Hey gang,

I posted elsewhere earlier this week about my desire to build a new gaming PC. There's a lot of games I'm DYING to play, including Original Sin 2 and Owlboy, to name a few.

However, I am concerned that now might not be a great time to be building a PC. From what I've heard, RAM prices have rocketed due to their being used in phones, and GPU prices have shot up due to BTC miners. For example, I priced up a new PC about a year ago, and an 8GB memory set was £35. It's now £100. Outlandish or what?

So what would you say gang? Should I hold off? I know there's a new line of stuff coming out in the coming months, but even still, I wouldnt be buying them anyway. My budget is around £750, so I'll be using mid-high range products.

I know if I keep waiting though, I'll spend my whole life waiting. I'm gonna bite the bullet sometime. Should next weekend (When I can drive to SCAN) be that bullet.

Thanks in advance!

What are you running at the moment?

I've certainly held off updating even though I had money in my pocket budgeted for it.

A 7 year old non-gaming laptop

@dave_tacitus: Ah. I've got a 980ti, so I'm holding off - It still blitzes everything at 1080p but I'm heading towards 4k.

In your case I'd say go for the best CPU you can afford as it should be the cornerstone of your PC for a long time. Something like a 1060 or even 1050ti will see you through and can be upgraded whenever GPU prices even themselves out.

Man, I'm not sure there's ever a great time. If you feel ready to do it, just do it. Ram prices are crazy, yes, but who knows when they'll even out? They were supposed to come down towards the end of the year, but they haven't.

My current setup is a four year old i5, 8gb of ram and a 1060. It runs everything I've tried so far in max settings. I say just go for it.

That's what I'm thinking. If I keep waiting, I'll end up never buying

If those are the type of games you want to play i would agree with getting the best cpu you can afford and getting a 1060 or 1050ti. Ram is expensive but ssd's are actually going down in price, also there still isn't a huge rush for 16gb ram(i am still on 8 myself) so go for 8gb.

There is never really a great time to upgrade, like say nvidia or amd might release new cards and prices on old ones go down, or new cpus release etc. Just get what you want/need and leave yourself room to upgrade.

I generally agree with the others: there's not often a perfect time. That said, if you want to go 4k at some point, just get a decent GPU for now (1060 or similar) and upgrade later. Nothing out right now really crushes 4k.

You can builld a mid to low end machine rather cheaply nowadays. The problem I personally have is I tend to want the best of the best right now. I'd say anything you can put together with recent hardware is going to be a step up from what you have right now.

I think prices for everything but video cards is fairly decent right now.

The prices for GPUs are completely messed up right now, I don't think I've ever spent more than $350 for a decent video card, it seems you have to spend $600 to get something the same caliber now.

+1 to investing in the most current, most powerful cpu you can afford. A step up in cpu choice can stave off the need to upgrade your whole machine for years more than if you try to go cheap in that department.

I think your laptop is about to spontaneously combust. Seriously have you ever dusted that thing out?

I'm in a kinda similar situation, running what is now a 5 years-old, fairly decent build (I should have upgraded my GPU a few years ago and would have been in a better spot). I feel like there's always some price issue when building a new computer, but at the moment, the funky cost and availability of the 1080ti has made me decide to wait a few months and see how things shake-out. As I don't absolutely need a new rig, I'd rather not be gouged, due to impatience. In the interim, I'll snatch other necessary components, when I see sales or just generally OK prices.

IMHO the amount of savings you'll garner from hitting a 'sweet spot' for pricing will never really justify waiting- so if you've got the cash i say go on and pulll the trigger.

The main reason I can think of to hold off on upgrading is to see what happens to CPUs now that these big vulnerabilities have been found. Not really sure if that's going to alter Intel's dominance or not. Right now looks like "not", but we'll see.

Other reasons like price, well there's never a clear "best" time to buy. I usually do try to buy components around black friday or back to school sales for good prices. If you can hang on another half a year, might be worth trying to look at that time of year. Maybe Bitcoin will have collapsed by then and the rest of our components may be marked down. But I wouldn't wait any longer than that.

As others have said, there's never a perfect time, but right now is less ideal than usual given the RAM shortages and GPU hoarding by cryptocurrency miners inflating prices. I'd suggest holding out for a bit if possible to see if those prices drop a little, but if nothing has changed in a few months, you may just have to go ahead and pay the inflated prices.

@sombre: I would argue its literally never a bad time to be building a gaming PC. There is always the next best thing around the corner and you can easily get trapped in this loop of “I’ll wait till XYZ is out..”

If you build a PC right now with top end gear it will last you for several years and run games really well into th foreseeable future. You can wai and get even better hardware but you’ll have to pay a premium price for it.

I will add to chorus that there is never a great time to build, but if you budget and plan your build you can put together a really good gaming 1080p gaming rig. I would recommend ryzen 3 1200 (if you have the budget i would step up to ryzen 5) on a good ATX b350 mobo, all ryzen cpu's overclock you can easily get 3.5=3.8 on the stock cooler. pair that with GTX 1060 6GB. but remember AMD also just announced new cpu's that will start showing up in February through April so they have cut the prices of all their current line of cpu's. Now faster ram does help but i am currently running 16GB of 2133 DDR4 with a ryzen 5 1500x on a asus prime b350 without issue and it runs everything just fine. Hardware Unboxed has a lot of great info to help you.

