Really is the million dollar question. I wish I could answer this but I've found myself pondering the same questions.

The bubble may not pop for a year or two, it could never pop with government bailing the companies out and merging the assets of the failures into the existing big tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft and we see no real reduction in prices. There could be a very real conspiracy to kill owning personal computers in order to sell subscription cloud computing and AI services to consumers. After all most consumers are not going to shell out $200/month for a pro AI subscription. But if they can no longer build or buy a gaming PC and that AI subscription is sold as a cloud gaming, computer, and AI bundle? Maybe they'd shell out money then. And so I worry the thinking goes.

The CEO of a big component maker recently said that if the current trajectory continues consumer electronic manufacturers are going to start going bankrupt, they can't compete, they have few customers at the price points they're looking at, and the component makers of things like memory are demanding ridiculous multi-year contracts and payment ahead of time to even consider working with them. If that were to occur we'd enter a very dire period. Things would eventually recover, China if no one else would eventually build out more capacity and start selling but that could take 5 years or more (could easily be 8 years to recover in terms of pricing lowering meaningfully in the west given their speed of things if Chinese components are not available or allowed).

The least risky decision is build what you can now, don't buy the top end components but something a generation older or a tier down in power if it costs a lot less (doesn't always cost a lot less so pays to shop around and compare). Then again I'm not an expert, for all I know by August or Black Friday there could be sales that drop the current prices, on the other hand the sales then could end up being merely dropping to the prices we have now or even higher than what we have now or there could be only limited sales that instantly sell out due to low inventory.

Otherwise you just have to wait and pay attention during sales periods to see if things get better with the understanding you could be waiting 2 years, 3 years, even an outside chance of longer than that.

Fact is prices for many components were at historic lows in late 2025. DRAM was cheap, SSDs had never been cheaper, I could get a 2TB TLC SSD with DRAM cache from the top brands for $150 or a 4TB model for $300. Now 2TB are barely in stock at all and when they are they're $300 or more and the 4TB are $600. So I think even coming off some price increases there is room for prices to get worse. The best time to buy was December 2025, the second best time was January when price increases were coming and had started to hit but hadn't really fully hit.

Either way is a gamble. If you gamble right now you spend more than you'd like but you have what you want, if you gamble on waiting you may not get what you want or pay even more or you could win the gamble and pay less but you'll still likely be waiting 12 months.

There is the option of trying to find stuff on the used market including a fully built gaming PCs or components. Of course this isn't without its own gambles and risks and prices there are high but may be lower in some instances for older components than anything you can find new.