this video 2 years after it was released. The issue about USB hubs (powered and not) is still highly relevant today. Boy you would think manufacturers would fix things. The only way I get consistent connections on key components is connecting them to my high-end docking station. My docking station plugs into 1 USB-C thunderbolt on my laptop, leaving me with one more USB-C thunderbolt and 1 USB-C port. I am glad I have the docking station. I have sent a number of hubs back to Amazon because they did not live up to manufacturer claims.

Gosh. Almost everything I did to maintain or build my PC is now wrong. Some of your advice seemed tongue in cheek. I am glad you explained this. Things change.

I’ve been around your channel on and off for close to 5 years, this is the type of content that keeps me coming back, no BS, just “here are the facts, and here’s why your stupid, don’t be stupid.” But it’s info people need to hear in order to push through all the marketing bs and keyboard warrior techies. Good stuff as always.

I've built a few PC's over the years and it's VERY important to keep your advice and knowledge base up to date because things change REALLY fast... My old desktop PC was built in a case that now is around 20 years old, it was solid enough for that but now the USB's have changed, PSU sizes have changed, fan sizes have changed, GPU's are bigger, we have liquid cooling options now... that case won't cut it anymore (I really like the case but it's time for a new one). Got to move with the times sometimes.

I was aware of not wanting to defrag an SSD, but the updates on fans, power supplies, and USB hubs were very helpful. Thank you.

My advice is to subscribe to this channel. You nailed it when you mentioned building a computer after 10 years. That old-school advice was new 10 years ago but now ...old. Excellent information. Thank you!

Steve from GN has shown the 80+ means nothing. Manufacturers can put in a model for testing for the 80+ then after being awarded a rating, the manufacturers can change the internals of the PSU and it can no longer reach a 80+ titanium for example but they get to keep the original rating

One man’s stock cooler is another man’s treasure.

I think powered hubs are still a good idea, but you need to have some idea of the bandwidth vs power consumption of the device. The elgato streamdeck doesn't use a lot of data, but uses a ton of power. The elgato facecam uses a moderate amount of power, but uses an absolute firehose worth of data. The streamdeck can go on the powered hub, the camera needs to go to an actual port (which is usually also a hub attached to a single USB controller on your motherboard but...)

This is a really nice form of video. This answers a lot of specific questions in advance that may come up for casuals like me. I appreciate this and hope for more

To add onto the USB hub topic, a good alternative is a USB add on card. Normally will net you at least 4 extra USB ports and you’ll have the added benefit of them having their own controller, as well as being connected straight to the pc

"Fan marketing isn't about static pressure vs airflow anymore. It's all about RGB" We've truly regressed as a society

2:48 I built my new PC for the first time since 2009 and when I googled changing the stock fan was surprised to find stock is fine these days.

When I found out about not having to defrag an SSD a few years ago, I was so happy. Because I'm lazy and hated defragmenting my spinning drives.

01:00 "Stock coolers are garbage" 05:29 "Defragment your drive" 07:33 "Fan Types Matter" 10:43 "Should I prioritize higher PSU wattage or higher efficiency?" 16:00 "Always use a powered USB hub"

Quick Note, in markets outside of the US, the 80+ standars and definitely still a thing. 80+ is the most common and the silver and gold are considered enthusiast. I have been a PC builder for 6 year now here in Colombia and I have seen just a couple of Titaniums

If the pc supports it, you can use a PCIe slot to add more usb ports for additional devices. Unsure if that counts as a hub but it works around using a usb port

I bought just bought a new 3.0 USB hub but I still use a computer case with drive bays and outdated hardware. When using a hub it's important not to use too long of a cable from the hub to the PC, usually 6ft max before a performance drop, especially when using external drives.

Best advice that I could give (and it aged well) is: Buy a PC case with as much as possible dust protection, which is easy to remove and clean because it not only saves you time (and sometimes broken components) while cleaning, but also helps you to see your RGB backlight (if you're in that sort of thing) instead of an RGB dust cloud. Obviously the temperatures and noise level will also be lower in the long run.

I'm one of those people returning to the PC world after spending 20ish years in the console world. I can't believe how much I love this stuff. It feels like I'm home.

Really good to hear about in depth info on hardware like this. Gr8 channel

Also to the defrag thing.... if you are running NTFS as a file system, it is rather resistant to fragmentation. I stayed on FAT32 until I moved to Windows 7. I ran defrag monthly as part of my normal maintenance and was rather shocked when I ran into my drives that were virtually fragmentation-free. I dropped it from my network maintenance checklist after 4 or 5 months. And I was moving HUGE amounts of data around on my home network at the time.

