Deals, Discounts, and Best PC Component Buys & Builds

It looks like DDR3 and DDR4 RAM prices have finally hit a plateau, and honestly, they still seem to be trending downward 🙂

I guess if anyone actually needs RAM, they should probably grab it now. It’ll likely start climbing again once this dip settles down

fadedorca66 said:And unfortunately, there isn't much you can do. As far as I know, the turnaround for repairs can take up to 45 business days, so it’s a bit of a headache. It probably isn't even that they're being lazy, but rather just a messy process (shipping the GPU back to the manufacturer, waiting for a replacement unit, etc.). It easily takes 2-3 weeks just for parts to arrive.

The legal timeframe isn't actually set at 45 days; it's left undefined, referring instead to "reasonable and acceptable" repair time, which is open to interpretation. Essentially, there is no explicit number of days mentioned anywhere.

Thomas Flores74 said:I was thinking about picking up that ASUS card over at San Francisco, but I'm not sure; I'm hesitant to pay upfront. I much prefer having everything delivered so I can just hand the cash to the driver.

San Francisco, PCMag, Future, Micro Center—I have zero issues with any of them. I used to work in distribution and know most of these people personally. They're reliable, and you certainly don't have to worry about getting scammed.🙂

Brandon Torres said:San Francisco, PCMag, Future, Micro Center—zero issues there. I used to work in distribution, so I actually know those guys personally. Nobody there causes trouble, and you definitely won't see them featured on some consumer watchdog exposé. 🙂

Still, you really ought to call or shoot them an email before paying upfront. That ASUS card was listed as in stock at San Francisco even a month after they sold out of their last unit. 🙏
I ordered a GPU from another shop one afternoon via COD, and the site showed 4/4 in stock. By the next morning, the website said 0/4 available, and I never even got a confirmation email. I eventually had to hunt them down with an email just to find out they were canceling my order entirely. 🙂

By the way, MediaWorld recently had the ASUS 960 STRIX listed as $505 for a couple of days before they realized their mistake 🤦 😁

Brandon Torres said:San Francisco, PCMag, Future, Micro Center—zero issues there. I used to work in distribution, so I actually know most of these people personally. Nobody there is shady, and they definitely aren't going to end up on some investigative news exposé.🙂

So what, if someone runs into an issue, they just come to you to fix it?

It's funny how you can vouch for a whole crowd of people you don't even know in a single sentence... 🤔

Exactly. Like we already heard, SSD prices are set to plummet this year. It’s honestly a shame that those 480GB to 512GB drives are still holding onto such high price tags.

It looks like some component prices have taken quite a dip over the last week...

http://www.amazon.com/s?k=AMD+FX+8300 - averaging around $350 per unit
http://www.amazon.com/s?k=i5+6402P - a Skylake i5, priced under $500, and it’s got a slightly higher clock speed than the 6400
http://www.amazon.com/s?k=i3+6098P - a Skylake i3, at a price that seems somewhat reasonable now, sitting below $300... though I guess the value proposition compared to the FX 8300 is still a bit questionable

I suspect the days of chasing Haswell might be winding down, especially with this i5 Skylake pricing and cheaper DDR4 memory.

http://www.newegg.com/p/nitro+r9+390 - goes for $950 for this specific model
http://www.newegg.com/p/r9+380 - these have dropped twice in a short window, first from 1600-$550 down to $517, and now they're at $483

http://www.amazon.com/s?k=8GB+DDR4 - another 10% drop; it's actually cheaper than 8GB of DDR3 now
http://www.amazon.com/s?k=RAM+4GB+DDR3 - prices have slid back down to the $42 lows we saw a few years ago

Whoa. 👍 If only those DDR4 Skylake motherboards were just a tiny bit cheaper...

R9 380... man, what a steal!

It’s not that prices dropped, it’s just the dollar 😁 Just a few days ago it was over $2.25, now it’s sitting at 6.66!

...which ended up driving the price down.

https://www.amazon.com/AMD-Radeon-Graphics-Video-Card/dp/B00X/

10% off on this

Not exactly a steal, but maybe an R9 380 is worth grabbing?

This GT 740 DDR5 is actually a pretty solid deal for the price—assuming you're happy with the performance levels, like if you're just looking to breathe some life into an older PC.

The GT 740 isn't actually a bad card (it's basically just a rebrand of the GTX 650), and I used to run a 650 myself without any issues. I managed to pull off some pretty crazy stuff with that setup and an E7200.

I honestly thought I was scoring a great deal with that GT 740 price, but then I stumbled upon this:

It’s basically an overclocked HD 7750, which seems pretty similar to how a standard R7 250 is just an overclocked HD 7730. I guess.

Back then, if I recall correctly, the GTX 650 held a slight edge over the HD7750. However, the R7 might actually be the smarter play these days, especially considering how much NVIDIA has been struggling with their Kepler architecture lately, combined with the improvements in newer AMD drivers and DirectX 12 support. Though, honestly, even that last point is debatable since cards in this performance bracket usually struggle to meet the minimum requirements for DirectX 12 titles anyway.

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/681?vs=535

Yeah, I guess 2012 was a bit of a gap, but you have to remember the GT 740 is basically just a downclocked GTX 650. Plus, this R7 250 512 SP has a core speed of 925MHz compared to the reference 800MHz, on top of what you mentioned. IMO, the GT 740 probably should be another 30-$13 cheaper to really justify that difference, but I don't think it's a mistake if someone decides to grab it 🙂

GTX 970 Phoenix$818—and that’s even without their 3% discount applied.