What's the best time to build a S939 rig?

[450R]

I've got a tentative list of parts:

Athlon X2 3800+
DFI NF4 Ultra-D
eVGA 7800GT
Fortron 450W
OCZ 2GB DDR400
WD 250GB Caviar SE16
SB X-Fi

I'm biding my time because this is actually beyond my budget at the moment, and with AM2 looming and the ever-ongoing GPU wars, I was hoping to sneak in and catch some big price breaks.

Thing is, I tried that last time with Socket A and came in way too late. By the time I was ready to buy, A64 processors were faster AND cheaper than anything on Socket A. Anyway, I was planning to build around March/April ... I'm hoping I won't hit the wrong end of supply/demand again. Any insight?

Thank ye!

 

[BOLt]

I've wondered the same. Anyone got something to add to the discussion?

 

[PhoenixOrion]

any time is a good time except the start of school year and buying season right before christmas.

it's like this: some people think best time to buy a big screen TV is before superbowl since there should be lots of promos and incentives. msrp by manufacturer may be the same but the trend by merchandisers is to actually jack the price a bit to make money. plain and simple.

 

[450R]

I'm actually more concerned with the life cycle of S939 in particular. AM2 will hopefully drive S939 CPU prices down but it MAY kick DDR prices up. I think I read Crucial and other manufacturers are focusing less on DDR and more on DDR2 which makes perfect sense since they can consolidate their product line-ups for both Intel and AMD.

I guess my point is, if S939 CPU and DDR prices are about to go up, I can start buying those more sensitive parts first while letting the HDD, video/audio cards, etc. continue their price drops.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: 450R
I guess my point is, if S939 CPU and DDR prices are about to go up, I can start buying those more sensitive parts first while letting the HDD, video/audio cards, etc. continue their price drops.

That's definitely the worst thing to do. Don't start buying parts when you're not even ready to build just because you're worried the price might go up.