Welcome to another addition of our Weekly Hardware Sales round-up that I affectionately call Mik's Piks. I have been away on paternity leave, but am now back with some sweet deals. I found a Xion case, some HyperX RAM, Zalman CPU heatsink, an XFX HD 7870, and Crucial 240GB SSD.
XION Gaming Series XON-985-BK case ($50): It is really fun to find a case with loads of features you normally find in more expensive cases. While XION is not one of the top name brands we usually see in cases, they have been around long enough to know what a gamer needs in a case. This case is large, but not massive. You get all the usual specifications you look for, USB 3.0, plenty of expansion bays, and even fan filters for the intake fans. We always suggest a minimum of two to three fans for cooling as a very rough guideline, and this one comes with three -- two blue LED fans on the front and a rear exhaust with room for more.
Kingston HyperX 8GB RAM ($65): Here I selected 8GB of 1600MHz RAM from Kingston. We recently did an article on dual channel vs single channel RAM platforms, and found that while the speed in not great in gaming, if you have editing or rendering needs it can make a bigger difference. However, this two stick kit should be great in just about any setup, and at a great price.
Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU Cooler ($75): Phanteks is offering up their tried-and-true 140mm fan-equipped CPU cooler for only $75 instant discount. This cooler is not too big for most cases and the distinct shape of it should look good in your build.
XFX Double D HD 7870 GPU ($170): Here we found a great budget gaming solution, the XFX Double D HD 7870 at a reasonable price. It is no secret that we absolutely love video cards, and this is a great entry-level GPU. It features 1280 stream processors with 2GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 256-bit interface. This means you should be able to play most games out at medium to high settings, including Titanfall at great FPS.
Pick of the Week
Crucial M500 240GB SSD ($125): It is really good to see the prices of Solid-State Drives getting lower. For the price that I paid for a 120GB SSD a couple years ago, Crucial is offering a capable 240GB SSD. Read our SSD Dictionary to get a better understanding of what to look for in an SSD. This one gets great reviews and even comes with an adapter bracket. It features a Marvell controller with Micron Custom firmware. If you have never owned an SSD, you will be astounded at the speed you get, decreasing load times of applications and lowering load times in game.
Well, that's all for this week. Keep in mind these deals are tentative, so buy them while the deals last. There are many more deals out there to find, so until next time.
- Michael "Mikagmann2" Mann.