This was _extremely_ helpful. I was an enthusiast many years ago but dropped out and so a lot of my knowledge is out of date. The last gaming PC I built was back in the mid 2000s, with HDD's and CRT's. Then I went to grad school and put gaming aside. For the past 10-15 years, I've been using laptops for work. I was thinking of building a gaming rig but then the pandemic hit and here we are. I've been finding that a lot of my knowledge is out of date but, worse, some stuff I think I know but I'm wrong. So this video was very helpful. My work laptop has Thunderbolt 3, and I don't know what I would do without it. I get my whole desktop setup (mic, headphones, webcam, keyboard, mouse, external monitor and AC power) all on one hub (the Caldigit one everyone recommends) going through one cable to my laptop. When I have to leave, I just pull one plug and my stuff for travel is already packed. When I get home, I only have one cable to plug in. For me, Thunderbolt is mandatory for future laptops. You just need to make sure you have a high-quality hub and a proper cable and you'll be fine. The other big thing I noticed is that the websites I used to trust for reviews have mostly gone way downhill. Most were bought out by big mainstream media corporations. The quality of the analysis and writing is way down, and most are very clearly just regurgitating manufacturers' PR talking points. It seems like the new center of gravity for PC build advice and reviews is on RU-vid. Thanks for the great advice!

One thing that really got me hooked on AM4 was the Wraith Spire cooler and the stock back plate and mounting hardware.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! 🙂

thanks for these advices. I am now planning to update my 10 year old system and esp. the PSU-thing helps a lot to make an decision.

As always, great advice. Another consideration is to buy a PSU which can operate in silent mode (fan off) up to around 250W-300W for office tasks. My build is inaudible during office use even in closed very quiet room.

Great video. I think a similar video about debunking computer myths would be fun. This reminded me of how everyone used to say that shutting down your computer was bad for it and that it's better to leave it on all the time. They claimed it damaged the CPU or hard drives. Yet, most of the PCs I repaired for people were ones that were left on all the time.

Still have a 580w bequiet powersupply from 2006 - my first prebuild pc. The supply got coil whine in around 2011-2012 everytime my pc was turned off which didnt bother me because of a Toggle switch power strip at my setup. It still worked and was used in my primary pc until the end of 2021 with a system i bought at the end of 2013. That PC was used between 6-14h daily so not that bad.

Thanks for taking the time to make this video. Last build I made was 5+ years and many things have changed a lot, although I've been out of the scene for a while this type of videos help me to stay current.

From my experience, Windows 10 doesn't defragment on an SSD, it does something different (optimize). If it shows up as an SSD in the defragment area, Windows won't defragment it (you would have to use a third party program to force the process)

Some good advice in this one. Thanks Jay.

i haven't built a pc in 17 years, just didn't bother and been buying prebuilt but about to build a new rig and most of this advice was helpful

"The old days..." for me were when nobody had cooling for the CPU, and usually the only fan was in the back of the power supply. Fan, singular. There was no such thing as RGB lighting effects, because "B" hadn't been invented yet (really). And for floating point efficiency, you needed to install a separate math co-processor, something few people bothered with. If you were wealthy enough to afford a hard drive or two, defragging was a necessity, and your storage maxed out around 20MB... and those were the new, fancy hard drives. Many people just made due with floppies, and a single megabyte of RAM... or less. *That's* the old days, to me...

Thanks man. This is a great video.

As someone about to build my first PC, thank you

I haven't been into this stuff in so many years so finally getting back into it has been hard. I was looking around for static pressure fans, optical bay fan controllers, USB 3.0 PCIE cards, wifi cards...etc. Nobody uses that stuff anymore lol. It's crazy.

I bought a seagate m.2 ssd for my first build. I could absolutely have fallen into the trap of defragmenting my ssd if it weren't for channels like yours. Thanks Jay and crew!

go on be a rebel and defrag your nvme m.2 ssd i dare you !!

Been 7 years since I built my computer. Nice to know some of these things have changed.

In my limited experience, buying an OEM CPU and for the “saved” money buying a cooler usually works substantially better than stock cooler.

Thanks Jay, I watched you when I first got into the PC space almost 10 years ago. I'm getting back into it and I'm glad to see you're still out here as a resource for people like me to refer to.

The main flaw that I've found on older stock fan/heatsinks (P2/P3 era) was that the stock thermal "paste" was terrible. It would eventually turn into plastic and your PC would start shutting down under load or in high ambient. Scraping that gunk off and applying the good stuff was 75% of the battle.

great INFO thanks

I built my first computer in well over a decade just last year. Plenty of your videos smoothed the process immensely, so thank you, Jay. I'm glad I watched this and was personally satisfied to know a lot of that stuff and that my competency returned so quickly. Thanks again for your help.

One of the BEST "OLDSCHOOL" JayzTwoCents videos in recent years, Brother; you, sir, organically create AWESOME content when you simply speak from the heart Jay!!! ...a true "return to form" =)

Right now I still have mostly older hardware that still works fine with what was standard in 2015. But in the near -ish future I'll probably have to upgrade. Thanks so much for letting me know what tips will no longer be valid when I get a brand new setup!

