how they can make it by slashing prices like they do.
Because they raise them before cutting them. It's simple. Demand is there and just bump the prices up enough to slow sales a bit before making them appear to be a huge deal for the sales season.
I put in the time to compare historical prices before making a decision and usually spending a couple of weeks gathering all of what's needed for a build into a list. I start tracking things closely to see what the market is doing and then pull the trigger on things as they drop in price.
FOMO though leads to freezing and not doing anything though. In the end things usually equal out when there's a great deal on a few parts and other parts don't budge much in either direction. The average total cost tends to be lower when just grabbing things at the closest to low price and not fretting over a couple of dollars here and there.
When I put together my ADL build I pulled the trigger on all of the parts prior BF and still managed to save $100 or so off the "sale" prices that were being offered. Sure, 6-12 months later there are bigger price reductions because there's a new CPU coming out and everyone is trying to get rid of some inventory.
On the flip side with AMD AM5 release isn't getting much traction because it's a complete rebuild from the MOBO / CPU / RAM and most don't want to pay that much when they've been able to just drop in a new CPU onto the same system for 5 years.
When you're playing the tech game it's best to get into the mindset it's not going to be a forever or 5 years of use situation like it used to be if you want to keep on the cutting edge of tech. Things now change so quickly you're better off planning on a system rebuild every 2-3 years if you want to get your money back out of it. Generational leaps are now coming a lot sooner than they used to in the past. Over the span of just a couple of years the bandwidth you get with PCIE slots jumped 2 generations which doubled with each one.
RAM has done the same going from DDR3 >> DDR5. While not as significant other than price it's still making for headaches when you go to upgrade as the notches for the chips change and require an overhaul of the guts to make them work.
There's quite a bit changing in the next couple of years again with everyone moving to a chiplet design and being able to pack more into a smaller package and customize things more with interconnects vs a monolithic single piece of silicon. Apple / AMD are already doing it and Intel is releasing it next fall but, the bigger change with Intel is 2024 with 2nm processes vs next years 4nm debut.
If you dig enough and keep an eye on the CPU market you'll get your deal eventually. It's a patience game though in the fall when there's turmoil with sales / releases / demand. Looking at the big picture of the total cost vs focusing on the $20 here or $50 there fluctuations is going to be less mentally taxing. If you're waiting it out then start gathering all of your other components and keep checking for flash sales while you're pulling in the parts you'll need anyway for the build. I wouldn't spend more than a few weeks though watching prices though since you want to be able to put things together and test to make sure it all works before you lose the option to return things for a refund vs replacement. Otherwise it might just make more sense to buy a prebuilt system from someone if the anxiety is too much surrounding the prices.