Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now Is a Bad Idea, Part 3: Bad Timing

[Julio Franco]

In the first part of this series we looked at DDR4 memory, then in part two focused on graphics cards. Those were the two big ones for sure. For the final installment of our series, we're looking at the whole picture. We're not just talking about other components but the product cycle and timing for building a new gaming PC in early 2018.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1564-build-a-pc-bad-idea-bad-timing/

 

[TrexAverell]

Great thanks for this series, the kind of why we're coming here everyday (and not just because we all can't wait Upgrades Giveaway Season 2 )

 

[Potato Judge]

Ok. I'll just sit tight for now and make do with my old-school potato while I wait for "Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now Is a Good Idea" counterpart.

 

[ET3D]

The 'not a good time' argument is pretty much always true. There's always something better on the horizon. How much it matters depends on what you're planning to buy and how much you care to save. Waiting to save $40 on an Intel motherboard may not be worthwhile, especially if PCB prices are expected to go up.

In the current market waiting doesn't always pay off. I put off buying RAM when it was $140 for 16GB because it felt too expensive (after having bought 16GB for $70 a year before), but it's even more expensive now. A GeForce 1050 Ti at $200 looks like a good deal right now.

On the AMD side it may be worth waiting for the next gen, but I think that the 'not a good time' here is just the same old one, nothing special about current market conditions. Ryzen 2 will offer some performance increase, people just need to decide if it's worth waiting 3 months, and possibly paying more. That's traditionally been the case for PC building. There's always the 'damn, I could have waited 2 months and saved $100', just like there are cases when you think 'that wasn't worth the wait'.

 

[Robertrogue]

I have been on a "hold" for building my new PC for a long while now. Coupled cost and need has been the issue. I play games nearly 20% of what I used to now. My AMD FX6300 paired with my R9 270 has been lack luster at best when trying to game with, but the 4K for movies and Netflix has been great so far. I am waiting for an issue to make me "have" to rebuild and I will upgrade. Until then I hope pricing and options for the right build are great when "that" time is upon me. Also, maybe I can get into the next "Upgrade My PC" so I can kick some daddy's money millennial ***. Happy Hunting!

 

[GreyFoxx]

The 'not a good time' argument is pretty much always true. There's always something better on the horizon. How much it matters depends on what you're planning to buy and how much you care to save. Waiting to save $40 on an Intel motherboard may not be worthwhile, especially if PCB prices are expected to go up.

In the current market waiting doesn't always pay off. I put off buying RAM when it was $140 for 16GB because it felt too expensive (after having bought 16GB for $70 a year before), but it's even more expensive now. A GeForce 1050 Ti at $200 looks like a good deal right now.

On the AMD side it may be worth waiting for the next gen, but I think that the 'not a good time' here is just the same old one, nothing special about current market conditions. Ryzen 2 will offer some performance increase, people just need to decide if it's worth waiting 3 months, and possibly paying more. That's traditionally been the case for PC building. There's always the 'damn, I could have waited 2 months and saved $100', just like there are cases when you think 'that wasn't worth the wait'.

Bear in mind that RAM is up £50 (for 16GB), GPU's are up £100 & SSD's are up roughly £10, so what would normally get you a 250GB SSD, 16GB + 1070, you're getting what 120GB SSD, 8GB + 1060?

Edit: I do however agree with the "something always better is on the horizon" statement.

 

[OcelotRex]

The 'not a good time' argument is pretty much always true. There's always something better on the horizon.

While I can agree that there's always something better on the horizon I would say parts 1&2 make a clear case now is not time to do anything that would require purchasing RAM or a GPU. Like with your RAM purchase I bought a MSI GTX 1060 GB Gaming X for $229 with a $10 MIR in March of 2017 - That card is $300+ more expensive now.

One solution I've seen is looking to prebuilt systems on shelves at stores like Best Buy. I've seen some Ryzen 5/7 machines with RX580s for $700-800 which is a great deal if you need to buy today.

