Worth Waiting for the price to lower?

[Brynadinaling]

I'm in the process of purchasing and building something of a Midrig, the specs are as follows

Corsair CX-600 PSU (£52) (already have)
Casecom CS-13 Full tower case (£32) (already have)
GTX660 graphics card (£168)
Pioneer Blu ray drive (£60)
Pioneer DVDRW (£19)
8gb Corsair Vengeance LP (£42)
Samsung 64gb SSD (£72)
Western Digital HDD 7200rpm 1tb (£68)
(insert cooler here, probably a Noctua NH-D14 which is around £70)
Asus p8z77 - LX ATX motherboard. (£85)
i5 (either 2500k or 3570k) (both £165)

I'm aware that the next gen of intel "haswell" processors is coming out around june, as well as rumours of the start of the Nvidia 700 series coming out in march. My question is, as I'm buying these parts steadily as I can afford them, is it worth buying the processor (lets say i5 2500k) now at £165 or waiting till june for the new gen to push the price down? the same goes for the gtx660.

Bear in mind saving for this build by saving £55 every fortnight so never mind time scale, and I've just got a tax rebate so I can either afford the processor now, the Graphics card now, or the motherboard, RAM, dvd drive and CPU cooler now.

 

[FinneousPJ]

Save up and when you can finally afford to buy check what's available. Maybe they have released new stuff, maybe they haven't.

 

[Brynadinaling]

In my expected time scale Id rather purchase it as I go along to keep me motivated over the coming months, else If I just hoarded the money I'd probably just go and buy a f**k off massive TV

 

[FinneousPJ]

That's not the best way to do it.

 

[sizzling]

With buying piece by piece it could be a while until you have a machine you can boot up? What would you do if one of the parts you bought first had a fault, you might have dificulty sending it back. Best option really is save up first or it might cost you a few £ more but there are plenty of suppliers who offer zero % interest on purchases of x months if you spend more than £y. Alternatively if in the UK get a zero % credit card, load are off 9 - 12 months 0% on purchases, you just need to ensure you pay it off in time.

 

[Brynadinaling]

Hold up here man,your talking banking and loans, thats not my bag.

I suppose I'll just save up and buy it all.

 

[trogdor796]

Buy everything at once. Then you don't have half your components when something new you want comes out(thus rendering them incompatible).

As for the waiting game, if you start waiting you will always be waiting. There is ALWAYS something more rumored/announce/coming out soon. If you wait for that then the next thing will be rumored and you will want to wait again.

Save up your money, and buy what is out at the time when you have enough. Like you mentioned, Haswell is due out in June-ish, so if you don't have enough to then then get Haswell. As for Nvidia, AMD just delayed their 8000 series GPU's until Q4 2013. The only officially announced Nvidia gpu to come out is Titan, which will likely perform in between the 680 and 690, probably closer to 690. All while costing around $800, so not very practical for your budget. When the 700 series come is anyone's guess. I'd estimate by April/May we will hear something.

If you don't go haswell, get the 3570k instead of the 2500k. If they are the same price no reason to go for older tech.

 

[Brynadinaling]

Despite my aware of the difference between Heat & temperature, I'm wary of the 3570k high running temperatures, and its 10% performance increase can be met easily by a slight overclock on the 2500k, and I'm interested in the sandy bridges stable overclocking potential (Although I'd probably only take it up to around 4.4ghz as a maximum for heavy games cause I'd rather not adjust the voltage and shorten the chips lifespan).

The fact is I'm not waiting for the next gen of tech to buy, I'm hoping the next gen will bring this gen down in price. But either way I'm not going to update this machine for at least 5 years when its built.

Thank you for the information about the Nvidia releases, I had done most of my recent Nvidia reading recently about Project Shield and I was not aware of the Titan, only the extremely effecient 650e.

I'm also hoping this machine will at least match the new next gen of consoles, or above, I suppose I will find out mid febuary whether this is the case (PS4 unvieling most likely)

 

[logainofhades]

I really wouldn't bother waiting on prices to come down if this is true.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Radeon-GeForce-Delay-GPU-Next-Generation,20838.html

 

[trogdor796]

The 3570k doesn't have bad temperatures. It's true that it runs SLIGHTLY hotter than the 2500k, but if you get an aftermarket cooler like the Hyper 212 for $25, you will never need to worry about temps. At stock voltage, you are guaranteed to hit 4.2Ghz, which will be as fast as a 2500k running at 4.5Ghz. All while using less power.

Video cards come down in price when the next generation is released, but CPU's do not, they remain the same, maybe lowering slightly(were talking like $15 here).

Yeah, Titan should be unveiled soon, but so far there's no word on the 700 series.

Any kind of Intel i5 and 660/7870 will be more powerful than next gen consoles. They will be outdated when they release, as always. However, consoles get better optimization over the years which is why they end up getting the performance they do.

Best of luck on your system, be sure to ask here if you got any more questions

 

[Brynadinaling]

Ok thank you for the advice, I shall research more into the 3570k.

I'm happy it would be more powerful than the consoles although would you not say Nvidia's constant driver updates for specific modern games would also keep up with the optimisation of the Console games? I am an Nvidia person say you may of guessed.

 

[trogdor796]

Yeah Nvidia does do optimizations, but I'm saying that the consoles run an lighter operating system and can make more use of their hardware than PC's since they are all the same, the developers can get more and more out of the hardware over the years.

That's why consoles can last so long with old hardware.

 

[Brynadinaling]

Ah, I see.

Although the point could be argued that with the many features that more recent consoles have to incorporate (online multiplayer, TV & films streaming, social network access, Multimedia functions including blu ray, cloud usage, rumours of constant internet requirement ect ect)that the operating system of recent consoles is getting heavier.

Its too much if you ask me, the convenience of it is detrimental to human behavior.

I miss the simplicity of messing around with my Master System or Gameboy and just enjoying the game.

 

[jaguarskx]

Intel CPU prices generally do not become cheaper over time, at least in the US.

Prior to the release of Ivy Bridge, the Core i5-2500k was selling for $225. After the release of Ivy Bridge, the Core i5-2500k dropped down to $220. The Core i5-2500k has basically stayed at that price every since. That excludes a sale and promo codes.

 

[Brynadinaling]

Thats about £140 which is at least cheaper than it is over here

 

[jaguarskx]

Well baked into that price are possible import duties as well as a VAT tax. Both of which you cannot avoid in the UK.

Ultimately the price is determined by the retailer. You may find that there may be a sale every now and then then after Haswell has been released to move some older Ivy Bridge CPUs. After all, if you have a large stock of CPUs that no one wants to buy because newer tech has been released, then they are just going to sit in the warehouse taking up valuable space for possible items than will actually sell. Thus, having a sale can move old inventory to make room for new inventory.

 

[Brynadinaling]

I did hear that intel themselves set the prices, and that only "microcentre" in the US was giving away i5's to walk in costumers for any less than the online price. Its certainly true in the UK, Amazon, Scan, Ebuyer, Overlockers all have the same price.

 

[jaguarskx]

Intel sell trays of CPUs at a set price. It is up to retailer to decide how much to actually sell it for.

MicroCenter sometimes sell CPUs at a deep discount (basically at a loss) in order to attract customers into the store and hope that the customers will buy more than just the CPU so that they can make money.