I am building a new system and I can't decide if I should build a Haswell (i5 4460) or wait for the new Zen arcitecture. I'm going for a mid-range system. I already have the storage, PSU, case, and GPU (r9 380x). Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Look bottom line is if you build a good system now it will still be a good system in a two years.
there is a bit of hype around Zen and I am bit excited myself. but there is very little confirmed info. No guarantees that they will be any better than Intel previous gen or current gen.
I would go with a Skylake i5-6500 build, it will cost arround the same as a Haswell 4460. But you are on the newer platform then, the i5-6500 is also a bit faster then the i5-4460.
Skylake makes more sense than haswell. its newer and faster.
That and a skylake i5 is a tad faster
Zen looks dissappointing from my point of view because they lowered over all IPC of the proccessor in favor of IPC per core. While this is good and it shows they are going the SMT route they are still probably going to be far behind intel. Stick with intel as they have a proven track record right now
There's always a reason to wait. New architecture, new refresh, lower prices, etc. but there will always be a reason to wait. It's easy to get paralysis by analysis and never make a purchase.
If you can afford it and will use it now, go for it.
i would say build on a skylake, you will get more performance.
at this point Zen is a big gamble there is very few things known about it other than its coming... sometime. its AMD's attempt at getting back in the game a new generation of AMD cpu's and as such it can come with a massive set of problems that its better to wait till their second generation Zen to assure they have ironed them out
Everyone knows that a week after you buy any system or part, something newer, better, faster, cheaper will come out. Build it now and accept that getting the perfect PC you really want is probably never gonna happen.