When to buy a new rig?

Hello all, this is my first post on these forums so i hope this is the proper place to ask. I am looking to buy a new rig sometime in the near/mid future. I was wondering when would be the best time to buy? Should i wait for AMD's 32nm offerings to hit, or intel's Sandy Bridge or for USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 to become standard on motherboards or just bite the bullet and grab a rig within the next month? I am currently running a P4 3.2 Ghz comp with a XFX 6800 GS vid card(AGP) and a 160 GB 8MB cashe sanmsung spinpoint HHD. 600W power supply too ( almost forgot) Is it worth it to buy 2 gigs of ram ( and a sound card as my on-board sound just quit on me) and stick it out for another year ( or more???) I am looking for whatever computer i buy next to last at least 4years and to be able to run games well but i am not looking to get 130fps in everything I do lol. Any advice I can glean from you guys and gals would be fantastic.

Well if the only problem is the sound then thats not enough to justify buying a system, and generally speaking it sounds like that rig is managing what you need currently, but it's a very hard question to answer and every answer will be different. To start with if you went and bought the newest thing to hit the stores on the day they launch they are already dinosaurs, because whats coming is already miles above what you get, solid state drives are becoming more common place, so there is always something better round the corner, but only you can justify if you need this or not. The biggest question is will you get store bought or build your own ? Building your own is the ideal, it means you have total control over what you put in it, it also means you can buy a bit at a time, and buy them right you may only have to upgrade board, ram and CPU in future upgrades, because once you have the drives thats it, same with case, and buy the best PSU that you can afford and your set, it only leaves the 3 components to worry about in the future, just a thought. Personally I would get the audio sorted, then look to building your new system, doing it a bit at a time means costs are affordable, and you can transfer kit into new components as you get them, so get a case, put the old system into it, get a PSU, swap out the old PSU, add drives as and when, get video as and when, once you have all that it leaves the main 3 bits, thats what I would do anyway, if you decide not to build then I would probably put off buying for a bit longer, the system still seems quite respectable generally speaking, hope this helps a bit anyway.

I plan to build my own so your advice does help me out! Thank you for your reply, and personally i would have never thought to upgrade in that manner, but I see why it would work well. Yes, the computer is good at everything but playing games well. So the desire to upgrade now is honestly driven out of want rather than need. But honestly it does struggle to do most anything else while anti virus is running… not that big of a deal but annoying. 2 gigs of ram + sound card + the case i would like to have = 150 USD or so, Which is doable. I am aslo thinking of an after market cooler because this Pentium 4 prescott runs at 40 C idle. That would bring it up to 200 or so including shipping charges. I feel as though i could just wait forever for the next best thing tho, and never upgrade , but as a broke college student it is best for me to not waste money on something i don't need. My best hope is to wait till 22nm processors come out and i can grab one of them, but that is like 4 years away… not sure if i will make it till then. Any other input on this would be very helpful still. thank you in advance( to any other commenters) and thank you again for your reply.

OK then what I suggest is lets get this one beefed up a little, then begin your upgrade path, and I say little because we don't want to waste money on this when you plan to get better, so some thought as to what upgrades are worth it for this whilst not breaking the bank, ram and heatsink are where you should be able to save money if you buy right, the rest "could" with luck be continued onto the final upgrade build, so it's a juggling act where being aware of the end goal and it's spec may work out well for you.

So where to start, lets begin with ram, this should make a noticeable difference to the performance, BUT, you need to buy wisely as it will not work in the final upgrade build, I suggest going to Crucial and use they're scan tool, it will tell you what you have, and suggest the best solution for you system, you can buy direct, and last I used it prices were very good and shipping was free.
Now heatsink, these CPU's are made to run hot, 40 is not too bad, but have you noticed the temp under load ? once you can answer this we can look at if a new heatsink would be of enough benefit to make a difference.

Sound card on the other hand may well be capable of moving forward into the new build once complete, so a closer look at this would be the way to go, identify what kind of slot\connection it requires and go from there, but it's worth remembering a few of the newer boards come with a separate sound card as opposed to built in\onboard sound, but they are mini cards as opposed to full size, so a little thinking is best here I suggest before deciding for sure.

Now lets have a look at what your working with, my guess is some maintenance will help a lot, changing the anti virus is probably a wise move as well, but lets see what we have first, go over to the Pit and run a full scan, you will need to sign up for an account, it's all free, then when the scan is complete post the url of the results back here so we can see whats going on, without the account the results will disappear when you move away from the page, once we see this we can make suggestions to try and improve what you have.

Hey, i downloaded the optimizer 3.0 program. Instead of buying it ( lol) i just cleared out the stuff it told me like Temp files and such on my own, changed a few cookie settings ( dayam 3rd party cookies) and gave my PC a good cleaning. After this i tweaked a few BIOS settings, downloaded the newest drivers for stuff and have had some good luck! Update: I now have sound, i am not sure if it was the drivers or just un-overclocking the PCI bus speed… but it is back and i am happy lol. I tried to get some more performance out of my cpu but overclocknig this already hot processor isn't that good of an idea in my mind. Temps at idle are like 45 ish , but only mid 50's under load, so i gues not too bad. Maybe better thermal paste would be the right move, idk. My single 120mm fan is dead, and i am thinking of picknig up anotehr fan for the side pannel of my case for temps. All this + 2 gigs of ram should keep this system running very well for more than the next year. If I decide to put these items into the computer, it will have been about a 900 USD investment. 600 USD at first purchase, then a new vid card and PSU for 200 and this will be about another 100 USD. For 5.5 to six years of use, i can not complain. Thank you for talking me out of my greedy ways lol.