Your PC deserves the sweet kiss of a magnetic screwdriver

(Image credit: SATA)

Earlier this year I made the mistake of moving across the country during the pandemic. This rookie move inevitably led me to spend the next month and a half building bookshelves, standing desks, kitchen islands, garage storage, and endless furniture, all things that hunger for damned screws.

I regret embarking on this journey without the help of a magnetic screwdriver. I feel sort of like Frodo who ran off to Mordor without trusty Sting. Let my failure benefit you, dear reader: get a magnetic screwdriver if you regularly open your PC.

We've all experienced the third least-enjoyable thing about building a PC: dropping screws into your case, only to have them roll behind the motherboard or some other metallic crevice. There they remain, marooned, until you nudge them back into the light—but only for a moment, because ugh, you dropped the screw again.

Another piece of advice: building your PC with a power drill is never a good idea. Over-tightening certain screws, especially anything on the motherboard, can not only make them harder to remove when you need to do maintenance or replace something, a screw that's driven too hard can crack or damage fragile PC components. You're better off doing it manually.

Evan's a hardcore FPS enthusiast who joined PC Gamer way back in 2008. After an era spent publishing reviews, news, and cover features, he now oversees editorial operations for PC Gamer worldwide, including setting policy, training, and editing stories written by the wider team. His most-played FPSes are Hunt: Showdown, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic, Rainbow Six Siege, and Counter-Strike. His first multiplayer FPS was Quake 2, played on serial LAN in his uncle's basement, the ideal conditions for instilling a lifelong fondness for fragging.