[SOLVED] Is it Better to Wait for New Hardware or Go for it Now?

[GNTSquid]

Last I built a PC was about 5 years ago and since working from home its clear its time for an upgrade. I don't trust myself to know if what little I've seen is reliable enough but my basic question is, is new hardware coming soon (within the next 6 months) that is better enough than current hardware to make waiting worth it?

A second part is more specific. I currently have access to a free MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Edge AC motherboard.That may or may not work. I'm unsure because the guy who was installing it on his PC realized he did something wrong so he thinks it might be perfectly fine but whatever he did was causing it to not run properly. By the time he realized this a new board was already bought and on its way. So lucky me, there's a spare lying around no one wants.

That all said the mobo is a 1151 socket and a Z390 chipset, but I see that 400 series chipsets are now out. Assuming the board works, is it worth getting a processor and DDR4 RAM and one of the latest video cards to complete the build, or is new hardware expected soon? Is the 400 series chipset improved enough to notice a difference?

I've heard talk of DDR5 RAM and nVidia 3000's series RTX cards all before the end of the year. Is that accurate? Is a newer better processor coming out soon that is a different socket?

If it helps primary usage for this computer will be a 60/40 split between games/work. I'd like to be able to run Cyberpunk 2077 on max when it comes out. Work wise I do 3D art so I'm using a lot of 3D, editing and compositing software. That type of stuff relies more on processor cores and RAM than video card power, though some newer rendering engines are using GPU rendering now too.

I'm not sure that this thread needs the build advice format but I can add one if it helps.

 

[Wolfshadw]

There is always something newer and better a few months away. There is always Buyer's Remorse as well. Buy what you need when you need it.

-Wolf sends

 

[Math Geek]

exactly. if you wait 6 months for next gen amd, then it's only 6 months away from intel's next release (assuming it stays on schedule). then what? amd's next will be "coming soon" and so on and so on.

get what you need when you need it unless something is literally a week away!! does not matter when you buy, something will beat it 6 months from now. you can't enjoy your pc if you're always worried about what someone else might be buying tomorrow.

 

[vMax]

Boy this is a tough one...yes you have new CPU's and GPU's not far of and probably by August things will kick of...

Ryzen 4th gen by end of year and RocketLake on the Intel side though rocket lake might go into q1 2021.

Personally there is a lot of performance available right now on the CPU side with AMD Ryzen in the 3700X and 3800X both 8 core 16 thread CPU's that are more than cost effective and will handle all your 3d/editing/rendering/encoding workloads and gaming.

On the Intel side the 10700K will provide the better gaming performance and also pretty much match the 3700X/3800X on productivity for your workloads but of course you pay a premium on the Intel side...With Intel Z490 motherboards at least they will work with the new Rocketlake CPU's and provide PCIe Gen 4...

As to GPU's you have a lot of power right now on the Nvidia side with the RTX's but the new Ampere GPU's are just around the corner, say September and the same with AMD...

Finally on the free motherboard side you will be locked in with 9th Gen on Intel with no upgrade path but the 9900K is a mighty CPU both for gaming and productivity but will cost an arm and a leg!! The 10700K is a better 9900K and reduced by nearly a 100 bucks!

I think it is worth waiting until September/October when everything shakes outs with the new launches, especially Ryzen Gen 4 and at least you will know for sure what will be available.

 

[vMax]

I also agree with the points above as there is always something new around the corner but if your systems is still workable then wait, if not and it is causing issues, then buy now as you will get a lot of performance for your money especially as compared to 5 years ago...by a huge amount.

Depends on budget of course!

 

[King Dranzer]

Nope. Definitely wait. It is only 2-3months of wait and you get far superior performance. Purchasing a PC which you want to last long with hardware which is going to be replaced in few months and for hardware whose production stopped is a bad decision.

I can only agree with above comments for CPUs. But when it comes to GPU it is worth waiting. In a long time most of the well known tech-reviewers are recommending their viewers and consumers to hold off the purchase as it is completely worth it.