The three things I most remember about CPU coolers are: 1: Bodging later generation coolers onto obsolete CPU types, sometimes by using thermal epoxy if the mounts couldn't be made to fit. 2: Having to replace the stock cooler on an E-machine not for performance reasons but because the undersized fan made a nasty "wasp in a jar" buzz that annoyed the heck out of me. 3: Reading about the Danamics LMX Superleggera

On the topic of USB hubs, I firmly believe that it is better to sacrifice a little bit of your PCIe lanes for a simple internal powered USB controller. If you have a newer AMD motherboard, you likely have 24 or even 128 lanes anyway. I got one for my Oculus Rift S weeks after purchasing the HMD simply because I was running into the opposite effect mentioned by JTC: the HMD and the software weren't working properly with the USB connected directly to the motherboard. The issue turned out to be a power delivery issue, and having a port with a dedicated connection directly to the system's power supply resolved my issues entirely. In fact, Oculus made a specific choice of hub in their support forum for the exact issue I and many, many others were facing.

I remember when choosing your motherboard basically locked you into which GPU you could use, or if you used the opposing brand/type you could suffer. Now it's so much better to just buy the card you want.

awesome advice thanks

I love old PC bits. My parents got me a custom-built cyberpower pc back in 2014 that had a pentium g320 with a 120mm AIO on it. I'm now running that same 10-year old cooler on an i9 9900k lol

5:26 well stock coolers in the past also weren’t garbage. The stock cooler included with the core i7 930 (the lga 1366) weighs arround 500 grams and has a copper core. It is able to cool the cpu under prime95. It also manages to keep a xeon x5675 with an overclock to 3.5GHz slightly above 80*C. But then of course it is pretty loud.

With regards to USB hubs, my experience was the opposite of "you might have issues". Not only did it solve some cable management headaches, it also sorted out a "takes forever to charge" issue with my headset's base station/charger. I have an Elgato Facecam connected via it as well, no problems at all. Nothing I would realistically consider connecting to a hub would require even a fraction of USB 3's bandwidth limits. It goes without saying that this doesn't mean you can buy a $5 hub from a Chinese web store and expect to load it up with external drives and have no issues... But, be realistic about what you plug into it, and make sure it's a recognizable brand name and has external power, and odds are you'll be OK.

i really like how you added segments in the video time. good shit

Magnetic Hard Drives are still far from obsolete when you factor in cost/capacity. It's pretty easy to fill up a 2TB ssd with the size of games these days and if you have any significant amount of 4K videos you'll probably be willing to sacrifice a bit of speed for capacity.

A good thing I figured out recently is a software called "Fan Control" as a modern SpeedFan replacement, working with basically any hardware. Look it up on the LTT forums, a really solid piece of software. Another thing I can recommend is SignalRGB, especially good for Asus, as a much better replacement for bad rgb software.

Actually, there are exceptions to the powered USB hub advice. Some laptops and "thin" devices do not have enough power on the USB ports to power external hard drives. I've had support cases where the USB drive worked on a desktop, but did not work on the laptop. The problem was resolved with a good powered hub. And hubs are a good way to minimize cable clutter when driving USB 2 devices such a steering wheels, flight yokes and throttle quadrants. For those things, and even a cabled keyboard, a hub is still a good device and has a usage.

Great advice

I use a hub to connect external drives to and it works perfectly with no performance issues. So don't generalise it. Some things may not work as well connecting through a hub... But others definitely do.

Actually Jay, you probably shouldn't defrag the new SMR drives either. The reason you don't want to defrag on SSD, is that you are fighting the internal logical to physical block mapping. Rather you use OS level TRIM support (not S.M.A.R.T technology) go give hints to the drive's controller that certain blocks can be un-mapped and marked as availible. The controller will then routinely attempt it's own defrag/garbage collection as it needs to write new data.

7:23 PRO TIP: Make sure to occasionally change the "needle" on your hard drive to avoid damaging the platter

Sound advice, didn't know about the hub, thanks.

I've been watching so many of your videos and I really love how your one of the most honest youtubers explaining all this stuff. I built my first PC in 2021 just for online university work so I basically just took whatever needed parts my father-in-law gave me at the time. Now that I work from home though on some pretty dense programs I really need an upgrade so I'm doing my research to say the least. I do care about esthetics since I am a console gamer and have my PC set up together with that. Buuuut also a parent on a budget so all this advice has been amazing. Excited to get my PC to where it needs to be for what I do and make it look good too without wasting a ton of cash in the process.

About power supplies: We've heard lots of relevant people saying that the 80+ rating is no longer ideal for measuring the build quality of a power supply. It may still measure electrical efficiency correctly, but as far as consumer PC goes it is much more important to worry about build quality, electrical protection mechanisms and etcetera than efficiency itself (or so I've heard).

Great work with this video. I'm a regular at Microcenter St. David's. The point of defragging is to make the mechanical process of extracting data from the platters faster. There is no mechanical process and no platters in an ssd so it's a waste to defrag it.