When can we expect to see deals?

[teddymines]

I'm holding off on putting a system together, because I want to see prices drop a bit more. Strangely, I'm not seeing the post-holiday deals I expected in computer hardware. I guess there are a few factors:

Hard drives: flooding in Thailand, expect to see prices drop in the next month? Should be HALF of what they are!

Rebates: they are mostly by chance

Monitors: keep slowly dropping as LCD in general (e.g., TV) saturates the market, maybe some brands are still milking the holiday buyers who cannot wait?

CPU: still holding for the i5 2500k to drop a little more! Intel must want this to be a good quarter as far as sales go?


Antec Three Hundred + BP430 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply $90

ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $125

Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 3000 ... $220

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL $30

Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $130

LITE-ON SK-1788/BS 2-Tone PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard $8

ASUS VW246H Glossy Black 24" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor, VESA Compatible $200

Logitech M305 Black 1 x Wheel USB RF Wireless Mouse $30


Total on 12/28=$833. I'd like to see this down around $700 before I pull the trigger. Any bets on when this might happen? I'm not in a "hurry" and can wait...just want to know how long!

 

[nebelwerfer41]

As I found, it is going to vary by vendor and brand. You're going to have to play the market and purchase a bit at a time. It took me four separate purchase from two different vendors to get the lowest prices and rebates on the parts I wanted.

To kick it off, after I made my purchases, I recieved promo codes from NewEgg for about half of the items I already bought.

From your list, Windows OS was on sale for 10% off on Newegg on 12/26 (one day only). I saw your RAM (8 GB version) and CPU listed on a Newegg promo with discount codes. You could also get different brands of MOBO and HDD from Newegg with discount codes. I ended up getting my case (Corsair 500R) and SDD (Patriot Pyro) from TigerDirect because they had slightly lower prices after rebates.

I found the add-on program "Invisible Hand" to be a great asset when shopping for my components. It is a plug-in for your browser that automatically searches for lower prices from other vendors when you go to a product page.

 

[blazorthon]

Hard drives probably won't go down in price any time soon or if they do it will be slowly, not almost overnight like the price increase was... I watched the 1TB WD Caviar Green SATA 6.0Gb/s drive go from about $69.99 to about $139.99 overnight and it really annoyed me finding out that waiting one more day meant I couldn't afford the drive.

I won't expect prices on CPUs to fall significantly any time soon but Sandy Bridge will be cheaper by the time Ivy Bridge comes out even if only a little cheaper. AMD's CPUs will probably also go down in price at that time.

Video card prices change the most when new video cards are coming out so they will undoubtedly drop for each level of performance when the Radeon 7000 series comes out and possibly again when Nvidia's 600 series come out.

Memory prices probably can't get much lower, if any lower than they are now. I don't expect 16GB 1600MHz kits for $20 any time soon.

 

[teddymines]

As I found, it is going to vary by vendor and brand. You're going to have to play the market and purchase a bit at a time. It took me four separate purchase from two different vendors to get the lowest prices and rebates on the parts I wanted.

To kick it off, after I made my purchases, I recieved promo codes from NewEgg for about half of the items I already bought.

From your list, Windows OS was on sale for 10% off on Newegg on 12/26 (one day only). I saw your RAM (8 GB version) and CPU listed on a Newegg promo with discount codes. You could also get different brands of MOBO and HDD from Newegg with discount codes. I ended up getting my case (Corsair 500R) and SDD (Patriot Pyro) from TigerDirect because they had slightly lower prices after rebates.

I found the add-on program "Invisible Hand" to be a great asset when shopping for my components. It is a plug-in for your browser that automatically searches for lower prices from other vendors when you go to a product page.

This is helpful information. Installed Invisible Hand and already found a few deals.

Where are these Newegg discount codes found?

 

[nebelwerfer41]

This is helpful information. Installed Invisible Hand and already found a few deals.

Where are these Newegg discount codes found?

I think you have to sign up for their weekly newsletters and create an account on their site. The codes only work for the account that the codes are sent to. Also, the reduced price only shows up in your shopping cart after you enter the codes in a field at the bottom. They make you work for it!

 

[teddymines]

Best answer selected by teddymines.

 

[Phamas]

I read an article somewhere saying dont expect HDD prices to go back to normal anytime soon

 

[teddymines]

I read an article somewhere saying dont expect HDD prices to go back to normal anytime soon

I'm not the only one who didn't know anything about the flooding in Thailand. I just asked a few co-workers (we're all in IT) about it and they said they didn't know. I watch the news on TV and check online news a lot, but didn't see any press on the subject. Only when looking at hard drive prices did I learn about this flood and its impact.

I'll wait 4-5 months and see what happens.