Weekend Hardware Sales - SSDs, RAM, & Mechanical Keyboards

We took a short break from weekend hardware sales round-ups to post a ton of Titanfall coverage, including two new PC build guides for those looking to get into system building. The builds were $797 and $506, so they appeal to mid-range and ultra-budget audiences pretty well. With all that out of the way, we're now back to our regularly-scheduled weekend hardware sales round-up; this weekend includes an Intel 530 SSD sale, mechanical keyboard, headset, and some RAM.

Intel 530 SSD 240GB ($175): Intel's 530 SSD has been around for a little while, but it's still one of the most reliable SSDs on the market and has speeds that push near the SATA limit. This drive is a 240GB SSD (~7% overprovisioned) and best serves as your primary drive -- throw a couple games on there, your work / core applications, the OS, and you're good to go. Use promo code EMCPHHC25 at checkout.

HyperX Steel Series Siberia Headset ($75): Back at PAX East last year, Kingston showed us their new Kingston-Steel Series partner product -- the Kingston HyperX Edition Steel Series Siberia V2 headset. That's a mouthful. The headset is a Siberia V2 rebadge with Kingston branding, coloring, and a new price on some retailers. Given the Siberia V2's performance and dominance in the market, it's a good buy; if you're looking for reviews of this, just look for normal Siberia V2 reviews and know that this one has a few small tweaks (color, mostly).

Rosewill Apollo Mechanical Keyboard ($130): It's not news to anyone that mechanical keyboards tend to run pretty expensive, but given their overall feel and endurance, it's generally a worthwhile purchase. I'm in the process of testing Rosewill's Apollo RK-9100xBBR keyboard right now (using it while typing this article, actually), and as a bit of a teaser, I'm pretty happy with it so far. It's in tight competition with Logitech's G710+, but if you don't need the more easily-accessible function keys, the Apollo is a good choice. I personally prefer brown switches for their punchy-ness, but other switches are available.

Pick of the Week

Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB RAM ($70): It's not news to anyone that RAM is about 2x higher in price than it was 1.5 years ago, but we do our best to find the occasional deal to mitigate that pain. Right now, a lot of our go-to memory options are $90 over their previous ~$70, making it tough on budget system builders to get into the market. There's presently a sale on Kingston's Blu consumer line of memory -- 2x4GB @ 1600MHz for $70, which is about as good as it gets right now. This memory is more than enough for most gaming rigs, but if you're using an APU and no discrete GPU, you should get something a bit faster.

- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.