I would only recommend going with the build if gaming or 3D workload or any resource heavy workload is not your main usage. Or you plan to use it for something like Music Production or other lite workload like for office or general usage.

Your main usage being 3D Rendering and related workload. I highly recommend waiting for next gen Ryzen which AMD announced Multiple times to be released in Q4 and not being delayed. And also get upcoming RTX3000 series GPU from NVIDIA which is rumored to have biggest generational performance jump.

It is definitely worth waiting.

 

[GNTSquid]

There is always something newer and better a few months away. There is always Buyer's Remorse as well. Buy what you need when you need it.

Of course there's always something better, but it isn't always a format/socket [?] update. DDR4 has been around a few years now, same with the 2000 series video cards. This just happens to be a year when things are changing in bigger ways. A couple years ago I could have got a system and known that DDR5 wasn't coming in a few months or that the 3000 series cards from nVidia was about to be released.
Thats why I'm asking because if this new stuff to be announced soon is that much better I can wait.

I think it is worth waiting until September/October when everything shakes outs with the new launches, especially Ryzen Gen 4 and at least you will know for sure what will be available.

I think thats a good idea. Waiting will be hard but better in the long run.

As an aside since you mentioned it, I haven't used an AMD processor since I had an ATI video card. Is the difference between them and intel processors that dramatic when it comes to games?

 

[King Dranzer]

Of course there's always something better, but it isn't always a format/socket [?] update. DDR4 has been around a few years now, same with the 2000 series video cards. This just happens to be a year when things are changing in bigger ways. A couple years ago I could have got a system and known that DDR5 wasn't coming in a few months or that the 3000 series cards from nVidia was about to be released.
Thats why I'm asking because if this new stuff to be announced soon is that much better I can wait.


I think thats a good idea. Waiting will be hard but better in the long run.

As an aside since you mentioned it, I haven't used an AMD processor since I had an ATI video card. Is the difference between them and intel processors that dramatic when it comes to games?

That RTX3000 series is rumored to have very big performance jump of at-least 50%-60% in the worst case or let say minimum guaranteed expectation.

Coming to AMD Ryzen vs Intel for gaming only the newly launched Intel CPUs out perform year old Ryzen by 10% and newly refreshed Ryzen XT by 5-6%. But when it comes to productive workload specially CPU intensive Multi-core workload which you will benefit from. Year old AMD Ryzen is ahead of new Intel CPUs by good 30-50% which is a very huge difference. The Upcoming Ryzen 4000 series will either perform equally or even better than the new Intel CPUs for games but that is not real deal breaker. The major jump you will see is in Productive workload. The gap will grow even larger between Intel and Ryzen making Ryzen the obvious option for many.

 

[Math Geek]

every single release is "rumored" to be a MASSIVE WORLD CHANGING improvement. however if you look, the gains are pretty consistent. why are the rumors out there? just for this reason, to keep you waiting and not buying what the competition has today that will do the job. don't buy AMD cause intel has something that might come out in 2 years that will be better. don't buy amd, cause nvidia might be better 6 months from now or a year or whatever.......

wait if you wish and then come back and complain that prices are higher than you want them to be, gains were not as agood as "rumored", stock is hard to find right after the release and so on and so on. it's literally the same for every single release from any company EVER.

 

[grimfox]

Normally, I would agree with @Wolfshadw but right now you have a confluence of new GPUs and new CPUs coming in the next few months. At the very least those will push the cost of the current gen stuff down so if there isn't a major bump in performance then you at least get a better deal on proven hardware. There's also a supply problem right now causing prices to baloon, which may improve as the rest of the world reopens having "recovered" from CV19.

