Deals, Discounts, and Best PC Component Buys & Builds

Quote: The New Guy

crimsonstag84 said:If I were in your shoes, I’d take that deal. 😛 My CNPS10X Perform has been doing the heavy lifting for over seven years now, and I originally picked it up during a sale at Best Buy for $40 btw. $83 😉

By the way, a few Gigabyte Z370 boards just popped up at a decent price. $250... Ryzen 3 The whole idea of combining parts is starting to lose its logic since it's really just about the core components. $50 It’s actually cheaper than picking up an Intel i3 8100 paired with a Gigabyte Z370.

The Ryzen 3—though honestly, the Intel i3 8100 at $130 is in that same boat—just doesn't make sense anymore, and it isn't even because you can snag a cheaper Intel motherboard. It’s actually due to... My brother's got a Ryzen 3 2200 g Veg 8 Processor. Which one's going to end up costing me $100?

Since when? $250 If you're looking for an Intel setup with a motherboard and CPU that won't let you overclock without breaking the bank, you're in a bit of a bind. Take this Asrock AM4 board, for instance; it handles any first-generation Ryzen R7 without breaking a sweat—the power delivery is identical to the higher-end Pro4 version—and it'll push them right up to those sweet spot speeds of 3.8GHz quite easily.

Check out this Asrock AM4 pro4 motherboard on Amazon.

Once the Ryzen 3 2200 g Veg 8 Processor finally hits the shelves in about two weeks, nobody with half a brain is going to touch the old Ryzen R3 1200 or the R3 1300X.🍿

If you're looking at the specs for the Ryzen 3 2200 g Veg 8 Processor, you'll see exactly what it offers for anyone trying to build a budget rig without a dedicated graphics card. It’s a straightforward little chip that handles the basics quite well if you aren't demanding high-end gaming performance right out of the gate.

Once those H310/B360 boards hit the market for around 500 bucks$200, pairing one with an Intel i3 8100 is going to be a killer combo. Honestly, there won't be much difference compared to a Ryzen 3 2200 g Apa paired with an AM4 board.$33

It’s highly likely we'll see some discounts on the Ryzen quad-core models soon; otherwise, they're going to lose all their appeal compared to the APUs.

As for the AM4 motherboards, there was a lot of hype and anticipation that they would undercut Intel's equivalents in price, but unfortunately, that hasn't happened. They end up costing about the same, if not slightly more.

Timothy Kim60 said:Those Ryzen quad cores will probably need a price cut, otherwise they're basically useless compared to the APUs.

As for the AM4 boards, everyone expected them to undercut Intel's equivalents, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. They end up costing the same, if not a bit more.

The Ryzen 1000-series is going to be phased out once the 2000-series hits anyway, so I wouldn't be surprised if AMD just scraps the CPU-only quads entirely. If they do that, the price of the current quads won't even matter.

Yeah, the boards aren't cheap, but you can't really compare them directly.
The B350 actually supports overclocking while the B250 doesn't, so we're looking at apples and oranges here.
It's true that the X370 is generally pricier than the Z270/Z370.

Maybe when Intel drops some cheaper boards, AM4 prices will finally budge.

I'm wondering what kind of graphics performance we're looking at with the Ryzen 3 2200 g Veg 8 Processor compared to an Nvidia GTX1050.

It’ll be something weaker than a GT1030, which means it's way slower than a GTX1050.

Quote: The New Guy

wiredotter14 said:It’s like comparing apples to oranges: the B350 actually supports overclocking, whereas the B250 doesn't.
It’s a fair point—generally speaking, the X370 tends to carry a higher price tag than the Z270 or Z370 boards.

It’s definitely a fair comparison. For instance, back in the day, you could pick up a Z370 pro4 for basically the same price as an Asrock AM4 B350 pro4. $250...which, for that matter, seems to perform a bit better.

For instance, just look at how Asrock compares its Extreme 4 against Intel's offerings. When you consider what Asrock provides on the AM4 platform for that price point—especially since those X370 boards are actually a bit cheaper now—it’s pretty clear where the value lies.

By the way, I went ahead and ordered the cooler.

Look, I'm no expert when it comes to specific motherboard specs, but the bottom line is that one of the main overclocking features found on an AMD board is also available on a board like this $200 one.

It holds up well enough, mainly because Intel doesn't allow overclocking on those lower-end chipsets. However, I have to say, once you start looking at the more serious price points (over $100), it feels like AM4 boards are getting pretty pricey—they really should be more affordable.

Timothy Kim60 said:It holds up, mostly because Intel doesn't allow overclocking on the lower-end chipsets. But honestly, once you start looking at anything remotely serious ($100+), those AM4 boards seem overpriced. They really should be cheaper.

Yeah, true. Looking at them now, the cheapest X370 boards are pushing nearly a grand, which is like 20-25% more than the entry-level Z370 options. It’s not exactly a great value proposition. Enthusiasts want the beefier chipset, so a lot of people will probably stick with an 8600K or 8350K over Ryzen, since that motherboard price gap eats up whatever savings you get from picking Ryzen.

It probably impacts the price because there's an extra layer involved—they basically outsourced the chipset manufacturing to ASMedia.

Did anyone make it out to the Happy Day event at Link's?

It's happening on February 10th in Cleveland, though I know they've already held one somewhere else.

I was out in Indianapolis. To be honest, they advertised this great deal on a printer and some mediocre offer on a laptop, plus a bunch of "other stuff." I specifically went there to check out what was in that "other stuff" category, only to find out they didn't actually have anything else besides the printer and the laptop—and the first 50 customers just ended up with some cheap mousepad.

You gonna tell Timothy Kim60 that it basically turned into a total disaster in the end?😁

Oh, and the guy who actually needed the printer ended up being perfectly fine with it. 😁

My neighbor picked up that HP ($90, it was a great deal from Target), so I set it up and got everything installed for him. He tried printing a single photo, but it came out all smudged and pixelated, and then suddenly—he tells me the black ink isn't working at all and it just refuses to print 🤷

So, he headed straight to customer service to file a claim, and a few days later they swapped it out for a new one. Everything’s working perfectly now.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-BarraCuda-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B07P8S6W8Z

Nothing groundbreaking here, but it's a solid option if anyone is in the market for a 1TB HDD.

Intel Core i5 8400$0.47 -

GTX 1060 6GB $777 (ASUS Dual)

It already changed in $1.25... I guess they maybe just listed it at the standard price by mistake 😬

4100 🤣 Would the order have gone through if I had placed it at last year's price?