Best time to buy?

Matter of fact, everyone seems to be saying that it may be prudent to wait until INTEL Sandy Bridge architecture scales to enthusiast mobos.

I'm just guessing that April thru August, of next year, will be a period where the next-wave solutions become available (street-priced) while all of these great X58 and 890 parts will become dirt-cheap, to clear the channel.

But even in February, after the very first notebooks and "Sandy-Lite" platforms are introduced (at a premium), the prices of AM3s and lesser INTEL parts should start to erode.

And, then, some folks are more concerned with just using an adequate system to attain a particular result ... i.e. ... If you just want a PC based cash-register or an office system ... who cares?

= My cell phone is a cell phone =

Actually I saw better sale prices before Black Friday ay most of the larger E-tailer sites like ZipZoomFly, Newegg, and TigerDirect. For example, the Intel X25-M 120GB SSD was first listed for sale on 11/23 for 179.99 and then on Black Friday for it's current price of 229.99. Also saw a few GTX 460's with the same price reversal.

You may see better prices with the After-Christmas-Sales-A-Thon, depending on how retailers make out this shopping season.

Generally speaking, the best time to buy is always when you have the money to afford the best performing parts that are available at the time. There are always cheaper, better performing components that will be sold tomorrow or next week.

+1 ^

Yeah ... Let your project-output govern your budget ... then ... just get what you need to do the job, and get you thru the next 2 years ... Just don't buy a "dead" (older) socket/chipset ... Get a socket that has forward mobility, and a CPU that has come down to Earth, in pricing ... splurge, a bit, on memory and, if you can only afford one (smallish) SSD, then get a 90GB Vertex2, for boot/sys/browser and common apps.

=burp= ("That one got away" -- Terrance Hill)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mzngPnsWAE