 

[King Dranzer]

every single release is "rumored" to be a MASSIVE WORLD CHANGING improvement. however if you look, the gains are pretty consistent. why are the rumors out there? just for this reason, to keep you waiting and not buying what the competition has today that will do the job. don't buy AMD cause intel has something that might come out in 2 years that will be better. don't buy amd, cause nvidia might be better 6 months from now or a year or whatever.......

wait if you wish and then come back and complain that prices are higher than you want them to be, gains were not as agood as "rumored", stock is hard to find right after the release and so on and so on. it's literally the same for every single release from any company EVER.

I think going only flat 30% up in performance and going up by good 50-60% at minimum there is a difference. It has been 4Yrs since we have seen a jump like that and that is a long wait. Next the Ray-tracing performance is set to be at-least twice as good and have extremely minimal hit on fps unlike big hit on Turing series. If OP were here in 2019 do you think I would have recommended him to wait a year for the release. Definitely not as you can roll back and check I listed lot many build recommendations. But at this point it is waste of money.

Prices will definitely be higher. But by 10-15% unless you can find me sub $1000 RTX2080Ti or sub $600 RTX2080 /2080Super. You cannot. They are currently priced at their launch price and even if new GPUs roll out with 10-15% price increase they will still have far superior price to performance ratio.

 

[Flayed]

I'm not sure waiting will help with prices and stock levels as those could easily get worse

 

[larsv8]

If your current setup works, Id wait. Q4 2020 is going to be awesome with next generation AMD chips and NVIDIA cards. Probably 20-30% increase in performance over today's stuff.

 

[King Dranzer]

If your current setup works, Id wait. Q4 2020 is going to be awesome with next generation AMD chips and NVIDIA cards. Probably 20-30% increase in performance over today's stuff.

Not 20-30% it is 50-60% increase. That is why it is highly recommended to wait and not purchase it right now.

 

[Phaaze88]

"Is it better to wait for new hardware, or go for it now?"
Yes.

But no, seriously, it depends. Some good points were already made.

I can tell you one thing for sure, pricing on the older Intel and Nvidia stuff will not drop. It'll go up, both retail and 2nd hand - they'll try and reference the retail price as an excuse to gouge their own price.

If you're still unsure...
Whichever move you do make, be absolutely sure you won't regret it and are happy with it.

 

[madmatt30]

What components are you actually running now?

That should influence your decision above anything else.

Buy what you need for the performance you need when you need to.

CPU wise, there are not really going to be any great shake ups soon, definitely not from Intel and I'm fairly certain any new cpu's from AMD will have a fairly small incremental performance increase.

Gpu wise that may be different but it may be worth at least part upgrading your current system at this current time.

Bear in mind a current $160 ryzen 3600 has better performance than a $400+ intel cpu from 5 years ago.

CPU wise when it comes to price/performance has never been better than it is at this current time.

 

[GNTSquid]

What components are you actually running now?

Motherboard: MSI z97 Gaming 7 uses an 1150 socket
CPU: i7 4790 3.6GHz
RAM: Kingston Hyper Fury X 16gb 1600 DDR3
Video Card: MSI nVidia GeForce 970 GTX

for work its okay. It shows its age but I can get most things done at tolerable speed.

"Is it better to wait for new hardware, or go for it now?"
Yes.

Normally I would probably have an easier time deciding when to upgrade, but with this free motherboard being a 300 series chipset using the 1151 socket, and the new 400 series chipset using the 1200 socket it has me hesitant.
I would think going with the 300 series chipset would hinder any ability to upgrade in any worthwhile way in the future. Assuming newer stuff keeps coming out for the 1200 socket. It would be locking myself in to hardware thats maybe at the end of its run.
Same with RAM. The system I use now runs DDR3 RAM. It wasn't until maybe about a year later DDR4 came out, but I couldn't upgrade to DDR4 because the hardware sockets are incompatible. If DDR5 is about to be released in the coming months why not wait and see what its like? I can still go to DDR4 if needed.

My current system is old enough that anything I buy thats even somewhat new is going to be an upgrade for me. If I can wait and see what Q4 holds I can decide from there and either go for the new new stuff or the stuff thats been around a year or so.

