Motherboard

The PC’s motherboard is a vital part of any build, but it doesn’t really affect your PC’s performance unless you’re overclocking the CPU and/or the GPU. Unless you’re upgrading it for compatibility with something like a new CPU or GPU, you will be wasting money and time in what is essentially dismantling and rebuilding the full PC.

CPUs

Changing out a CPU is one of the more labor-intensive upgrades on the PC and could quickly go wrong, costing you hundreds of dollars if the pins get bent from incorrect alignment. The one circumstance in which upgrading a CPU makes sense is if it’s bottlenecking your RAM and GPU; otherwise, it may not be worth the hassle.

Operating system

The quality of life improvements from a new operating system can be nice, but they might not be enough to justify switching from a system you’re used to and tend to be offset by other changes and hefty hardware requirements needed. The only real reason to upgrade is for security purposes, as new updates might not be available for your current OS.

Hard drive

Once a vital component of any PC, a hard disk drive (HDD) still had a place even after solid state drives (SSDs) began offering faster speeds, lighter weight, and more durability. With SSDs becoming more affordable, it’s easy to see HDDs as obsolete with their slower speeds and the risk of losing your data due to the fragility of their moving parts.

RAM

There’s a good chance you already have enough RAM inside for what you need, as most PC’s from 2020 have 16GB of DDR4 RAM, with some even having 32GB. Increasing the amount of RAM available is probably a waste of time unless you’re editing high-definition video on a professional level or running a server.