Advice Request Is there a good time of year to buy a new PC ?

[jetman]

I'm thinking of buying a new desktop PC sometime in the next 12 months.

I realise that technology is improving all the time, but is there any reason to wait before buying ? For example, is there about to be a new generation of processors released, or some other technology appearing on the near horizon ? Is there a particularly good time of year to buy ?

I was thinking of hanging on for WiFi 6, but the routers are so expensive at the moment I don't see it becoming mainstream for long time.

 

[SumTingWong]

New AMD Ryzen 4000 aka Zen 3 will be launch somewhere in late 2020 or 2021. AMD and NVIDIA next gen GPU will be in 2021 too. Buying new computer right now is a bad time because electronic prices are skyrocket due to more demand and low supply. I recommend wait till Black Friday or Christmass or Thanksgiving to buy it.

 

[plat]

I got some answers to your question by searching online. They say generally: Black Friday (right after Thanskgiving), also last few weeks of July thru August into early September, aka: Back to School.

Also: whenever chipmakers release new products, there will be reductions in prices to get rid of inventory. Right now, Intel released some Comet and Cascade Lake processors. So right now, you could look at some of the Coffee Lakes or earlier, depending on what retailers are in your area. For example, the Coffee Lake i7 9700K is currently on sale for 359.00 USD at Micro Center as they have the newer inventory now. NVIDIA? No clear eta for its 3000 RTX series.

Do you have a Micro Center around you? If not, there's a web store and the site is a good source of info for current discounts on parts and pre-builts. At very limited times, it's actually cheaper than Amazon but the timing on your part would be critical. Newegg is another source, but I'm not comfortable linking to that site.

 

[ForgottenSeer 72227]

For me typically fall/winterish.

As it's already been said, a lot of the new hardware, CPUs, motherboards, GPUs, typically come out around the summer, early fall time frame. So usually just before and a little bit after, prices begin to drop on the previous gen stuff. As, you've said, it's constantly changing, to if your waiting to get the latest and greatest, you'll never buy a computer because there will always be better on the horizon.

Your typical holiday sales are also a good time to get one. Assuming you don't need to get the newest stuff, you can score some pretty good deals on last year's models. As to Wifi 6, if your computer comes with it, I would just get it then upgrade your router later when they come down in price. That way you will be good to go when your get your new router. Or, you can just get a Wifi 6 Pci card and add to your desktop later, it's really up to you.

One big factor right now though is everything going on with COVID19. The supply is so low that the prices are rising, so in IMHO unless you need it right now, I would just wait till the end of the year, hopefully supply will be a little better by then.

 

[HarborFront]

11th Gen Tiger Lake CPU is coming for Intel. Current CPUs are 10th Gen IceLake and Comet Lake

As for routers WiFi 6e with 6GHz support is on the horizon. I do hope new routers will support Wireguard protocol for its VPN

Should see them by the end of the year

 

[South Park]

I've had the best luck with Back to School sales in July/August.

 

[yuanyasmine]

When you need one is the best time to buy. Honestly, there's so little profit margin on computer systems, that prices are always generally the "best" prices.

 

[jetman]

Some very useful answers here. Thanks.

 

[Local Host]

Black Friday is a trap, as for waiting for new better hardware you would be waiting constantly as there's always something new and better next year.

Currently there will be new GPU releases from both AMD and NVidia before the end of the year, AMD already confirmed RDNA2 before the new console generation (so around September or October max).

In terms of CPU, AMD is pretty far ahead of Intel in terms of features, so you can't go wrong with the 3000 Series.

 

[shmu26]

If it is a laptop, intel 10th gen has been around since late last year, so it is pretty much tried and tested.

If it is a desktop, intel 10th gen is just now hitting the market, so it is bleeding-edge hardware. Conservative buyers should wait a bit before sinking their money into it, IMHO.

If you are running Linux or are planning on it, some distros don't perform well on brand new hardware. For instance, I could not get MX Linux 19 to boot on an intel 10th gen laptop. They tried to explain to me on the forum what incantations to chant at the boot screen, but I am not good at magic chants. Then I tried MX Linux 19 on a 9th gen desktop, and it booted but the performance was horrible.