If you’re searching for some HOT deals today, check out these bargains on baller PC parts.
It won’t surprise anyone to hear that Hot Hardware is staffed by PC gaming stalwarts who (mostly) balk at the idea of playing games on consoles. After all, you have a limited game selection, few choices in terms of input devices, and you’re restricted to whatever quality-versus-performance compromise the developer decided on.
The conventional wisdom is that PC gaming is great, but really expensive. You don’t have to spend a huge bundle to get a killer gaming PC, though, and that’s especially true right now with Amazon’s Prime Day sales going on. Come along with us as we peruse Amazon’s best deals on PC parts.AMD Ryzen 7 7700X Eight-Core 5.4 GHz Socket AM5 CPU – $244 on Amazon (39% off)Intel Core i5-12600KF Ten-Core 4.9 GHz LGA 1700 CPU – $135 on Amazon
For gaming, you need at least six CPU cores, but eight or more is even better, as it leaves extra CPU on the table for background tasks. It’s also nice for the occasional multi-threaded workload. Right now there’s an excellent deal on the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, which has eight hot-clocked Zen 4 CPU cores with simultaneous multi-threading, offering a full 16 threads of Ryzen power.
If you prefer Intel, you can’t go wrong with the Core i5-12600KF at just $139. This chip has six fast Golden Cove P-cores and an additional four Gracemont E-cores to handle background workloads. It also neatly sidesteps any Raptor Lake stability concerns. While it lacks the extra cache of the newer LGA 1700 CPUs, using fast DDR5 memory makes up a surprising amount of the difference in our testing.Cooler Master Hyper212 Spectrum V3 ARGB CPU Cooler – $12.99 on Amazon (28% off)Thermalright Peerless Assassin 140 Dual Tower CPU Cooler – $39.90 on Amazon
You’ll need a CPU cooler for these chips, and there are two great deals today. First up is the beloved classic, Cooler Master’s Hyper 212, this time in “Spectrum V3” form with included ARGB fan. While the venerable Hyper212 isn’t the best cooler on the market anymore, it will serve for either of our CPUs at stock settings, and it’s just $13 right now.
If you instead are interested in overclocking, check out the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 140 dual-tower cooler. This is the big brother of the popular “PA120”, and it offers cooling performance competitive with even liquid-coolers. It will give you plenty of headroom for Performance Boost Overdrive or manual overclocking.MSI PRO B650-S WiFi ProSeries Socket AM5 Motherboard – $129.99 at Amazon (24% off)GIGABYTE B760M-C Wi-Fi LGA 1700 Motherboard – $109.99 at Amazon (14% off)
As for motherboards, we’ve got one each for our AMD and Intel CPUs. For the Ryzen chip, we selected the MSI PRO B650-S WiFi, which is a businesslike motherboard that eschews RGB LED accents in favor of pure functionality, including 2.5-Gigabit LAN, 2×2 Wi-Fi 6E, and a pair of PCIe 4.0 M.2 sockets. It’s a fully-equipped platter at a bargain basement price for Prime Day.
The Gigabyte B760M-C is our choice for the Intel platform, and it’s a bit less expensive but that’s because it does step back a bit on features. The integrated Wi-Fi is Wi-Fi 6, and the Ethernet connection is 1-Gigabit. It actually gains a third M.2 socket, though, and it also has Q-Flash support, meaning you never have to worry about a failed BIOS update. For the money, you can’t beat it.Silicon Power Zenith 2x32GB (64GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 RAM – $135 at Amazon (23% off)
Silicon Power Zenith 2x16GB (32GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 RAM – $85 at Amazon
CORSAIR Vengeance 2x16GB (32GB) DDR5-6000 Low-Latency RAM – $99.