Price currently isnt at the front of my mind, that will come when I figure out what parts are available. I have enough set aside that I can afford to look at what the new stuff might be.

 

[Phaaze88]

@GNTSquid
1)You got a 9900K capable motherboard for free... you can sell it, or put a 9900K in it.

2)The 400 series boards don't offer that much more over the 300 models.
-New networking controllers
-Rumored - not yet confirmed - support for PCIe 4.0, which has only proved to be useful for storage on workstations, photo editing tasks, or the like
-Faster USB support
If any of that is even useful for ya... ¯\(ツ)/¯
If anything else, the cooler mounting hardware didn't change between the 2.

3)Intel has made it a thing to only support 2 generations per socket, and there was a legit reason behind it, besides greed. AMD has found out the hard way with their AM4 socket; expect AM5 to not run as long as the previous did.
You'll always be 'behind' regardless of which you go with, so don't think too much on it.

4)DDR5 is going to be stupid expensive when it comes out, just like the previous did. I, at least, am not going to be in a hurry to snatch that up.

 

[King Dranzer]

Motherboard: MSI z97 Gaming 7 uses an 1150 socket
CPU: i7 4790 3.6GHz
RAM: Kingston Hyper Fury X 16gb 1600 DDR3
Video Card: MSI nVidia GeForce 970 GTX

for work its okay. It shows its age but I can get most things done at tolerable speed.

Normally I would probably have an easier time deciding when to upgrade, but with this free motherboard being a 300 series chipset using the 1151 socket, and the new 400 series chipset using the 1200 socket it has me hesitant.
I would think going with the 300 series chipset would hinder any ability to upgrade in any worthwhile way in the future. Assuming newer stuff keeps coming out for the 1200 socket. It would be locking myself in to hardware thats maybe at the end of its run.
Same with RAM. The system I use now runs DDR3 RAM. It wasn't until maybe about a year later DDR4 came out, but I couldn't upgrade to DDR4 because the hardware sockets are incompatible. If DDR5 is about to be released in the coming months why not wait and see what its like? I can still go to DDR4 if needed.

My current system is old enough that anything I buy thats even somewhat new is going to be an upgrade for me. If I can wait and see what Q4 holds I can decide from there and either go for the new new stuff or the stuff thats been around a year or so.

Price currently isnt at the front of my mind, that will come when I figure out what parts are available. I have enough set aside that I can afford to look at what the new stuff might be.

That system you have is fine. It can hold on for few more months.

The New 400 series Motherboards comes with PCIE gen 4 which all the upcoming GPUs will have. It is locked with the Intel 10000 series CPUs. But when 11000 series CPUs release it will be unlocked. Sell that MSI board.

DDR5 RAM. Nope it will not be releasing any time soon. The upcoming Ryzen 4000 series as well as next gen Intel CPUs(launching next year) will be using DDR4 RAM. The Ryzen 5000 series which will be releasing late next year may have DDR5 support and a completely different pin design and new layout ending the AM4 socket support any further.

Definitely wait be no need to go with old stuff. As you are waiting add as much as you can to the budget to have to make least compromises while purchasing new PC.

 

[King Dranzer]

@GNTSquid
-Rumored - not yet confirmed - support for PCIe 4.0, which has only proved to be useful for storage on workstations, photo editing tasks, or the like

That is not rumored. PCIe 4.0 is implemented into 400 series boards but is limited or say locked due to CPU limitations. It is Intel 10000 series CPUs not supporting PCIe 4.0. When the 11000 series CPUs release they will support PCIe 4.0 and it will be unlocked.

@GNTSquid
4)DDR5 is going to be stupid expensive when it comes out, just like the previous did. I, at least, am not going to be in a hurry to snatch that up.

It is not going to be implemented any time soon. Lets say most probably Ryzen 5000 series which will be releasing in second half of 2021 may have it implemented for the first time.