I'm going to hold and skip the entire Sandy/Ivy Bridge generation and jump straight to Haswell. SSD will be probably cheaper in 2-3 years as well. My Q6600 + 8800GT runs every game fine @ 1024x768 xD
More video power maybe good after OLED finally hits the market.

There are best buys in each hardware generations. You can always wait but you can also never go wrong with building a new PC. The only risk comes when you buy the rev1 release from the newest things, that is something everybody should avoid except he is a professional builder or a hard core enthusiast..
The question is not about if you want to wait or not, but about what's your goal, what do you want to play/do with your new PC, and is it cost effective to build it atm, or you need more money?

note1: SSDs are still luxury today and if you don't shit money, they are only cost effective for boot drives.

note2: 100€ for a video card is only enough if you don't want to play new games (e.g.: bf3) in high res/detail.

note2: Custom mini-machines are usually more expensive to build and they are also harder to build properly.

Hmmm I think 100 euro for graphics card is plenty. Anything 1 year older and the prices go down like a anchor. I took a quick look on ebay and right now GTX 480 can be picked up for around 150gbp/euro.

If you are thinking about used stuff, you are right. What's the budget and the goal?

I am so fed up with my notebook,
it's slow and I can't play any games (Intel GMA graphics) ...

I found a gfx card for 150 Euro AMD Sapphire 6870, seems to be very silent and quite fast :-)

and I want a SSD!!! 120 GB OCZ maybe,
just look at the prices of normal HDD's, they are all still expensive because of this flood thing in Taiwan I guess,
on my current notebook I also have 120 GB, and I even still have a native Linux partition on it, with about 16 GB

Assembled a nice silent gaming rig online:

1 x ASUS Xonar DG
33,49*
1 x OCZ Agility3 2,5" SSD 120 GB
129,90*
1 x G.Skill DIMM 8 GB DDR3-1333 Kit
37,99*
1 x be quiet! Straight Power E8 400W
59,90*
1 x SAPPHIRE HD6870
149,90*
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 960T
109,90*
1 x Asrock M3N78D
51,90*
1 x LG GH-24NS
16,79*
1 x be quiet! Dark Rock Advanced C1
49,99*
1 x Zalman Z9 Case
39,99*
1 x Cooler Master Ultra Silent Fan SAF-S12-E1
9,99*

Sum
€ 689,74

sure I could get a non-ssd somewhat gaming orientated pc without any silent components and worse gfx card for 450-500 euro at some warehouse, but I take this individual system any day over this other crap

-You can have a much stronger card (e.g.:560ti) on ebay from a trusted and respected reseller for ~100€.

You can replace the (probably already noisy) stock fans with two hydro-dynamic bearing fans. I prefer Coolink's Swif2 series because they are silent for years and you can have them for 7€ each which is a nobrainer.

You just use the provided rubber feet to let them sit on the fins and fasten them with two simple rubber bands per fan (around the whole card). It's also very easy to keep the whole thing clean this way, because you can remove or put back the bands and the fans in a minute.

You can connect them into the video-card if you want, but I prefer to connect them to the motherboard because I can control all the fans from one single software automatically, and I only let them spin up if it's required because of the high temps in that part.


-SSDs are awesome but still risky, you need a HDD to back up things regularly. HDD prices are going down very slowly indeed:(

edit.: I will check your config tomorrow..

sorry, was busy yesterday:S

- If you are not planning to unlock the CPU, the 955 would be a better pick imo because of the well known OC capabilites.

- If you are buying the 960T because you are planning to unlock it, the 400W PSU (might be enough, but it) won't be efficient, since those locked cores are used to add a lot of extra Watts to the power comsumption. Perhaps go for 450W or above to keep the comsumption in the "sweet range" of the PSU.

I would save up money and go for an i5k, but if you insist about AMD, it would be better to go for a stable "OC-er" board (like the 970Extreme3+DDR3-1600, if you prefer Asrock). That board would make upgrade and OC possible on the long run.

thanks for the tips,
I decided to still wait a bit, I will look again into buying a pc in mid-april, let's see what HD prices, pricedrops of the i5 will look like then,
there is also the new Zalman Z11 case coming =)

Yep there won't be anything much better than the i5/i7 this year and even when it does come ,I doubt it will be more than 20%, of which you could exceed by overclocking both those CPU's.

hmmm, I don't plan to overclock,
what do you think about the AMD Phenom X4 series, e.g. 960T?

Cheaper of course, but you might aswell go for the i5. It'll last you heaps longer. AMD can't really compete with intel on CPU's towards the higher end of the spectrum.

an i5 2500k will last you years, you should OC it too, that is what the K series is all about. And its dead simple as most mobos provide you with a utility to do it, so you just press a button.

its not like you need to spend hours in the bios anymore and be a geek.

if you have a decent laptop, say high dual core and above then buy yourself an ssd (like 120 oder 64gb even) and experience a totally new feeling of browsing and working on your computer. ssd is a must today even if it is just for your boot drive.

I think my notebook does not have a esata-port :-( or port for PCI-Expresscards :-(

ssd's use the exact same port like normal 2.5" hdds. Or did I misinterpret something here?!

I got a new pc about 6ish months ago, alot of the components haven't gone down much in price so I figured I did ok :)

Intel should be releasing their third gen processors sometime in the summer I think. The new 7 series from ATI is out, but only the high end one. More will be released. I imagine SSD prices will just slowly lower in price, I can't see huge jumps in it. It's a fucking shitty time to buy a regular hard drive though, and SSD's. My advice is to get either a high capacity HDD, or spend the same money and get a 64GB SSD that's really good, and use that. Up to you though.

I'm waiting till around September to build my high end ~$1800 streaming rig. Ivy bridge, Nvidia Kepler, and (hopefully) normalized HDD prices around that time. So IMO Q3 2012 best time of the year for a new build.