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Is this a bad time for a new build?

Phantomaniac

Senior member
I have been holding out for quite a while now with my OCed i7 920, however, sorely missed platform features like USB3 and SATA3 along with a nice tax return has got me pricing out builds. But the current CPU market seems unfavorable to consumers. Skylake is still above MSRP 5 months after release, and Haswell has not seemed to change despite its age. Is it worth holding out for another 6 months? Or waiting for a deal? Or am I just kidding myself?
 
Skylake is very close to MSRP now if you look in the right places.

There are deals out there if you watch for sales. Newegg has daily deals if you are subscribed to their emails, Amazon usually has some type of limited deals, and if you live near a Microcenter, you are golden.

If you need a new PC, go ahead and make the plunge. In computers, people will tell you there is always something big coming in 6 months and to wait.

You can use pcpartpicker.com or slickdeals.com to find deals.

For example, my laptop was from 2011 and was getting pretty slow even after putting in a SSD (limited to Sata2).

I decided I was going to replace it, so I set up deal alerts on slickdeals, and waited. I just snagged a Dell 15 7000 with a i7 6700hq, 8 GB ram, hybrid hard drive, full HD screen, and a GTX 960m for $700. This sale lasted for about 7 hours.
 
I decided I was going to replace it, so I set up deal alerts on slickdeals, and waited. I just snagged a Dell 15 7000 with a i7 6700hq, 8 GB ram, hybrid hard drive, full HD screen, and a GTX 960m for $700. This sale lasted for about 7 hours.

Wow, not bad at all.
 
Skylake is still overpriced and we are due for our first GPU die shrink in years. Also waiting is almost always better. Moore's law (or what is left of it) dictates that stuff is always getting better/faster/cheaper with time.

The best reason to not wait is if increased productivity or power savings will make up the cost if you buy now. At some point the old power hungry stuff has got to be replaced.
 
I had to make a new rig because the old one was obsolete. I went with the i7 6700k, asus z170 pro gaming, r9 390 8gb saphire, 16gb ddr4 corsair at 2400mhz...
 
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