The PC hardware market moves fast, and at times, faster than most wallets can keep up. Every new generation and iteration of components promises improved performance, enhanced efficiency, and more intelligent design. Over the past five years, however, several reliable categories have quietly slipped in quality, value, and longevity. From overpriced GPUs to flimsy stock coolers, the modern market often seems more concerned with upselling consumers than empowering them.

No, this isn’t nostalgia for the “good old days”, but rather, a reality check into how the last half-decade of the PC component industry has traded practicality for marketing, and long-term reliability for short-term spec gains. Here are four major PC components that have gotten worse over time, either in value, utility, or design integrity.

Stock cooling solutions

The (vanishing) value addition

Credit: Unsplash

For the ones on Team Red, the AMD Wraith coolers felt like a nice little bonus to their CPU purchase. In 2019, the Wraith Prism could keep the Ryzen 7 3700X at a comfortable 70-80°C, well within its operating margins under load, all while maintaining a sleek appearance and operating silently.

Fast-forward to 2025, the absence of stock coolers, in essence, seems almost like a microcosm for the shrinkflation in the economics of PC components. The newer AMD chips, like the Ryzen 7 7700, 7800X3D, and the Ryzen 9000 series (except for the Ryzen 5 9600), nowship without a stock cooler. Furthermore, the select units that come with stock cooling have now downgraded the cooling solution from the Wraith Spire to the Wraith Stealth model, which brings the TDP support down from 95W to 75W.

This means that first-time PC builders who could get a decent, usable cooler out of the box now have to spend an extra $30–$75 for an aftermarket cooling solution. For budget and mid-range users, that’s money better spent on faster RAM or a little extra storage. It’s cruelly ironic that while CPUs have become more efficient and powerful, stock coolers meant to support them haven’t kept pace, or have vanished entirely. Even if stock cooling solutions remained untouched after unboxing, they still served as a convenient contingency plan for when your AIO went bad, or for the times you had to assemble a test bench, which isn’t possible anymore.

Budget segment GPUs

Where did the VRAM go?

It’s neither a surprise nor controversial to say that budget GPUs, such as the RTX 4060/5060 and AMD’s entry-level RX 7600, have steadily regressed in value since 2020, offering less performance and longevity for the consumer dollar. Five years ago, the $300 RTX 3060 came with 12 GB of VRAM, empowering it to handle 1080p and 1440p reasonably well, with a little headroom for future titles. Its successors today, priced at $350 or more, still ship with a meager 8 GB of VRAM, which is barely sufficient for modern titles like*Cyberpunk 2077 *and *Black Myth: Wukong *at those resolutions, where textures routinely exceed 10 GB of VRAM utilization at 1440p.

Raw raster performance improvement has been substituted with upscaling crutches like DLSS 3.0 and FSR 3, which cleverly masquerade weaker silicon with AI-enabled refinements. Performance uplifts now range from a 10–15% net increase in raster performance from predecessors, compared with the 60–70% generational leaps one expected (think GTX 1060 to RTX 2060). Whereas in 2020, a $300 GPU felt like a long-term investment, the paradigm in 2025 seems to signal that your purchase of a budget GPU can set you up for barely a calendar year before you have to start making compromises to graphical fidelity or reach your wallet for a hardware upgrade.

Power Supply Units

The saga of diminishing value continues

Five years ago, a $50–$70 non-modular 80+ Bronze PSU, like the Corsair CX 550 or EVGA 600 BR, would provide you with solid value for your mid-range setup built around the RTX 3060 or RX 5600 XT. These units provided 550-650W with stable 12V rails, decent cable lengths (reaching up to 60cm for ATX and 65 cm for PCIe), and would handle the typical power spikes from GPUs (up to 300W) and CPUs (65-95W TDP) without breaking a sweat. Featuring 80-85% efficiency and OPP/OVP protection, they were reliable and built for longevity.

Within the same $50–$70 range in 2025, PSUs are a far cry from what they used to be. Most PSUs in this range today will not support the best features like ATX 3.1 or PCIe 5.1 compliance, and instead reserve those features for units retailing for over $90.

Another concern is the warranty decline. Even budget PSUs a few years ago came with 5-year warranties, which offered a sense of reliability and peace of mind to the user. Today, however, most budget units in the sub-$80 range offer only 3-year warranties, which can be construed as a sign of reduced confidence from manufacturers in the longevity of their products.

Some components are feeling the squeeze of inflation

Most hardware enthusiasts would believe that in a free and competitive market, the value, quality, design, and function of hardware components would retain a steady upward trajectory, and they would be right, except when it comes to a few segments and components. In those cases, it is important to do your research before you invest your money.

Whether it’s GPUs with less VRAm or stock coolers that barely cut it, many products are designed to look good on paper and fill a void, but fall short in real-world use. As prices rise, it has become more important than ever to look beyond marketing fluff and focus on what brings the best value for your PC.