With all these threads lately of people building new PCs I was wondering when the best time to build a new one is? With constant updates and releases to products are you always screwed in the end no matter what? or is it best to hold off until a certain time usually? Obviously one has to bite the bullet at some point or it would never get built.
You gonna bite the bullet no more what. Always gonna be new tech coming. Early this year new CPU's will be coming out from AMD. So if you are going AMD you might want to wait and see on those. For the games coming out this year the products that are already out are overkill in specs.
Even though new shit is coming out all the time you still have to buy something sooner or later. I usually give my comps about 4 years at most before updating or complete overhaul. If you just catch something every year around thanksgiving or something cheap shows up on new egg you can keep your system constantly updating for rather cheap until you have to get a new mother board. There's really no need to spend thousands of dollars on a system since every game has a wide range of specs that can be played on and that tech will be outdated just as quick as anything else. Just make sure your motherboard is updated every 5 years or so and you'll be fine.
Most people buy now for 2 reasons, companies tend to release products around the time of CES, which starts tomorrow I think. So with new products on the market and people reading about them all throughout the Christmas buying season, they are anxious to get something new instead of running on their "outdated" hardware. The other reason is tax returns. People get some money back and want to spend it on something, a new computer is often on the mind of a gamer who just got a chunk of money. If you like Intel, you can get a good performance and relatively cheap computer now. Although Intel is releasing their good stuff in November of this year. The current Sandy bridge is the low performance version with "only" dual channel RAM and a quad core with 8 threads at the most. The next release for Sandy Bridge (called Ivy Bridge I think) in November will be the performance socket with all the good stuff and 6-8 core, HT enabled processors. AMD is releasing their new socket and processors in a couple more months, so if you like AMD then wait. If you like multiple graphics cards then wait for AMD's release as well. The Current new product from Intel releasing in a couple days only has 16 PCI-E lanes for graphics and thus cant use multiple graphics cards to their full potential and will be a bottleneck.
i can semi unoffcially confirm what enigma has said about the INTEL stuff ... we had a training on it at work few days ago so... sandy bridge right now is gonna be like i3 with dual chan basiclly ... november will be high end stuff anything u buy now is going to be good for a few years anyways ... most games arnt all that demanding if you get some good stuff that is out now
This is so true. There's nothing else I can really add. With Intel releasing their mid/low end chips and probably more higher end models soon (aside from the 2600 series, including K) and AMD rollin' out stuff. Its going to be a fun start of the year hardware wise, already is! December was bumpin' too.
6-7 years ago when I built my last pc I think I did it in September and kind of regretted doing it because all new shit came out in november/december. However, the thing did last me for quite a while so I supppose in the end it didn't make a huge difference. Just need to build it right from what people have said. I am mulling over the idea of building one this year sometime, most likely closer to the end of the year/beginning of next.
The best time of year to buy a new computer or parts is, when Enigma and Jarien are upgrading their computers. What these guys have been saying is right. There really isn't a "best" time to upgrade, jut buy the best available for your budget. Also waiting til later this year for some of the new tech to come out would be a good idea.
Just wait another month when XXX comes out... The best time to build a new PC is when you need to upgrade your current box. There are always deals, and unless your going first run, there is no real sense in waiting for the next big thing. The only stipulation would be to not buy at the end of a processor's architectures life cycle. In my opinion at least.
best advice ever. Many people do the opposite and then complain about how horribly they were "screwed over" and how computers are just stupid.