Early Black Friday 2018 Deals: SSDs, RAM, 4K Monitors, & Misc. Tech
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are upon us again. ‘Tis the season, as they say, for unrepentant, gluttonous consumerism. The official dates are Friday, November 23rd and Monday, November 26th; however, that doesn’t stop retailers from enticing would be buyers early – we’ve already seen Newegg doing their “Black November” discounts.
Amazon has announced they’ll be dedicating an entire week to the event, and Newegg has deals going live as early as November the 19th (that’s today). Many deals will go live on Thanksgiving Day, with all deals going live on the day after, presumably at midnight.
We’ll be rounding-up the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for computer hardware, heading into the holidays. This should help those looking for advice on where and how to shop. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, as well, or hit YouTube for our larger audience.
Amazon and Newegg remain the premier options for PC enthusiasts this time of the year, but Dell, Best Buy, Walmart, Fry’s, and Micro Center will all have deals going. We’ll try to aggregate all relevant deals on the homepage, but if some of you spot something, keep us apprised.
We spent the whole of 2017 complaining about airflow in cases, and it seems that some manufacturers have heard our complaints for 2018. Cooler Master has revamped its H500P to now feature a mesh face, and has also resolved significant build quality concerns with the front and top panels. Enermax rebuilt its Saberay to use mesh front and top panel inserts (optionally), a major step forward. Lian Li put out the best case at this year’s show, focusing on both looks and airflow (with two different models).
This is our review of the best cases of 2018, CES edition, following on a now six-year (!) tradition of “Best Case” coverage from CES. We started CES case round-ups in 2012, and have advanced them significantly since. Our demands have also changed significantly, as we look more toward function-focused designs that can artfully integrate ease-of-installation features.
There’s just barely time left for online Christmas shopping, and retailers know it. For once, Amazon’s deals have synchronized with Newegg’s, and there are discounts across the board. We’ve collected some of the best last-minute deals. Remember: if you order it before the 25th, you technically didn’t forget.
On the heels of what already seemed like a remarkable discount, considering how relatively new Ryzen is, it seems that retailer Amazon has now cut AMD R7 CPU prices even further. It’s the typical, “hurry up and buy! This is the last day of the sale!” situation, while whispering that tomorrow’s sale will be even better.
Regardless, for those who didn’t buy in on the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, the R7 1700 CPU (which we strongly recommend with a quick overclock) and R7 1700X CPU are now marked down to $243 and $252, respectively. List price is about $400 on the 1700X and about $330 on the 1700, though both have been marked down closer to the $300-$350 range for the last few months.
The Best Mechanical Keyboards of 2017 - Sales for Gamers & Typists
As we continue to slog through sales over the weekend, we’ve compiled some of the most attractive deals on keyboards—which might be some of the best deals yet, given the RAM, GPU, and SSD sales out there. We’ve rounded-up the best mechanical keyboards of 2017 and their subsequent Cyber Monday sales. If anyone is looking for a new plank for the holidays, here our some of our picks.
As we continue our year-end awards and sales guides, we’ve come to SSDs. Thus far, our others guides have covered RAM, various Black Friday picks, monitors, 1080 Tis, and laptops. Below, we’ll look at the best SSDs of 2017, and any resultant sales for Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Holidays. We use the word “sale” loosely: much like DRAM, NAND has spent much of the year suffering from undersupply and insatiable demand, and thus the ensuing price hike. Most manufacturers are transitioning to 64-layer 3D-NAND, and it is progressing slowly. So, new product releases have been few and far between, supply on other NAND types have been constricted, and prices have remained high. It’s likely CES in January will bring news or announcements.
That said, storage is still a glaring bottleneck for many, and there’s not a more tangible difference in response than upgrading to a modern SSD from a mechanical drive. This holiday season should be a good time to pick up an SSD on sale—or at least at a slightly less rapacious price.
Must-Have PC Building Tools & Accessories - Black Friday & Cyber Monday
As the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, & holiday sales continue, we thought it may be helpful to put together some essentials for PC building. We’ve included everything from tool kits to thermal paste and many other various items we’ve found useful. The idea is to compile a list of must-have PC-building tools, including PC technician tool kits, thermal compound, power meters, parts trays, and more.
iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit - iFixit makes some of the best tool kits in the industry, which is why we routinely work with the company to run sponsorships and ads on the channel. We use the products every day and feel confident in recommending them. The iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit has been featured on the channel previously and includes all the tools one would need when building or maintaining a PC, including most the tools required to disassemble video cards, coolers, and laptops. The kit includes a 64-bit driver kit, anti-static wrist strap, a small suction cup, opening tools, opening picks, multiple tweezers, two spudgers, magnetic pad, jimmy, and tool roll. At $60 on Amazon (list price), this should serve as a good tool kit for tech enthusiasts as well as general use around the house.
Liquid is only half of the argument, but it’s an important half. We’ll soon be rounding-up several of the high-end air coolers available on the market, and before jumping into that, we’re going to lay the groundwork with a round-up of our liquid cooler reviews for the year. This guide looks at the best closed-loop liquid coolers (“AIOs”) for 2017, but also includes a few of the worst – the leak-prone and the weak-fanned.
As usual with these round-ups, we’ll be including links to the individual reviews for the applicable coolers, with purchasing links also included for each line item. This is part of our end-of-year round-ups, which can all be found here. For specific items, we rounded-up our top Black Friday sales choices here, our top gaming monitor picks, and the best CPU sales. Plenty more on the Buyer’s Guide page.
Note: You’ll want to pull our most recent cooler review to get an updated table with all performance metrics, though individual reviews are good for non-performance discussion.
With our Best AM4 Overclocking Motherboards content up, we figured it was time to publish something in the same vein for Intel. Intel presently has two mainstream platforms: the 200-series and 300-series, with the former hosting Kaby Lake CPUs (like the i7-7700K, presently on sale) and the Skylake-X/KBL-X series (X299), while the latter hosts the new Coffee Lake series (i7-8700K, i5-8400). Oddly, Intel decided against launching Coffee Lake with lower-tier B-series motherboards, so we’re left with only Z370 to fill both the mainstream and enthusiast segments of Coffee Lake.
We rummaged through the Internet’s Black Friday sales to find the best Z370 and Z270 Intel motherboards, including boards we think fitting for the 8700K, 8500, 8300, and 7700K. If you missed our previous content, we have a GN Pick Black Friday Sales guide (that lists some CPUs), a DDR4 memory sales guide, and a Best CPUs of 2017 listing. For those unsure of which CPU to buy, we have reviews of the i7-8700K here, the i5-8400 here, and the i3-8350K over here. If you’re interested in Ryzen stuff, check out our motherboard round-up or Best CPUs guide, both linked above.
It’s one spelunk after another for sales round-ups. Our other sales round-ups covered RAM sales, AMD CPU sales, and provided a GN “Best Of” Black Friday sales guide. We’re back to look at the best gaming laptops of 2017, along with their subsequent sales for Black Friday.
We moderate comments on a ~24~48 hour cycle. There will be some delay after submitting a comment.