Prime Day 2023 Deals Live: Latest SSD, CPU, GPU and PC Sales
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AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, World’s Fastest Gaming CPU, Drops to $419
Though it is not at the very top of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 CPU stack, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is the fastest gaming CPU you can buy right now. Thanks to its 96MB of 3D V-Cache, this chip beats the pants off of Intel’s fastest, the Core i9-13900K, coming in 12 percent faster on average and 40 percent faster in some titles.
The 7800X3D, which as 8-cores, 16 threads and a 5-GHz boost clock, carries a $449 MSRP, and has been selling for $439 at most stores. However, right now, if you buy it from B&H photo, you get a $19.01 coupon which takes the price down to $419.99. You also get a free download of Starfield.
When we wrote our Ryzen 7800X3D review, we noted that this chip is even slightly faster than the 7950X3D and 7900X3D, both of which have more cores and higher boost clocks. However, perhaps because it has a single CCD and fewer cores, the 7800X3D is able to give more priority to your games.
As you can see in the chart below, the Ryzen 7800X3D topped our suite of 1080p gaming tests with an average fps of 224, which is ever-so-slightly faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, a full 12 fps ahead of the 7800X3D and 24 fps beyond Intel’s best chip.
If you want more productivity to go with your gaming, the 7900X3D and 7950X3D’s higher core counts put them ahead. However, if you want the fastest gaming CPU that money can buy, go with the 7800X3D. — Avram Piltch
I carry around an external SSD in my backpack to hold benchmark installers, game files and anything else I might need to run tests on the best gaming laptops, best ultrabooks, and best gaming PCs. That drive, the SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD, is on sale today for Amazon Prime Day for an all-time low price. Even the larger 4TB drive, at $199.99, is an all-time low, per CamelCamelCamel.
You can’t quite trust the massive Amazon price reductions that claim it has fallen 70% or more over the list price. These prices have been falling for years. Still, you can save $40 to $100 depending on capacity and color, which is no small change.
On the 2TB model, the blue “Monterey” color will get you the best savings. On the 4TB model, go with “black” for the biggest sale. There are also 500GB and 1TB versions.
This drive has a USB Type-C 3.2 connector, which will work with any laptop using USB-C or Thunderbolt. If you’re using an older notebook or you’re out of USB-C ports, it comes with a USB Type-A adapter in the box. SanDisk advertises speeds of up to 1,050 MB/s. It’s also IP65 water and dust resistant and can resist 3-meter drops.
It has a carabiner loop, which is good for technicians in the field, but this thing is small enough that I just stuff it in a pocket in my backpack. Maybe you’re more organized than I am!
Storage prices have been falling, and may fall further. But these are the lowest prices I’ve seen on these drives, which I’ve good experiences with. I don’t know about you, but I always appreciate a good recommendation. — Andrew E. Freedman
Dell’s Eye-Popping Gaming Monitors on Big Sale
It’s no secret that Dell makes some of the best gaming monitors around and, when they are on sale, they are also fantastic values. Right now, we’re seeing quite a few Dell monitor deals that are hard to resist.
The Dell S3222DGM, a 32-inch, 165 Hz screen that sits atop our list of the best gaming monitors, is now going for $299, reduced from $349. When we tested the Dell S3222DGM, we noted that it reproduced 111 percent of the sRGB color gamut while providing an impressive 3,700:1 contrast ratio.
If you can spend quite a bit more, the Alienware AW3423DWF has a brilliant QD-OLED panel and runs at 3440 x 1440 resolution and 165 Hz. When we tested the AW3423DWF, we were blown away by its color reproduction, which hit a full 107 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut.
If you need to spend a bit less, Dell’s S2722DGM is a good deal at just $249 today. The 27-inch, 2K display delivered a bright 350 nits and a colorful 111 percent of the sRGB gamut in our tests.
— Avram Piltch
Just Say No: Laptops with 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSDs Are a Bad Deal
It’s Prime Day so the market is flooded with laptop sales. We’re covering the top ones on our best Prime Day laptop deals page, but if you’re out there browsing the virtual shelves on your own, you might be tempted by some deals that look good if you don’t glance too closely at the specs.
For example, Best Buy has a MacBook Air with M1 chip for just $749, which seems good (if you’re into Macs) because you rarely see a new MacBook for less than $1,000. And, this $1,199 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon config might also catch your attention because the Carbon is one of the leading Ultrabooks for productivity.
But here’s the thing: whether your budget is $500 or $5,000, you should not buy a computer that has just 8GB of RAM. As I write this, I have less than a dozen Chrome tabs open with Spotify and Slack running. Yet my PC has already assigned 12GB of its RAM. Maybe with some better memory management and fewer processes running, I could get my usage to around 8GB but by the time I have another 10 tabs open, I’ll be using closer to 16GB.
In short, if you get a computer with only 8GB of RAM, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be using more memory than you have installed just when you’re browsing the web. And if you exceed your physical memory, your PC slows down a great deal as it has to read and write from a paging file on your disk to make up for the shortage.
You might be thinking “I’ll just buy this cheap laptop with 8GB of RAM and upgrade it right after I take it out of the box.” That’s possible on some gaming laptops but most thin and light laptops have the RAM soldered in with no upgrade slot so, if it comes with 8GB, you’re stuck with 8GB forever.
The same laptops that have just 8GB of RAM often come with just a 256GB SSD. While that’s adequate for a Chromebook, you’ll find yourself using up most of the 256GB just from having Windows and a couple of productivity apps like Microsoft Office or Photoshop Elements. In 2023, the minimum storage size should be 512GB.
