When's the best time of the year to built a new system? (price drops etc.)

[Wolfenswan]

I want to built a new system for scratch before I move to Norway in 2013 where everything is about 500x more expensive. My current system is still decent but won't handle the upcoming releases (mainly Arma 3) and I won't be able to salvage anything apart from the 1TB HD.

So here's the question:
When's the best time of this year to buy new hardware? Are there any next-gen GPUs/CPUs on the horizons that might cause a significant price-drop for the current generations? Same for RAM, SSD, Mobos etc.

Bonus question:
Worth watching or useless hype? ("fanless heat-sink")

[Heliocentric]

The best answer seems to be 2 weeks after you buy and build a system.

Something will come out, or a price drop will happen, it sucks but its just the way of things, tech is out of date as soon as it gets delivered, just remember out of date is fine.

edit, on the fan, when the fan is floating, is that not an insulating layer?

[slick_101]

As Helio said, new things will come out and price drops will happen. but C'est la vie. Though just because something big and new has come out doesn't mean it's better than the old stuff, look at how long the 8800 GTX lasted. it could still keep up with some of the mid-tier graphics cards today. Look at the intel q6700 quad core processor that is now only being surpassed by the processors to day and could easily reach 3.5 Ghz with a decent fan.

But back to the main question, the best plan for you to build a reasonable system is to build it just after the next gen stuff has arrived. Or if you can look around some of the bundles on websites can give you about £20-30 off rather than buying the parts on their own. The best thing to do is just shop around (though now it does feel like I'm trying to teach you to suck eggs)

And the bonus question,
We could see something like this take off. Which would be quite cool, However I bet it isn't cheap and if I'm honest, I reckon ARM chips will be the future, they produce hardly any heat at all. just look at the power in the Android phones today; we have got some phones with quad core processors and everything. blowing laptops out the water that were pretty decent a few years ago.

[Moraven]

Ivy Bridge just came out.

New video cards came out first 1-4 months of the year.

SSDs are a lot cheaper than the past 2 years.

Mobos, RAM seems to be around the same price/feature ratio always.

So in the next 3 months, no nothing Huge is coming out that would cause a market stir up.

But even if there was, as mentioned the best time is now always. You never know what impact a new product if any will have on the market and prices.

[djbriandamage]

Depends on global markets. PCs are complex machines with parts that are manufactured all over the world. Floods in Thailand recently caused hard drive prices to rise. Oversupply of memory has caused RAM prices to plummet.

But in the end there is only one absolutely correct answer to this question:

The best answer seems to be 2 weeks after you buy and build a system.

[Feldspar]

If you keep waiting for the price of x to go down and then the price of y, you'll never actually end up building your system, sooner or later you have to take the plunge and pay what it costs at that moment.

And on the cooler, wait and see, read about this a long while back and while the market sounds good I'll wait until the metal hits the shops before forming an opinion.

[djbriandamage]

To rephrase everyone's answers in a more positive light, it's always the right time to buy the last generation's hardware.

[Finicky]

Don't think there has been a good time since the hd5870 was released on the gpu front, and since the phenom II (and 2 years later in overkill land the i5 2500k) were released.

Everything since those 2 has looked like really poor value to me, I've been looking for an excuse to upgrade for 2 years now but MEH.

Next time a midrange card releases at an actual midrange price and not 400-500 euros (cough hd 7950 and gk104 cough) will be a good time to upgrade a gpu.
Next time you find a SB mobo and i5 2500k on the cheap will be a good time to upgrade your cpu if you still have an ancient c2duo or first gen phenom.

Hard drives are AWFUL value right now and take forever to come down, SSD's are still way too expensive / GB to be practical for anything but boot drive from a value standpoint.

Hey at least ram is pretty cheap:p

P.S; I'm sure those who bought a hd 7 series or gtx 670-680 will disagree (got to justify that purchase, yo) but they are all at very least 200 euros overpriced.

GK 104 IS objectively a low ram bandwidth limited ram pool small die cost effective midrange card branded and priced as a top end expensive no compromise high end card.
Wether you want to argue that it being the fastest single gpu card would make it worth ANY price they want to put on it or not, does NOT change the facts, it is what it is.

Amd 7xxx are also 100-250 euros too expensive across the board, the 7770 is no faster (7770 sounds like a much faster number than 4870 , doesn't it !) than the now ANCIENT (but back then amazing value) 4870 and that card cost the same 3 years ago in early 2009 than the 7770 does today.

Look at performance/dollar charts and the 48xx cards offered 2-3 times the performance / dollar 3 years ago than the modern mid and high end cards do today.
Performance / dollar is supposed to go UP by 20-50 percent every generation, not HALVE over 3 gens, there are no words for how ridiculous it is that this has happened.

It's what a long standing duopoly and emphasis on marketing will do, enjoy it :(

In 2008-2009 650 euros bought you a high end pc that is still capable today, nowadays a high end pc (with rebranded mid range card as the large bus, large die 28nm cards are held back for the 8xxx/7xx refresh ) costs a thousand euros.
Pretty awful time to be a pc gamer in need of an upgrade tbh, with no improvement in sight.

The biggest improvement has been in marketing's prowess in altering the perception of value for the consumer.
Thailand flood causing one factory for one manufacturer to have downtime probably made dollar signs appear in the eyes of sales guys across the globe, they rode that news and managed to permanently double HDD prices regardless of supply/demand.
The x8xx to x9xx rebrand on the AMD front managed to trick people into thinking the older cards are much slower than the newer ones (which they aren't) , again changing perception of value.

If only they put half this much effort into their drivers (as AMD user this makes me sad).

[Grizzly]

Amd 7xxx are also 100-250 euros too expensive across the board, the 7770 is no faster (7770 sounds like a much faster number than 4870 , doesn't it !) than the now ANCIENT (but back then amazing value) 4870 and that card cost the same 3 years ago in early 2009 than the 7770 does today.

Some nuances need to be reported: the 7770 is slighlty (think 5 fps) faster then the 4870, the 4870 costed 160 euros at launch, whilst the 7770 costs 120 euros (this is a significant difference, as the 4870 is mainly good value due to later price drops, which still need to happen for the 7770). The 7770 is a DX11 card, and most importantly: The 7770 requires 80 wats of power, as opposed to the 4780 which requires 150 watts of power, which is a significant difference. Also, the performance of the 7000 series has already improved with the latest catalyst drivers.

[Mistabashi]

-snip-

I can't say I agree with any of this really. You seem to have some sort of rigid idea of what things should cost which is at odds with a free market. I also don't know where you're getting these prices from, and I suspect you haven't really considered inflation and other economic factors.