Another week - another discount. This week I searched the web and—as always—found some sweet deals on gaming hardware and PC building equipment, including SSD sales, GPU deals, and CPU sales. I usually just go with just five picks, but with so many deals out there, we've listed seven noteworthy deals for you! Let's get to the good stuff!
AMD Radeon HD 7850 GPU ($165): Since this is a website dedicated to gamers, I felt I should start off with what gamers use most: A nice, solid video card. I found this HIS HD 7850 on Newegg for a reasonably low price of $165; the 7850 frequently drops to the $150-$170 range on sale, and given its power, is a great price for such a high-performing card. It's fitted with 1GB GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit memory interface and standard clock rates, should play most games in the high-to-ultra spectrum settings, but more demanding games (Crysis 3) at mid-to-high settings! The cherry on top is that you get Bioshock Infinite and the new Tomb Raider game for free with purchase!
Update: This card has now sold-out. If you're looking for an alternative, fear not, because TigerDirect has Sapphire's 7850 for $165 after rebate and XFX's 2GB version (well worth it if you're using high-res texture packs) for $178 after rebate.
8GB Kingston HyperX Red ($43): Next up is a kit of memory! The price of memory has finally seemed to stabilize at roughly $50/8GB (insane considering 4GB was $100 just a few years ago), and sales occasionally drop it to the $40 range. Newegg has 8GB of Kingston's HyperX Red 1600MHz memory for $43 this weekend, which is a decent enough deal for system builders to seriously consider for the next project; I just bought this kit myself for an HTPC and can vouch that it is great ram for gamers, like myself. 8GB should be more than enough for gaming purposes, only purchase more if you're considering building a video production or streaming PC.
TigerDirect has a great weekend deal going on, so the next items are from them. The deals end Monday, but it's not like there's a finite supply of consumerist-friendly, discounted items. That said, if you see something you set your heart on, take advantage of it early.
Samsung 840 120GB SSD ($100): First up, TigerDirect has Samsung's 840 SSD (non-pro edition) at 120GB for $100, less than $1/GB. We have come to strongly suggest that you acquire an SSD for the bolstered speed benefits gained from owning one; not only will your OS load-up uber fast, the load times in IO-bound games will decrease dramatically (we saw nearly a 50% increase in speed on PC-centric Shogun 2: Total War). For under $100 at 120GB, this is a solid starting point for an SSD.
Thermaltake V3 Case ($40): Next up we have Thermaltake's V3 budget gaming case for $40. This is an acceptable budget gaming case—one we've recommended many times—and if you're trying to emulate one of our Cheap Bastard builds and want to cut as many corners as possible, it's a good option. It supports ATX and mATX form factor motherboards and has decent cooling options, shipping with 2x120mm blue LED fans, and can support 3 more fans. It also has a nice small clear window on the side so your friends can look at the beautiful components inside and be jealous! The V3 is a mid-tower, so it doesn't take up too much space, but still has enough room for internals (just watch that video card length).
Thermaltake 500W PSU ($30): In line with the above budget case, TigerDirect's got a Thermaltake PSU listed at a "Cheap Bastard" price-point. This 500W PSU is on sale for $30 after a $10 rebate and $20 discount - certainly not bad for the unit. Here you get a modest 500W PSU that should be more than enough for most gaming builds, a standard 120mm cooling fan, and Active PFC; there is no 80 Plus rating, so it's not the most power-efficient PSU in the world, but user reviews on all major retailers that we researched point toward the unit being reliable en masse. This PSU has longer cables than other PSU's to help out with cable management but is not modular, so keep that in mind when buying. For the low price, you should thermal-take advantage of these deals! Ha. Awesome.
Time for the Pick of the Week!
i5-3470 CPU ($180): This week's best deal / pick-of-the-week I picked out is a bit different, in that it's a dual-deal. I found the Intel i5-3470 quad-core CPU for a sale price of $180! The 3470 is a perfect unit for those who have no real need or desire to overclock (but it will overclock very slightly, just not as much as the "k" SKU chips), but still want the quad-core prowess of an i5- CPU. The IB i5s are not hyperthreaded, but hyperthreading has vastly proven to be unutilized in gaming applications; it does ship with an HD 2500 IGP for basic integrated graphics needs, though it won't run any games very well/at all, but more notably the CPU is clocked at 3.2GHz with 6MB L3 cache and four physical cores. Not everyone needs a 3570k - especially if you're not overclocking - and quite honestly, this will perform perfectly fine for games at this point-in-time.
Alternative i7-3770k ($300): 3770k. As an alternative to the above deal, TigerDirect also has the Intel i7-3770k processor marked down to $300 from the average $320 price-point (use coupon code RGQ83596 at checkout). This is the cream-of-the-crop performance-series processor from Intel that blows anything AMD makes out of the water for gaming, perhaps with the exception being INT-heavy applications and Cry Engine 3, where AMD competes heavily. With the overclocking abilities of this bad boy, it should overclock way past the stock speed of 3.5GHz with a quality aftermarket heatsink (try the NZXT X40, which we're currently testing). It's also fitted with Intel's hyper-threading technology and a healthy 8MB L3 cache, both of which will prove useful for CPU-bound applications (video rendering/encoding) and repeat instruction cycles/decoding, respectively. The IGP is not noteworthy for gamers, so don't expect it to even come close to discrete GPU capabilities.
Well, that's all for this week. There are many more deals out there to find, so until next time.
- Michael "Mikagmann2" Mann.