PC parts deals are as stagnant as I've seen it

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Shark974

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 4, 2009
Messages
378
Unless you've got a Micvrocenter near you, you're basically dealing with newegg. what you have is:

-Intel CPU's pretty much never on any serious sale for years. No reason, no competition from AMD.

AMD CPU's are often a good deal, but it's still hard to settle for so much less performance.

-The Litecoin craze has pushed AMD GPU prices sky high. And it's not getting better for many, many weeks now, despite people constantly claiming it'll soon get better. In fact, it's getting worse. Prices just keep going higher and higher that I can tell. Even Nvidia GPU prices have been pushed a little higher I think (because why not if the competition is unaffordable).

RAM prices are also high, high, high!

Few sales, immovable Intel CPU pricing, high RAM and AMD GPU prices....
 
I was thinking the same thing, except it seems hard drive prices are finally reasonable again. Occasionally there will be a good SSD deal too, but nothing like around black friday 2012.
 
I think the reason is many people aren't buying right now and have no reason to. Most people browse the internet and do the occasional thing at their computer that doesn't require an upgrade. Lowering prices isn't going to sell more because people don't need it henceforth they will just end up losing money on the cheaper prices.
 
I need (read: really want) to upgrade, but the prices just aren't right. I've been rocking my CPU/Mobo/RAM setup for a long time waiting for the sweet spot in price and performance in order to upgrade and just haven't seen it yet. At this point, unless my tax return is a lot of money, I'll probably buy used parts off someone when the new intel stuff comes out. I'd be all about getting the new intel setup, but DDR4 is projected to be very expensive, and a current gen i7 will be enough of a performance jump over what I have now to satisfy me and last a couple more years.

TLDR: I want to upgrade, but the prices aren't compelling, so, if a company won't sell me what I want new, at a price I find acceptable, I'll buy some used parts.
 
Prices are stagnating as the demand for devices are tapering off. Until we see some huge strides in performance not to much happening there.
 
I think a lot are waiting for the new stuff coming out this year to see what will be worth getting. You can get new stuff now, when possibly 5 or 6 months or more from now there may be newer CPU or cards or such that may be more powerful at around the same prices.
Won't say they will, but imho that's what i think a lot may be doing.
(Postponing my own computer build till the new cards and CPU's come out myself...lol)
 
To me the bigger issue is that it isn't worth upgrading for the incremental improvements. I was hoping for a 6 core i5 and an 8 core i7 by now. I waiting for a worthwhile upgrade from my i5-2500k.
 
Imo, people are just tired of seeing the same crap as "new" releases. I know I am.

Both nvidia 700 and amd's R9 series mainly have been rebadges of previous things.

Intel has no reason to lower prices because amd cpu's are finding it difficult to compete with them on the cpu level.

And haswell isn't too impressive over ivy/sandy.
 
3 years on a 4.9ghz i7-2600k. Not even a thought of upgrading sadly enough. Longest Ive ever used a processor for.
 
doz said:
3 years on a 4.9ghz i7-2600k. Not even a thought of upgrading sadly enough. Longest Ive ever used a processor for.
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same lol

2600k @ 4.5ghz, never tried any higher simply because 4.6,4.7,4.8 look like funny numbers to me lol and I dont want to try pushing 5ghz

the only thing im waiting to upgrade to is skylake simply because it sounds cool and nothing else ahaha
 
Don't forget SSDs have just been so so. I bought a 512GB for $305 like more than a year ago and they still rarely touch that.

But the good news is that outside of GPUs there has been little to no reason to upgrade CPUs, RAM or SSDs. I bought GBs of ram way back when the prices fell. I bought K series intel CPUS from the sandy bridge era. And nothing has come out that justifies an upgrade. In fact maybe the reason GPUs are so high is because with nothing else to spend money on people are pouring it all into GPUs. Heck that is what I did. I bought a 780 for around $650, I never EVER, EVER spent that much on a single component before in my life. The reason I justified is was because I had nothing else to spend money on.
 
doz said:
3 years on a 4.9ghz i7-2600k. Not even a thought of upgrading sadly enough. Longest Ive ever used a processor for.
Click to expand...

I've been on this 920 almost since it was released, which was Q4 2008, so...5+ years?

No really compelling reason to upgrade here, either.
 
I may go to a 4930 this year though depending on what the prices are after the new stuff comes out. Maybe even something higher once I see what comes out and how much it costs.
Waiting on the word if there is a 790 coming out, but if need be my 690 is still perfectly fine till I absolutely need something faster.
Adopting a wait and see attitude atm.
I AM getting a 1TB boot SSD though as I hate running out of room as I have with my previous boot HD/SSD's. :p
 
MavericK96 said:
I've been on this 920 almost since it was released, which was Q4 2008, so...5+ years?

No really compelling reason to upgrade here, either.
Click to expand...