On the bright side, on many laptops — but not a MacBook — you can upgrade the SSD after you buy. And with high-end, 1TB SSDs costing as little as $54 these days, buying your drive on the aftermarket isn’t a terrible idea.
However, if you want a computer that works decently out of the box, you need to go for at least 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. What’s particularly shameful about companies offering models with 8GB and 256GB is that the models which have the right specs don’t cost much more and sometimes they are even less.
— Avram Piltch
Cache Me Outside: AMD’s Gaming CPUs with 3D V-Cache Plummet in Price
If you want the best processors for gaming, AMD’s chips lead the pack, thanks to their 3D V-Cache. Now, for Prime Day, three of Team Red’s gaming chips are at all-time lows on Amazon: the Ryzen 7 5800X3D for $277, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D for $577 and the Ryzen 9 7900X3D for $459.
When we reviewed the 7950X3D recently, we compared all the chips on our Windows 11 gaming suite. You can see in the chart below that the 7950X3D and 7900X3D make mincemeat of Intel’s top-of-the-line 13900K and the last-gen 5800X3D, which uses the older Zen 3 architecture, is just a few fps Intel’s best.
Though it’s now a generation old, AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D remains one of the best CPUs for gaming thanks to its generous 96MB of 3D V-Cache, 8 cores and 16 threads. Not only does its $277 price point make it the most affordable high-end gaming option, but the fact that it uses the older AM4 socket means that you can find a compatible B550 motherboard for less than $100, lowering the overall cost of your build.
If price is less of a concern, the 7950X3D offers a no-holds-barred experience that’s as good for productivity as it is for gaming with 16 cores, 32-threads and a boost clock of speed of 5.7 GHz. The 7900X3D is a better value, though, as you get 12 cores, 24-threads and a 5.5-GHz boost clock for more than $100 less. Both 7000 series AMD CPUs require AMD5 socketed motherboards that start at around $125 and DDR5 RAM which is still pricier than the DDR4 alternative.
— Avram Piltch
Speedy 2TB SSDs From Samsung, WD, Crucial Hit New Lows, 5 Cents Per GB
If you’re after affordable solid-state storage, then there are plenty of enticing deals to consider. We’ve already covered the plethora of shockingly cheap 4TB NVMe SSDs available starting at just 4 cents per gigabyte. But if you don’t need that much storage and/or don’t have that much cash to fork over, there are some sweet deals on more affordable (but still speedy) 2TB drives as well, with many drives hitting new low prices. The 2TB Crucial P5 Plus has dropped to $103, while the 2TB WD SN850X and Samsung 990 Pro drives are both down to $99.
Any of these PCIe 4.0 SSDs would be a good option for a boot drive, a game drive, or a PS5 drive. Just note that only the Samsung drive below comes with its own heatsink to keep the temps under control in your console.
With many motherboards these days shipping with three, four, or even five M.2 slots, grabbing a 2TB drive is a cost-effective way to save some money and add storage now, while having the option of adding more storage later. Just be sure to check how many spare slots you have. Because if you’re limited to adding just one extra drive, opting for a 4TB SSD might be the smarter move considering current deals mean spending as little as $60 more for double the capacity.
— Matt Safford
$149 Corsair 1000W Modular PSU Deal Will (Hopefully) Bring My RTX 4090 System Back to Life
It was the worst of times and the best of times for PC hardware failure. After getting home from the office last night, with mere hours before my first Prime Day deals shift, I discovered that my primary gaming/productivity PC had just… decided that it wasn’t going to turn on anymore.
It was perfectly fine before I left that morning, with no indications of any issues during the past few weeks as I’ve used it to level up my Druid in Diablo IV. But now, aside from a few RGB lights around the motherboard’s IO shield, nothing else powers up no matter how much I re-seat cables or swap out components (not that I did a ton of that, given the timing). So, while I haven’t had a chance to confirm things 100% yet, it seems highly likely that the power supply is dead since nothing else has changed and I left the system in sleep mode yesterday morning. And with all the deals work to be done in the next few days, I don’t really have time to do extensive troubleshooting. For the moment, I just have to shift to another system, which I’m writing this on now.
What I could do in the meantime, though, is order a new PSU so that it’s here waiting for me when I’m done slinging deals and ready to get back murdering my mouse switches in Diablo IV. But given that my rig is running an RTX 4090 and a Ryzen 9 7900X, I wasn’t expecting a suitable PSU replacement to come cheap.
But lo and behold, a quick search of 1000-watt-plus power supplies of the modern ATX 3.0 variety pointed me to Corsair’s RM1000e, a 1000W, fully modular model with the requisite 12VHPWR cable for my top-end GPU. Even at its normal price of $179, it’s not a bad option, given that most similarly specced PSUs from well-known brands sell for about the same price or more. But thanks to Prime Day (and Newegg’s Fantastech sale), the RM1000e is available for just $150 at Amazon and Newegg. That’s the lowest price it’s been, and cheaper than any other juice box I’d trust to run my gaming rig. Not bad.
Now, am I happy that my primary PC is currently sidelined and I’ll need to spend (at least) $150 to fix it? Of course not. But having just ordered a new PSU replacement for about $50 less than I would have expected to spend a few days ago, I’m happy knowing that I’ll be ready to game again once the deals-fest that is Prime Day calms down. At least I hope I will be, assuming the power supply didn’t take any other components with it. But that’s a potential nightmare for another day.
— Matt Safford