I'd also say timing is the most important factor. Purchasing when retailers are unloading stock before a new launch is a great time to get CPUs at places like Microcenter. Ryzen launch week saw Intel prices at near their lowest. Black Friday is also a great time to get some of the lowest prices of the year. I'd imagine back-to-school shopping would be a close second.

 

[Xabi Granja]

Yeah... I'm glad I upgraded my PC in March 2016, because it's all been downhill ever since. I got an i5 Kaby Lake, 8GB DDR4 and a GTX 1060, all at MSRP. In those days, I was already happy to pay the actual real price as discounts were an illusion while the market was getting more expensive. My failure was not thinking memory prices would get SO bad - I should've just spent the extra $50 to get a total of 16GB, but now here we are: I've made my peace with staying at 8GB until prices go back to normal.

For now I'm back to 2016 mentality: discounts are a fantasy, but I'm not paying a cent over MSRP. Every friend that has asked me about maybe building a PC I've advised to sit on it for a while if they can. Buying know means accepting you're going to overpay for many components. I'm not even a fraction of OK with that, but some people are. Price doesn't bother me, the value proposition does - if something costs more than the manufacturer says it should... it should be a no-go for all of us. If we all refused to buy at inflated prices, stock with rebuild, you'll see how fast prices go back to normal.

 

[dirtyferret]

I can see a good amount of people holding off on building or updating their PCs and simply getting a gaming console. The GTX 1060 6GB seems to cost as much as one of the new consoles...assuming you can find the GTX 1060.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I just got an Alienware 17 fully loaded for $3000 with a GTX 1080 inside. In fact, I got three of them - but before you call me out - let me say that it was part of a grant to teach VR development. I got 3 Oculus Rifts in the grant as well.

Personally, I prefer buying desktops off-the-shelf every number of years.
I typically buy the highest-end $1000 desktop and pair it to monitors I bring home from work. I have four LA1905wg right now. Eventually I want to get one of those large, curved gaming monitors. If you buy a desktop - say an HP with a Core i7, SSD, GTX GPU, etc...you are likely to get volume store discounts. If you want to upgrade the GPU later - you can. Upgrade the Power supply. Upgrade the RAM.

Even the highest end games right now don't demand more than a Core i7, 16GB of RAM and a GTX 1070 unless you are truly pushing for 4K resolutions at the absolute highest settings.

What has rely thrown the market off is coin mining. Not till now have people walked into the store buying so many GPU at once.

As for CRUCIAL...I love Crucial MX because unlike the other makers, Crucial gives you 525GB instead of 500 or 512. Windows 10 takes up 20GB on its own. I am disappointed that they stopped making the 750GB version which I bought for a laptop for less than $190.

 

[Vulcanproject]

There are 'good times' to buy though, just right now is a bad one. Yes there is always something new around the corner, yes you can wait forever for it.

When you have a little knowledge about rough releases and cycles then you can identify a good time to buy, or at least a better time.

It's best policy then to buy when something is newly out, if there is no foreseeable competition soon. For example I bought a Pascal card when it launched summer 2016. 18 months later it's still current, worth about what I paid for it and I feel I have gotten my money's worth in all that time. I'm cool with it now to drop in price and be replaced with something better.

If you buy graphics now, you have less than 6 months before it'll be replaced most likely and dive in value.

Same for CPUs. If you buy a Ryzen now, you may regret it in just a couple months when Ryzen refresh arrives. But if you wait and buy then, you'll probably get a deal on the old parts or have your new one at least a year before it's replaced with something else.

Try and buy at the start of generations, their first half, not the second half or near the end. You'll have the latest tech for longer and when it is finally replaced with new gear it will feel like you have gotten your money's worth and good value.

I think that is really what everyone really wants to feel, whether they spend $500 on a CPU or $50.

 

[Gabriel Pike]

Thanks so much to Techspot and Hardware Unboxed for another great series! I was thinking of biting the bullet for another 8GB DDR4 RAM but going to keep my fingers crossed and wait after watching and reading.

 

[TomSEA]

Great series, Techspot - thanks!

