With the year fast coming to an end, and Black Friday approaching, sales have been more promising with each passing week. This week I found a cheap 23" monitor, 240GB SSD for $160, a video card on sale, and a case.
HP 23" Monitor ($120): This HP monitor would be great for any basic gaming PC setup. With a standard 23" viewing area, 1920 x 1080 resolution, and 5ms response time, you get a pretty solid monitor for the price. You also get VGA and DVI input connectivity, but this monitor does not support HDMI.
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 240GB SSD ($160): The price of solid state drives has continued to fall to the point that we can now find these 240GB drives for less than $1/GB. This SATA III SSD from Mushkin is driven by a second generation SandForce controller, which should ensure not only reasoanble performance, but good stability as well. Also included is a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter.
MSI HD 7790 ($100): MSI is selling this decent budget GPU at a budget build price. The HD 7790 is a great entry-level video card for gamers who play games like League of Legends or DOTA 2. The 1GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit interface should allow you to play most games out at medium settings, but will struggle with games like Battlefield 4 and Crysis. We strongly recommend a 2GB video card for anything more intense, for instance...
MSI Radeon 7850 2GB ($110): At $110, this is an easy pickup. Actually, unless you have specific TDP or noise requirements, we'd encourage you to snag this 2GB 7850 over the above 7790. If you're building an HTPC or a lightweight gaming machine, the 7790 makes good sense.
Pick of the Week
Zalman Z9 U3 ($45): After featuring this case in our $425 League of Legends build, I had to spotlight it this weekend. Zalman's Z9 case offers everything you should look for in a budget case at this price. You get a sleek-looking case with a clear side panel on it to view all of your components, 4xFans stock, and a fan controller built into the case.
Well, that's all for this week. There are many more deals out there to find, so until next time.
- Michael "Mikagmann2" Mann