Any reason to think the SB release *increases* component costs?

Well, the Sandy Bridge that will be released this January (LGA1155) is made as a replacment for the Clarkdale (32nm LGA1156) and Lynfield (45nm LGA1156) processors. You can bet these will drop in price. But the Bloomfield (45nm LGA1366) and Gulftown (32nm LGA1366) ones will stay at the same price...Their replacement ("Patsburg" platform, LGA2011) isn't due before the very end of Q4 2011 and Q1 2012.
So you can expect a drop in price (it has already begun) for the i3 and i5 processors, as well as all things related to the socket 1156 (which will stop to exist).
You can also expect the Sandy Bridge processors to cost as much, if not more, than the i3 and i5 when they first came out. The same thing applies to the motherboards and etc.
When the Patsburg processors will be released, their price will be as high (if not higher) than that of the Core i7 920 when it became available in 2008.

But anyway, that's what I think.

No. This theory is basically asking whether so many people will buy Sandy Bridge that they make China run out of components. Not going to happen. The only time you see price increases from retailers are when something's new and out of stock.

I don't see too many people scrambling to get the early Sandy Bridge just to have it. The initial processors are not going to be the great leap forward, and the people buying them will mostly be the same people who were going to replace their systems anyway. I'd expect a much bigger pent-up demand for Bulldozer (depending on the price, but AMD doesn't disappoint lately), not that that's going to have much effect either.

Keep in mind that the people who are tuned-in enough to even care about Sandy Bridge to the point that it would affect their upgrade schedule or purchasing decisions represent a very small percentage of the population. For every person who knows anything about system building, there are 10 people who buy their machines from Dell or HP and probably don't even know what CPU they have. Or for that matter, anything about their machine other than the salesperson told them it was "good for graphics." The enthusiast segment only influences the market for the new component itself, and even then only for a short time.

Ok first of all, to the last poster, Intel processors do not come from China. LOL

Intel typically doesn't do much price dropping when something new comes out.

The Q6600 dropped $10 then went up $20. The i7-920, pretty much the same thing.

Q8400's and E8400's are still going for $170. The Q9650 is $340 on Newegg. The dual core Celerons have been the same price since they were released.

I don't see many people giving up their i5's and i7's for SB. Just people buying a whole new system. So I don't think the demand will be stellar.

Except that his theory was about other components, not processors, LOL. Read the fricking question.

How do you know he didn't mean cpu components?? Yeah....anyways, I answered the question. Did you ?

What exactly was the point of your post again?