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Froz
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Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylake

Sun Aug 09, 2015 2:36 am

I decided I'm moving to Skylake. Mainly because I want to finally update my motherboard (I'm still on AM2+) and was waiting for additional push for quite long time.

I'm guessing everyone here is more experienced then me with those things. Can you tell me if it's worth waiting a couple of weeks for some price drops or is that unlikely to happen? Keep in mind I need to buy CPU, motherboard (I was thinking about the Asus one reviewed by TR, Z170 A) and RAM (will probably go with cheapest known brand, currently in my country that's Crucial).

Thanks.
 
whm1974
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 2:55 am

I'm guessing everyone here is more experienced then me with those things. Can you tell me if it's worth waiting a couple of weeks for some price drops or is that unlikely to happen?


Not very likely. What is your budget?
 
travbrad
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:06 am

I doubt you will see much of a price drop. Intel CPUs tend to sell for pretty much the same price their entire life right from the start, at least on the U.S. market. I don't know what country you live in but Skylake should be about the same price as its Haswell counterparts, so if they are selling for around that price where you live I don't think waiting will save you any money. Brand new motherboards may drop in price very slightly over time, but probably not enough to warrant waiting. DDR4 has been gradually getting cheaper, but again within that 2 week timeframe I wouldn't expect a huge drop in prices. This may be of interest regarding RAM: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/m ... 133.4x4096

I'd say at most you might save $20-25 by waiting, but probably less than that. DDR4 may not continue dropping in price either if suddenly there is a bunch of demand for it due to Skylake. Enjoy the new build. That's going to be a huge step up from anything AM2+ based. :D
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Froz
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:16 am

whm1974 wrote:
Not very likely. What is your budget?

My budget is not a problem here. I have just never bought any PC part so quickly after it was introduced, so I thought I'd ask about it here first.

Thanks for quick replies. I'm going to buy it now.
 
whm1974
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:21 am

I'd say at most you might save $20-25 by waiting, but probably less than that. DDR4 may not continue dropping in price either if suddenly there is a bunch of demand for it due to Skylake.


Hard to say about any demand for Skylake since anyone who has gotten a new system during the last three years or so most likely doesn't need to upgrade unless it is a POS computer they brought or built. On the other hand the new chipset itself would be worth the upgrade for those who have old systems.
 
whm1974
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 3:24 am

My budget is not a problem here. I have just never bought any PC part so quickly after it was introduced, so I thought I'd ask about it here first.


Well it doesn't hurt to ask. I built my Haswell based system not long after it came out. I did the same with Socket A CPUs as well. And didn't run into any problems.
 
Kougar
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 4:45 am

You might be more mature UEFI / drivers (especially more mature Win 10 drivers) but honestly it's not worth waiting over. Newegg has a qty-limited $25 off $200 promo if you use visa checkout (again), so you might wind up paying more by waiting.
 
just brew it!
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 9:19 am

Unless you're hoping to snag a nice Microcenter motherboard bundle on sale (which may or may not happen), a couple of weeks (or months) isn't going to make much difference. Prices aren't going to move appreciably, especially given that there's no meaningful competition from AMD. If demand is strong, street prices might even rise a little bit.

Coming from an AM2+ platform you will see a very nice performance bump.

If budget had been a factor I would've suggested considering something DDR3 based instead; but since it isn't, and given that you seem to hang on to systems for a very long time, skipping the DDR3 generation entirely and going straight to DDR4 makes a lot of sense.
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Topinio
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 2:02 pm

Assuming the OP's already bought it, this might be an unhelpful comment, but if not (or for others): replacing the motherboard in my Sandy Bridge HTPC was a little bit of a pain, if I'd waited a couple of weeks I would have found out before purchase about the Cougar Point SATA bug and so could have waited, soldiering on with the old junk HTPC, until the fixed motherboards were available.
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The Egg
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Sun Aug 09, 2015 2:29 pm

To the OP: Do you plan to OC? If not, you might be able to save some money with a non-K version, or possibly even get a slight boost in performance with embedded L4 eDRAM (I believe some of the non-K models are supposed to get it).
 
Froz
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Re: Is it worth waiting couple of weeks before buying Skylak

Mon Aug 10, 2015 2:55 am

Thanks for advices. Yes, I plan to OC, or at least I want to have that option.

I'm going to take the risk that something might not work completely correctly, I'll deal with it if it happens and maybe it will be ok. I don't really want to wait more, unless that would make a big difference.

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