With Intel announcing Rocket Lake next month and AMD's Ryzen 5000 series still mostly MIA, now is not necessarily the ideal time to build a new PC. However, there are timely discounts that will test your patience and resolve, especially if you can get a 10-core/20-thread CPU and motherboard bundle for considerably less than the market price.

Specifically, Newegg is offering an Intel 9th generation Core i9 10850K processor and Asus Prime Z490-A motherboard combo for $499.98. This is $123 cheaper than buying these parts individually.

I don't usually highlight combo deals, but this is a good enough savings, even with Rocket Lake looming around the Core i9 10850K, which is at the top of Intel's Comet Lake stack (just slightly below the 10900K), can make a strong case for building a gaming or streaming PC.

It is also worth noting that Rocket Lake is best configured with 8 cores/16 threads and promises a 19% increase in IPC performance; the Core i9 10850K offers two additional cores and four additional threads to throw into multi-threaded workloads.

As for the motherboard, the Prime Z490-A features 2.5Gbps LAN connectivity, USB 3.2 Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 support, dual M.2 slots, RGB lighting, and an enhanced power design to facilitate stable overclocking This is a well-rounded option with the following features.

If you want to get the latest and greatest, waiting for Rocket Lake or Ryzen 5000 is perfectly acceptable. But you can also build a high-end gaming PC around this foundation and get more bang for your buck. Now if only we could find a graphics card to go with it. ......