As others have mentioned, you can hold off forever to wait for the "perfect" time to build. But with the artificial high prices due to crypto-mining and potential new generation releases; in the 20+ years I've been building computers, I don't recall a more obvious "DO NOT BUILD" time-period than right now.

 

[Tgard]

Great series, Techspot - thanks!

As others have mentioned, you can hold off forever to wait for the "perfect" time to build. But with the artificial high prices due to crypto-mining and potential new generation releases; in the 20+ years I've been building computers, I don't recall a more obvious "DO NOT BUILD" time-period than right now.

+1
In 25+ years I cannot recall seeing it this bad. I used to pay more by % for things than I do now and it was ok; but with the cheap prices of the last few years we have gotten spoiled.

Example: I usually upgrade/build around the 3 year mark and my builds used to cost $1500-$1800 and then they were just $1500 and my last upgrade which was pretty much a build except for the case was $1100 or so and that got me a decent gaming machine that would do whatever else I needed.

I also remember paying $300 for a 6 GB harddrive when they were new and what would $300 get you for storage right now? So prices went down on practically everything in the PC building world for a lot of years and I for one got pretty spoiled.

I don't really see an end in sight to these high prices on memory and graphics cards for any time in the foreseeable future. I am tempted to just bite the bullet and go ahead as I planned to rebuild about Novemberish. My system is still running OK, but when I see how fast my daughters new system (I built 7 months ago) encodes video and framerate on games, that green monster raises it's head and I have to try to keep it in check. I don't really NEED to rebuild but this is the longest I have used the same main computer since 1991

Just for another example of how we used to pay more, I remember building a system for a co-worker years ago built on the Pentium Pro processor(anyone else remember this no upgrade path processor) and she wanted me to spare no expense. With printer and all her system costs about $3000+ and while it was top of the line at that time it was nothing special. $3000 gets you a boutique computer nowadays. Prices have really been way down the last few years and that was a good thing!

 

[ShagnWagn]

If anything is going to bring down the PC gaming scene, it will be bitcoin miners. Pricing hardware out of the average person's hands will kill it.

 

[Danny101]

This series came 2 months too late as I already took the plunge. Aside from that, investing in a new updated build has, for me, never been a cheap prospect. Most of my builds are for present and past games that my last build couldn't touch.

 

[FreeBetaTester]

The 'not a good time' argument is pretty much always true. ....

Be it PC parts, cars, real estate, stocks, airfare, etc. timing the market has always been a hard problem. But to say "not a good time" is "pretty much always true" is really failing to understand market history, trends, and observations of statistical anomalies.

Nobody begrudges the guy that bought the Sandybridge CPU for a build back in 2011, even if they can get something later for more performance at same or less money. The current situation with PC parts, GPU, Memory, SSD, and upcoming releases is confluence utterly terrible situation for the buyer. And it is more than just simple best bang for the buck at an instant, you actually want best bang for the buck over a time period.

 

[poohbear]

Very nice series and nicely timed! U guys should do more such series especially if the timing calls for it. Its sad to see the state of the PC market....2 years ago everyone said PC is dead, now it seems everyone and their cat wants to build one and the demand far exceeds the supply.

 

[poohbear]

Great series, Techspot - thanks!

As others have mentioned, you can hold off forever to wait for the "perfect" time to build. But with the artificial high prices due to crypto-mining and potential new generation releases; in the 20+ years I've been building computers, I don't recall a more obvious "DO NOT BUILD" time-period than right now.

+1
In 25+ years I cannot recall seeing it this bad. I used to pay more by % for things than I do now and it was ok; but with the cheap prices of the last few years we have gotten spoiled.

Example: I usually upgrade/build around the 3 year mark and my builds used to cost $1500-$1800 and then they were just $1500 and my last upgrade which was pretty much a build except for the case was $1100 or so and that got me a decent gaming machine that would do whatever else I needed.

I also remember paying $300 for a 6 GB harddrive when they were new and what would $300 get you for storage right now? So prices went down on practically everything in the PC building world for a lot of years and I for one got pretty spoiled.

