Is now the best time to build a high end gaming pc now or wait for Q3-Q4 2022 part releases?

sandman578

I've got a 2015 pre-built that's on its last legs. I got a laptop from MicroCenter back on Black Friday that's got beefier specs then it now. I recently built a gaming pc for my nephew and short of custom water cooling I'm fairly familiar with the current hardware and standards. I've got the budget to make something up in the higher end, up to around $4,000. If I need something new for everything inside the case, including the case itself, should I jump in now when prices are starting to dip down ahead of the next gen releases and the current gpu glut or will the performance increase from the next round of gpus and cpus be that significant and the 2nd generation of DDR5 motherboards have improved stability and greater adoption bringing the price per Gb down? I saw 3090Tis on Microcenter going for $1300-1400, if I can afford a 3090Ti am I better off just holding out for the 4090 in a few months for whatever the performance jump between the two is? Will AMD's first DDR5 cpus be stable with the new RAM or am I better of getting the current i9 12th with a first gen DDR5 motherboard. If I'm going high end and maybe have plans to either replace a 3090Ti later with a 4000 or even 5000 series card down the road and run a lot of RAM and storage in a full tower case as well as a high end cpu, will a 1000W 80Gold psu cut it or should I seriously start looking at 1200W units? Ideally, I want to build a pc by September getting all parts all at once, and probably won't be willing to actually having to wait until Q1 2023 to actually get started.

magarity

Early adopter tax is a real thing. You mention price more than a few times. It seems you want an excuse to not pay the early adopter tax. So, the question to ask yourself is, are you perfectly happy to spend less to get "pretty good" or do you have the budget to not care and just want "best"? My personal strategy, and I bought my first PC as a 386, is to get the midrange latest thing and then when the higher end goes on sale at the end, upgrade to that. This stretches each build and maximizes the bang for buck. If I were buying a PC today, it would be i5 12th gen with the plan to get the i9 late next year, for example.

Also, always buy a computer for what you want it to do the day you take it home. Every few months either Intel or AMD or nVidia has some new thing coming out. You'll never buy anything if you wait just a little longer for the next thing.

Ian

Greetings,

There are constantly new parts being released on the market. Chasing rumors and new products isn't always the best thing, because there's no telling how many of a new item will be produced, the pricing, etc. A new video card could easily be bought up, demand won't meet supply, and be sold out for months or perhaps there will be no stock issues at all, you never can know on that unfortunately.

You can always build now and keep yourself in a position to upgrade if you have the money left over / if it seems worth it once more details on new products come out.