This is exactly how it was back then, roughly from when the 386-based PC clones appeared up through Windows 7. The best thing you could do was ask the local computer stores about what configurations they were building, since they got to see more hardware come through. But they struggled too. The system the store built for me in 2001 had an Athlon Thunderbird running 1.4GHz and cooling tech hadn't caught up so it hit the failsafe temps during long sessions of Counter-Strike and Serious Sam. Later, wiser me eventually figured out, two computers later, that the power supply was probably the culprit, but this wasn't much of a topic of discussion yet - power supply efficiency wasn't a priority in the 90's.