I don't really see an end in sight to these high prices on memory and graphics cards for any time in the foreseeable future. I am tempted to just bite the bullet and go ahead as I planned to rebuild about Novemberish. My system is still running OK, but when I see how fast my daughters new system (I built 7 months ago) encodes video and framerate on games, that green monster raises it's head and I have to try to keep it in check. I don't really NEED to rebuild but this is the longest I have used the same main computer since 1991

Just for another example of how we used to pay more, I remember building a system for a co-worker years ago built on the Pentium Pro processor(anyone else remember this no upgrade path processor) and she wanted me to spare no expense. With printer and all her system costs about $3000+ and while it was top of the line at that time it was nothing special. $3000 gets you a boutique computer nowadays. Prices have really been way down the last few years and that was a good thing!

Totally agree. Bitcoin mining came out of left field! Irs just mental.

 

[ET3D]

While I can agree that there's always something better on the horizon I would say parts 1&2 make a clear case now is not time to do anything that would require purchasing RAM or a GPU.

I'm certainly not arguing with parts 1 and 2. It's just that part 3 doesn't seem convincing to me. Suppose you already have the GPU and RAM, would you wait more? Perhaps for Ryzen 2, but nothing else I can think of. Not sure waiting is more necessary than at any other point in time. Waiting often helps, but as RAM and GPU have proved, not always.

 

[Luay]

DDR4 and GDDR5 prices are up and there are only three manufacturers, Samsung, Micron and Hynix whom have intentionally kept production levels the same and ignored the rise in demand for RAM.

Then came the mining craze, and today we're hearing about copper shortage. What's the solution?

We need cheaper hardware. Why? To execute software programs that require powerful processing. Why?

The answer because programmers/developers are doing a disgusting job in creating inefficient and uninspired software programs, where information that isn't on your screen is still being processed in the background and slowing down your game. Maybe that's where the solution is.

If all these mediocre game creators can make their games look as good with less hardware power by thinking smart, creatively, resourcefully and out of the box, then they can be our last line of defense.

We need better programmers.

 

[Steve]

While I can agree that there's always something better on the horizon I would say parts 1&2 make a clear case now is not time to do anything that would require purchasing RAM or a GPU.

I'm certainly not arguing with parts 1 and 2. It's just that part 3 doesn't seem convincing to me. Suppose you already have the GPU and RAM, would you wait more? Perhaps for Ryzen 2, but nothing else I can think of. Not sure waiting is more necessary than at any other point in time. Waiting often helps, but as RAM and GPU have proved, not always.

If you already have GPU and RAM you didn't wait, so I don't get your point.

 

[fktech]

If money is no object then...

 

[ET3D]

If you already have GPU and RAM you didn't wait, so I don't get your point.

For example on the Reddit AMD sub there's currently someone who got a good deal on 32GB of DDR4 RAM and last year bought a GeForce 1080 for cheap, and currently has an i5-4690 with 16GB DDR3, and he's thinking what to do.

Not saying that's common or anything, what I'm saying is that if you're past the two first hurdles, the timing part isn't as important. Buying an i7-8700K right now likely won't bite you back. If you're willing to shell out for RAM and already have a good GPU, I'd say go ahead and buy this. If you're thinking of buying an i3-8100, a Z370 motherboard costs $100 on Newegg right now. Is waiting for a B360 to save $30 or so (and losing the chance of future overclocking on an upgraded CPU) really worth it?

You see the point? The timing issue is much much less significant than the other stuff. It's not a general issue, rather specific to certain products. It's no different than it has always been. There's always something better or cheaper on the horizon, announced or rumoured. You can take it into account or not, but none of this is enough to declare that it's not a good time to buy a PC. GPU and RAM, sure, but not this.

 

[McMurdeR]

The 'not a good time' argument is pretty much always true. There's always something better on the horizon.

Generally very true, but it's unusual to have a bad time to buy almost all kind of components. I always find this a good time to focus on keyboards, mice, disc drives, monitors, cases and other complementary products.