Steve's Picks: Weekly Hardware Sales - Z87/HW Combos, AMD APUs, 3TB HDD

Mik's taking another break from his semi-regular hardware deal round-up column, so I'll be filling in for the weekend. Given the recent rush of Z87 and Haswell products to the market, we've seen a series of combo deals on motherboard/CPU selections that make for surprisingly good prices. For this weekend's hardware sale round-up, we'll cover a 3TB externalHDD,SDcard (because I like storage), and those Z87/Haswell products.

WD Elements 3TB External HDD ($115): After a significant instant discount and measly $5 coupon code (XVN93232), you can snag 3TB of external storage (via USB) for $115. Though I personally prefer internal storage, external units do offer a bit of modularity and archival potential that fits multi-PC or living room PC environments well.

Kingston 16GB MicroSD Card + Adapter ($11): So, if you haven't been paying attention for a few years, phones have become a pretty big deal. Flash storage continues its upward trend in demand, and as mobile devices continue to take the place of traditional consumer electronics (cameras and mp3 players, for instance), we see heavier focus on their storage capabilities. This is a simple Class 4 16GB MicroSD card for use in your mobile devices; it's not crazy fast, but it's perfect for normal mp3/phone photography purposes. The adapter makes for convenient connectivity.

A8-6600K APU + ASUS F2A85 Motherboard Combo ($210): With the increase in popularity of HTPCs and living room PCs, AMD's new Richland series of APUs makes perfect sense for any "lite gaming" HTPC/DVR replacement. This combo bundles the APU itself with a decent-quality ASUS board (OC supported) to get you started. $210 for the lot is a solid deal.

i5-4430 CPU + MSI B85-G41 Board ($270): This combo deal sees the unification of Intel's "mainstream" non-K SKU i5-4430 CPU with a business-class B85 motherboard. If you're unaware of the chipset differences in the Haswell generation, check out this article. You won't get any OC support or fancy features out of this combo, but if you're just building a standard machine (gaming or otherwise) that doesn't need SLI or overclocking support, then this saves a lot of money.

That's it for this deal round-up! Check back next week for when Mik's back behind the keyboard.

- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.