Seeing where you are coming from, I would around now build a mid-level machine as others have delineated. Might think about headroom with the CPU and MB. Less so for a gpu. I hate to be a jerk but bitcoin crashing won't bother me, thus ending eating up/jacking up premium Gpu's because of mining.

I'll come from a slightly different angle than other people, as I have been building PC's for around 20 years, every 3-5 years, and while what people are saying is true (tech always changes, what you buy now is "outdated" in a year, you can't ever completely future-proof, you can't even always predict what will be out in 6 months...), there is also sometimes a better time than others.

For example, I built my current computer for Watch Dogs...yeah, I know... The worst part about it is that I got a 980, which I paid a pretty penny for, and the 1080 came out a year later and was vastly better. Plus, besides Watch Dogs, there weren't a lot of other games I was interested in that really needed the horsepower I was buying. In hindsight, I could have easily waited a year, got better tech (1080, the next released CPU), been better equipped for other games such as Witcher 3 that I truly were worth the investment, and my computer would have lasted longer til I had to buy a new card (I have a 1070 now) or CPU (which basically means a new computer, which I can't afford for at least another 2 years).

So, generally, "wait until you absolutely can't wait anymore" and "make sure you really have several good reasons to build (i.e. games you just have to play)" are my general pieces of advice. :D

Happy Building!

It's always a good time to be building a gaming Pc.

Yes, Nvidia's next generation of cards will start to show up in the next 3-4 months if history is anything to go by.

Echoing a lot of what others have said, there's always going to be "more new tech" coming down the line which *may* result in lowered prices for the previous specs. Yes GPU and RAM prices are high right now but all that being said I think it comes down to this question:

What are you running now and can it do what you want it to do?

Prices are so volatile and if you always wait, you'll never end up pulling the trigger because you're always waiting for the "next wave" because in tech, there is always a next wave. If you feel a new rig would really benefit you, then now is the right time to buy.

As for what to get? Focus on the best CPU you can do in your budget as that'll be your cornerstone for the machine and get a reasonable GPU with the thought of maybe saving to really upgrade the GPU to top of the line in 2 years. That way you can save a bit now but still play what you want. Also...go SSD at least for your OS and for whatever your "current" games are. They've come down a lot in price and are worth it.

I can't wait for cryptocurrencies to completely tank like they should and will just so the prices and availability for fucking video cards go back to normal.

If you have the funds, pull the trigger. The time spent waiting for the next generation would be better spent gaming on a new rig. You can always sell components and replace them at any time.

A lot of people complaining about mining when that's only one part of the puzzle.

RAM prices are way up and so is flash storage, you can blame the mobile market for that. Cryptocurrency mining has lead to a shortage of GPUs, yes, but the prices haven't inflated too much to be offputting. I bought 4 1080 Tis recently for $800 each (one of them was used), this is in Japan though, and I did get lucky because a typical price is $900-1100 here.

My DDR4 kit costs double what I paid for it last year. RAM is ridiculous right now.

Anyway with all that said, no I don't think it's a bad time. It's just a bit of a worse time.

Yeah dude. A 750 billion dollar sector is gonna disappear overnight so you can buy a 1080 Ti for $120 cheaper. Even if the price of Ethereum went down by 50%, it would make zero difference.

People were ignorant about Bitcoin when it was worth $12, now it's worth over $14,000. Let's make money instead of being dismissive, that's sure as heck what I've been doing.

I'll probably be buying 8 Volta cards on release if they have a strong increase in efficiency. I'm getting into mining because the going is simply too good, I can't ignore having a second salary for zero work hours.

Blockchain technology is here to stay and people should be taking Ethereum very seriously. Hopefully I won't regret this comment.

@darlingdixie: Good luck to you.

It's not a bad time necessarily. but because of RAM shortages and crypto mining parts like RAM, solid state drives, and video cards are a little more expensive than they would usually be. The typical $1500 rig now costs around $2,000 give or take depending on what you are looking for. Definitely a time to be deal hunting, more than usual.

That being said, with your current rig anything would be an improvement at this point so even at the inflated prices it's still worth it. While there is always new stuff around the corner there isn't going to be any huge jumps in performance any time soon so there is no need to wait things out more or try and "future proof" things. Just get the best that you can afford and play the hell out of it.

Thanks brother.

If the money I have in this (and the mining gear I'm getting) disappeared or became valueless, it wouldn't sink me, but that's quite a lot of nice stuff I could have bought instead.

I don't like my job very much. I'd really like to quit so I'm going to accumulate mining gear and keep investing and see if I can turn this into a life changing experience.

I would wait to see if the new Ryzen is any good. Especially with the Intel scandal recently.

There seems to be no indication that prices will come down anytime soon.

If your goal is 4k @ 60 fps I would wait for the next gpu line from Nvidia later on in the year. The current ones on the market still struggle to reach that for the most demanding games.

I think 2017 was a great year for CPUs but damn Ram and GPU prices still havent leveled off into normal territories. 1070s and 1080s seem to be able to be had at around MSRP if you keep an eye out but the midrange cant be kept in stock at what seems like $100 over MSRP. Ive been looking for a new RX 580 8GB or a 1060 6GB since i missed a good deal on an RX 580 right before black friday, its come to a point where Im just going to dish out around $330-350 for any card after having nowinstock texting me when theres a shipment. Its crazy.

If you are not in super dire hurry, I would wait to see what the Meltdown and the Spectre CPU hassle does to the market. Maybe prices come down as people push off their builds while waiting for fixed CPUs?