Hah, was going to mention a buddy of mine is on a 920 and the only thing he upgraded was to a gtx 670 from a gtx 460. He is set with playing today's games on medium/custom.
 
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I went on a building binge a couple years ago so have a lot of Sandy. One 2100, one 2500k, and two 2600k's in addition to an old 920. I don't foresee needing to buy a CPU for at least two more years, probably 3-4. After how exciting Sandy performance was at release, Ivy and Haswell were pretty meh. I expect more meh in the future. The impetus just isn't there for them to make large performance jumps like sandy was anymore.

As much as I bitched about them then, I almost miss the heat-belching dragons I had in the past. Tri-SLI 480s anyone? Efficiency is cool (literally and figuratively) but performance at any cost is its own kind of fun.
 
I built a new Haswell I5 last July but I still find myself using my core2duo build from over 6 years ago as my daily driver just because it's familiar and for browsing the net and light tasks it still has plenty of power.
I really could have skipped the Haswell build and just refreshed my current rig for hundreds of dollars less.

Core2quads, the last one they made can be found for pretty cheap today.
Maybe increase my memory and install a 64 bit win 7 or something, it was doable.

Always a tough call, refurbish or rebuild.
 
the OPs assesment of the parts market is SPOT ON.
Greed rules!!!
 
It's February, we just got past the holiday season, of course there aren't any great sales right now. Although I did get a 4770K from Amazon for $280, which is the best price I've seen them at online (no Microcenters anywhere near me so that is not an option).
 
There might be a few good price drops for Presidents Day due to a lot of retailers/etailers trying to optimize and/or clear out their inventories.
 
There seems to be some occasional sales that are decent, but they do seem to be few and far between. I did get my MSI Z87 GD65 for $125 at Newegg a while back and some AIO coolers have been dirt cheap now and again here lately.

The upside though, is that older gear is holding it's value well so if you do feel the desire to upgrade, it really reduces the hit. After selling my old 2600k and mobo, it was only like $75 more for my new 4770k and mobo.
 
Yeah that's a good point, upgrading isn't as expensive these days when you account for selling your old hardware. Problem is there's hardly any point to upgrading in most hardware, with the exception of GPUs lol.
 
Typically we see the best deals of the year (besides BF) around tax time as retailers know the majority of people will have a refund coming. Of course, "best deals" doesn't always mean good deals :rolleyes:

BTW, tax season is also a great time for selling on EBay.

I don't think I've ever bought a new-release CPU. I don't game, so I've always been content to watch the FS threads for decent used parts. I don't mind being a couple of generations behind the current hardware.
HOWEVER, pricing on used parts has been ridiculous. Probably because of the fact that nobody wants to justify the cost of upgrading. But seriously folks, $200 or more for a Socket 775 combo??
How many platform generations back is that?? I remember not too long ago when the last-year's hot release could be had for table scraps compared to it's original price, because the latest-greatest was on the shelf. Sigh.
 
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wjogert said:
Typically we see the best deals of the year (besides BF) around tax time as retailers know the majority of people will have a refund coming. Of course, "best deals" doesn't always mean good deals :rolleyes:

BTW, tax season is also a great time for selling on EBay.

I don't think I've ever bought a new-release CPU. I don't game, so I've always been content to watch the FS threads for decent used parts. I don't mind being a couple of generations behind the current hardware.
HOWEVER, pricing on used parts has been ridiculous. Probably because of the fact that nobody wants to justify the cost of upgrading. But seriously folks, $200 or more for a Socket 775 combo??
How many platform generations back is that?? I remember not too long ago when the last-year's hot release could be had for table scraps compared to it's original price, because the latest-greatest was on the shelf. Sigh.
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People will ask for what the market will bear. But it's only worth as much as someone is willing to pay.

I still see good deals on used stuff in the marketplace, but those deals are fewer and far inbetween compared to previous years. I do miss the crazy heydays of huge jumps in performance between generations of hardware, but the market has changed.

My local computer store doesn't even have full page sections for PC components in their ads anymore. They mainly advertise TVs, tablets, appliances, and some laptops nowadays. I used to pore over their old ads looking at all of the different RAM, CPUs, hard drives, and especially video cards.
 
I just ordered parts for a new build. Amazon had the i5 4670 for $179, I got 2x8GB of Kingston Hyper-X for $105 and an XFX Radeon 7870 OC for $170. Certainly not the cheapest price for any of these parts but I feel I got a good deal. There's still deals to be found if you look around. Make sure you're setting deal alerts on SlickDeals, CamelCamelCamel, or other such sites of choice so that you can pick up the parts you want when they are available at good prices.
 
I'm kicking myself for not grabbing 1 or 2 cheap 7970s last year now that the r280x are around $400 :(

I suppose my 2 6870s should last me a bit longer.
 
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