Learning for the sake of learning

Recently I wanted to upgrade my home pc. I work in the IT field but have no experience with computer hardware. I fit in the know enough to be dangerous category. I could get into something and make a change, what happens after that I am not sure? This is usually where our engineers come in and save the day. I wanted to do this all by myself. So I sought out to find what kind of hardware was in my PC and what I could upgrade it with. I was limited because of the small form factor of the actual computer case and the age of the equipment. So I thought I should buy a new PC but I was on a budget. I found the cheapest way to get into a new PC with semi current hardware was to build it myself. How hard could it be? Not that hard actually once I read into it. I read all I could on building PCs. I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube and got a general idea of what I wanted to build. I established a starting budget and found a good platform to work with so I could upgrade it down the road. I also chose all these parts knowing that I would be overclocking them. Overclocking is modifying the clock speed, voltage, and fan profiles. This usually results in lots of heat, crashes, and stability issues. Once you learn how to do this you can do it safely. Why would someone do this? To achieve more performance out of the equipment you have. After playing with this PC for a couple months and learning a lot. I have reached the ceiling as far as performance goes. Time to upgrade again. Only now I know so much more than when I started. Also parts get a lot more expensive from here on out. This is skill not part of my job. I won’t use this knowledge every day. I just did it for the experience.