Buy now or wait?

[bottomrungho]

I am planning to build a new gaming rig between now and January. I have seen some posts saying to wait until after Christmas before buying components. Is there that much to be saved by waiting? More specifically, given the standard list of components recommended by this forum (E6600 or E6850 processor, P35 motherboard, etc,). I am willing to hold on until the end of the month but I do not want to be pissed off when the after-Christmas sales turn out to net me a minimal savings, especially when I can be playing all the new games over Christmas break.

 

[rgeist554]

I would go for the E6750 over the E6600 or the E6850. They both cost too much for the performance they offer.

Anyways, prices are pretty low right now and whether they get lower after Christmas or not is a gamble. You probably won't pay more after the holidays, but you need to decide whether your patient enough to have the chance to get things cheaper.

I don't think anyone but the retailers can give you a 100% positive answer on whether or not there will be sales... so take that as you will. Personally, I would just build now. Most of the new, "juicy" parts probably won't hit stores until February or later.

*edit* Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but the E6600 is $230ish @ 2.4Ghz while the E6750 is $189 @ 2.66Ghz.

Also - the E6750 comes out faster on the carts found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247046-31-wait#t1763506

 

[zenmaster]

The E2160 and the E6750 are sweet spot chips at the moment.
Both can OC really well.
The E2160 cheap but will beat the E6850 at stock if it's OC'd.

The E6750 can clock higher and has alot more cache.
If you have the money, this is a good deal, but don't skip on a GPU to get this CPU over the E2160.

Two new NVIDIA cards are coming out.

The 8800GT 256mb card is just hitting stores for about $210-$220 so it's a sweet price.

The 8800GTS Rev 2 should be out anytime now and will be a nice card for about $300.

I would prefer both to the 8800GT 512mb.
The original 8800GT runs a bit warm for the cooler.
The 256Mb version is slightly cooler due to less RAM generating heat.

The 8800GTS will have a dual-slot cooler which is something the 8800GT 512mb should have had to start.

 

[bottomrungho]

I am not so much interested in a guarantee that suppliers will drop their prices after Christmas as I am in historical experience with post-Christmas sales on popular items. I can see them dropping prices to dump overstocked inventory but if these items are moving already, do they typically drop anyway?

I also understand that new releases will typically drop prices on older models so we can leave that out of the discussion unless there is something imminent (like new graphics cards coming out in February) that will drive prices down.

I ask these questions because I have been out of the computer component buying mode for about 4 years (the last time I built a computer) and I do not have a feel for price fluctuations around high-demand times (like Christmas).

Thanks for the replies so far.

 

[chookman]

Id wait simply for the newer stuff to come out... penryn, new gts etc.