Well, I’ve reached a new milestone in my PC-building adventure: I am officially Thinking Too Much!

I tend to do this a lot, and have basically accepted it as a natural part of my decision-making process. Sure, it may not be the most efficient method, but I can’t seem to break the habit so I might as well just own it.

The way it tends to work is this: I’ll start my research, casting as wide a net as possible and basically poring over any source even remotely relevant to my subject. In regards to building a PC, this has involved sources such as Reddit, PCPartPicker, and professional review sites. And let me tell you, there’s a lot of information out there (a lot in the form of acronyms, but that’s beside the point). Almost too much.

Of course, the more research I do, the more I realize I don’t know, and the more variables I start to consider. Throw my ever-present frugality into the mix, and it gets really hard to make a decision. “Is this motherboard better? But this one’s on sale. And this other one looks perfect, but is currently out of stock…”

That’s the great thing about shopping and planning: anything is possible until you actually start spending money. And I’m at the point where I should probably start spending money, otherwise I’ll keep thinking myself in circles and it’ll be another year before I actually get around to building my new computer. And by that point, all my knowledge will be outdated and the whole cycle will start over.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m starting to realize there’s never going to be a “perfect” time time make a decision, or a “perfect” suite of hardware. I’m going to have to make compromises and pull things kicking and screaming out of the realm of theory and into messy reality.

When is that going to happen? I don’t know. But I think I’ll wait a couple days to see if Micro Center gets any motherboards back in stock before I pull the trigger.