I know that the best time to buy a PC is always "next year" and that now is a horrible time to upgrade due to supply problems with graphics cards and other components in general plus the Nvidia 3000 series is just out. DDR5 and USB4.0 components should become available later this year and 11th gen Intel processors are around the corner but it´s a non release year for Nvidia and I am not informed about AMD´s plans. I wonder whether late 2021 would be a good time to transition to a newer PC or if you would hold off even further till mid/late 2022. I am not talking about buying high end latest chips but rather those which are one generation off the newest release.
As good time as any if the inflated prices of gpus goes down before the end of the year, which I doubt. The "holding off until..." mentality will only lead to you never getting anything
COVID and Bitcoin have changed that, though as graphic cards are not coming down in price due to scarcity - real or falsely created by the manufacturers. It´s also worse for consumers that AMD are aligning their prices upwards with Intel and Nvidia products so you get more or less 2 brands with the same performance for the same price, whereas a few years ago AMD were cheaper albeit not quite as fast. On the other hand they are pushing each other more to be the best so new releases provide bigger gains than in the pre 8th gen Intel and pre 1000 series Nvidia card periods.
Covid-19 has impacted a lot of chip manufacturers in China and other Asian countries. This is going to improve slowly during 2021. On top of that, speculators are using bot programs and buying up all the new graphic cards and some of the new CPUs as soon as they are released and then reselling them on sites like eBay and Amazon with huge mark-ups. Cards like the RTX3060 with an intended retail price of around $300 USD are being sold for prices ranging from $550 to $800. Until the manufacturers can produce an adequate supply of components to meet demand and make the profiteering less profitable, it will not be a good time to upgrade an old system or build a new system. Even used graphics cards are selling for ridiculously high prices now. Example: 1 1/2 years ago I bought a new RTX2060 for $299 USD. The same card is now listed on Amazon and eBay for $350(used) and up to $699(new). TL : DR Now is not a good time to buy computer components. Wait if you can. Maybe by Black Friday things will get better.
I agree. A lot depends on how quickly DDR5 and USB 4.0 pushed out on motherboards and whether that will make older gens much less attractive and therefore get discounted.The 11th gen Intel chips are probably not going to give a performance boost like 8th/9th gen were but will push 10th gen prices down. There are still deals on off-the-shelf PCs but definitely not at the moment for gaminggcomponents, apart from SSD drives, which have come down in price again. If Nivida were to bring out a 2660 model to plug the gap between 2k and 3k cards, that could also help. At least there is relatively stability in the driving games market with no big planned releases this year or next, so there isn´t an incentive to rush into buying.
The reality is that whenever you decide to buy a new piece of hardware or a whole new rig, there will always be something new "just around the corner". USB 4 will become USB 5, the 3000 series will become the 4000 series, 10th gen will become 11th gen. Within six months whatever rig you build will be behind the current "best". That's just the way it goes in computing... the next version of everything is either already in development, or already completed and waiting for the most opportune (read: profitable) time for release. The real question you need to ask yourself is what do you need? USB 4 for example. Most peripherals don't even require, fully support, or make full use of USB 3 yet... so why wait for 4? A 10th gen processor is going to eat whatever game you play on it for breakfast now and for the next few years... so why wait for 11th? Etc etc etc. If all you care about is having the latest and greatest, then it's a battle you're never going to win. There is no such thing as future-proofing in computing because technology and software moves way too fast. Eventually you just need to bite the bullet, decide what your needs are, and build a rig to suit those needs using whatever is currently available. You can always upgrade bit by bit in the future, if you really need to.
Until the prices of GPU goes down, it's not a good deal. Sadly, the best deals are pre-built, at a cost of lower quality.