As part of our recurring weekend-ly hardware sales round-up, this weekend sees the arrival of monitor, video card, and CPU discounts; for something a bit different, we also included a power strip (often overlooked) to protect your systems from power surges.
Patriot Signature 8GB @ 1600MHz ($68): RAM is still overpriced when compared against last year's prices, but we're able to occasionally find kits being dumped for lower prices. Patriot has 2x4GB modules of their Signature memory listed at $68 right now (which is, comparatively, not a bad price). The memory clocks natively at 1600MHz, making it ideal for gaming and mainstream builds (you won't notice an impact from faster memory unless you're caching out in video transcoding software).
AMD FX-6350 Vishera CPU ($120): Normally found at $140, AMD's FX-6350 six-core Vishera CPU is presently on sale with a $20 instant discount. As most of you likely know, AMD defines their cores a bit differently from Intel: an AMD core is a single Bulldozer module, which is comprised of two INT units and one FPU; Intel, meanwhile, has 1 FPU per core. This means the Vishera-class CPUs are a bit more efficient at integer processing, but at the end of the day, gaming on a 6350 will be about the same as gaming on a similarly-priced Intel CPU. Most games are GPU-bound, so that's where your difference will start to emerge.
Tripp Lite Surge Suppressor ($30): We don't normally go out of the way to recommend surge protectors/suppressors, but they are easily one of the more important (and overlooked) components of your pipeline. By putting a MOV between your PSU and the wall, there's one more point of failure that could potentially take the hit for your PC.
AMD HD 7970 ($280): After a $30 rebate, XFX's take on the AMD Radeon HD 7970 drops to a relatively affordable sub-$300 price. This particular model ships with 3GB of on-card memory, making it ready to play Battlefield 4 (with its high-resolution texture pack) on near-max or max settings.
Pick of the Week
HannsG 27" LED Monitor ($200): This 27" display isn't the skinniest unit on the market, but for the size and price (and yes, it does support up to 1080p on HDMI or DVI connections), it's a solid offering. The monitor boasts a 2ms GTG response time, which is more than acceptable for gaming.
That's it for this round-up! Be sure to check out our PC builds section for in-depth guides of how to apply these sales.
- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.