Hardware Sales - 120GB SSD for $40, 16GB LED DDR4 Memory for $70

With websites like Newegg and Amazon rolling out “Pre-Black Friday Deals,” it is a good time of the year to purchase memory and storage. For this sales round-up, we’re primarily focusing on Flash-based devices -- namely, memory and SSDs. DDR4 prices seem to get lower and lower as Intel’s Skylake and Broadwell-E chipsets mature, and both Intel’s upcoming Kaby Lake and AMD’s Zen are known to have DDR4 support. The market will complete its switch-over for the enthusiast segment as these platforms roll-out.

Avexir Core Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-2400 ($70): This 16GB kit of memory is on sale over at Newegg for $70 until Monday, timed at 16-16-16-36 and with LED options in red, green, or blue (not RGB -- just one color). For comparison, the Avexir Core Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4-2400 kits are selling for $62 at Newegg right now, making the 16GB option at $70 the much more cost effective route. If you are in the market for DDR4, particularly with LEDs, this is a deal to consider.

Crucial Sport LT 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4-2400 ($50): Amazon is having a sale on Crucial’s budget line of DDR4 memory kits, at $50 this kit would be fast enough and have enough capacity to handle modern AAA titles. If you’d rather shed the LEDs and get something more budget-oriented, the Crucial Sport LT 8GB kit of 2x4GB sticks would be a reasonable buy.

Western Digital Blue 1TB HDD ($50): Newegg is having a sale on WD’s Blue 1TB hard drive through the end of this weekend, which is about $5 less than the normal price (despite a “$70” list price). This HDD runs at 7200 RPM and features a 64MB cache, and at $0.049 per/GB this is a deal that will give mass storage at a reasonable price. If an SSD is out of the question for a budget machine, the WD Blue drives at 7200RPM make for an acceptable starting point.

PNY CS1311 120GB SSD ($40): For those looking to purchase a smaller capacity SSD, Amazon and Newegg are both having sales on the PNY CS1311 120GB model for $40. While the price per/GB is slightly higher than the MX300’s sale from two days ago (at $0.33), this is still a considerable deal since the CS1311 has sequential read/write speeds of 550/520 MB/s.

Check back this week for more review coverage.

- Ryan Greenberg