You really have to rewind to mid 90's pre-Windows 95 in the days before Plug 'n' Play when manually assigning IRQs etc was a thing before the process of building your own PC meaningfully changes in my opinion.
Still, before AGP we had VESA, also around the time of MCA and IBM's attempt to capture some copyright patent control back from the expanding PC market and BIOS clones ("Halt and Catch Fire" Season one well worth a watch if you missed that era in life).
Yes pre Windows 95 was a fine art, from tweaking DOS memory, to optimising windows .ini files and then the fun of having to dial up Microsoft's patch BBS for a TCP/IP stack.
But top-end gaming PC's back then, sure made less noise.
Or possibly you had money to buy higher quality components than I did at the time.
OTOH, before the main consumer storefronts were the kind of flea markets of no-name sellers that used to roll into county fairgrounds every couple months, you could actually find good retailers with not only strong return policies, but also focussed on quality parts with a high S/N ratio in their catalog, that even offered added value (including, e.g., mounting CPU and memory when bought with a motherboard.)
Some of those same places survived, but they don't do consumer retail anymore.