Howdy, gerbils! Bruno is away and so it’s amateur hour on Wheel of Deals here at TR today. I hope you’re all stuffed full of excellent foods and have had your eyes properly seared by staring directly at the fireworks last night. I know I’m sporting a nice sunburn on my face and shoulders and a little extra in my belly today here on July 5th. Anyway, there are plenty of deals to be had so let’s take a look at the best of the best, starting with PC components.
- RAM prices have been steadily on the decline, but they’ve typically been a little slower than what we’ve got cooked up for today. If you’re dreaming of a new Ryzen 7 3700X build like many folks, you can get a 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) Ballistix Sport LT DDR4-3200 RAM kit at Newegg for only $124.99 after cart code EMCTCTA27. If that’s more memory than you need, then perhaps you’d be interested in this 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) Ballistix Sport LT DDR4-3200 RAM kit, also at Newegg, for $61.99 with cart code EMCTCTA33 instead.
- AMD’s Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 CPUs might be right around the corner, but Amazon has a pair of deals on the current generation for bargain hunters who know these things aren’t going to suddenly be slower once the new version launches. Right now you can pick up the Ryzen 5 2600X, which includes a Wraith Spire CPU cooler, at Amazon for $159.99. If you’re looking to save a few bucks and a couple of watts on the TDP, House Bezos is selling the 65-watt Ryzen 5 2600 and its Wraith Stealth heatsink for $139.99, also on Amazon.
- Did you just impulse-buy a Ryzen 5 2600X and some RAM but have no power supply for your new rig? If that describes you, then take a look at Seasonic’s Focus+ Gold 650-watt power supply. This fully-modular unit has a single, quiet 120-millimeter fan to keep the unit cool and a switch to enable a semi-fanless mode that should help keep noise under control. This compact unit will run you $81.99 at Newegg after promo code SSNCJUNE18B, and there’s a $25 rebate can sweeten the deal further.
- Everybody loves a good monitor deal because displays tend to live through multiple systems and upgrades. If you need a big ol’ 4K display, we’ve got you covered: LG’s 27UL500-W 27-Inch 4K display is just $272.99 at Amazon. This big ol’ wall of pixels has a pair of HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort input, and an IPS panel that covers 98% of the sRGB color gamut.
- Apple’s had a bunch of big discounts on Mac hardware over the last several months, but by percentages I’m not sure they’ve had one bigger in recent memory. The current-generation 12″ MacBook in a gold finish is a mere $849.99 at Best Buy, down nearly 35% from its usual $1,299 asking price. This tiny PC has a Core m3 CPU, 8 GB of LPDDR3 memory, and 256 GB of flash storage onboard. The Core m3’s HD Graphics 615 integrated GPU powers the MacBook’s 2304 x 1440 display.
- If you’ve got tons of data and nowhere to store it, Western Digital’s got you covered. The company’s WD Elements 8 TB drive can connect to your PC’s USB 3.0 ports to transfer data and comes with a two-year warranty. This drive can be yours from Newegg’s Flash Deals site for $129.99 after cart code NEFPBQ74.
That’s all for today, folks! There’s a chance you’re looking for something we haven’t covered. If that’s the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you’re out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg and Amazon, but we also work with Best Buy, Adorama, Rakuten, Walmart, and Sam’s Club. For more specific needs, you can also shop with our links at Das Keyboard’s shop.
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Ben Funk
Thanks, Funk! I ordered that 32GB RAM kit. Nice to see something other than G.Skill on sale.
Just ordered the 32GB RAM kit. Thank you.
[url<]https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Global-chip-supply-at-risk-as-Japan-and-South-Korea-feud[/url<] Japan may be fixing that "problem" of too much cheap DDR4 flooding the market.
Yeah, it’s not uncommon. It hails almost everyday somewhere in the area.
My father lived in southern Alberta for almost a century, and he saw snow in or around Calgary at least once every month of the year, including July and August.
“Modern OSes should use spare RAM to cache things and make everything smoother”
They do.* It just doesn’t help as much as you might imagine.
You may remember Windows “SuperFetch” which pre-loaded pages based on your usage patterns (as well as optimizing the pages needed for boot). While it still exists, it’s not used much anymore because capacious SSDs got so fast and ubiquitous it didn’t make much difference (beyond what the basic [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefetcher<]prefetcher[/url<] already did). Lack of smoothness when (if) you encounter it is due to other things. And one of the things that causes a significant lack of smoothness? Not enough memory. *(In addition to filesystem caching, modern OS's don't immediately zero out released code pages and some read-only data pages unless you're in a low memory situation or you're in a high-security environment; if any of those pages are requested by another process before they do get zero'd, they're available immediately without having to hit the disk. Caveats apply.)
With 16GB I’ve already almost always got at least 10 free for that, though, and I already don’t tend to get that file cache filled up very quickly (nor do I want the OS to pre-fill it more aggressively). I’ve been running swappiness at 90 (bumped it to 95 the other day; swap is an LZ4’d RAMdisk) and don’t think I’ve ever seen more than a handful of megabytes in swap outside of cases where I was specifically trying to test low-RAM behavior.
Right now, with Firefox (10 tabs), WCT (L2 radar), Steam, Geany, and a few terminals I’ve got:
[code<] total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 16416152 2620744 12193456 160540 1601952 13342360 Swap: 16777212 0 16777212[/code<] 16GB is [i<]hilariously cavernous[/i<]. I'll buy that it is still a diminishing-returns kind of upgrade over 8, but what am I going to do with 32, really?
Only if performance is suffering as a result. If it does the job then do it cheaply. 🙂
My normal usage is served perfectly by my Surface Go or the iPad, so hell, I barely ever even need 8GB.
All I see are nerds whining about being too warm. I lived in Florida over a hot summer and loved it. 80-90s with high humidity. It’s great. Move to Seattle if you want gray skies and minimal sun.
35C is nice if there is a breeze and humidity isnt too bad
Today’s high: 98 °F (37 °C)
Today’s heat index: 110 °F (43 °C)
P.S.: Tonight’s low: 79 °F (26 °C), which matches the dewpoint.
You’re so lucky.
It’s hard to recommend anyone buy a current macbook. If the throttling CPU and de-glueing of the screen laminates from the exhaust heat aren’t bad enough, the horrible keyboard will fail without any question.
Yep, even Apple have admitted defeat and canned those stupid butterfly switches going forward.
It feels like I moved to Florida. 32-33C every day but like 80% relative humidity and torrential 20-minute downpours every afternoon. Been very strange.
Ddr4 prices are making my choice – to save on a minor new build for a media centre by reusing DDR3 – seem dumb as heck.
Modern OSes should use spare RAM to cache things and make everything smoother
I barely ever even need 16GB.
I KNEW SOMEBODY WOULD CORRECT MY PHONY DENIAL.
For those of you who feel hollow about not having an SSD deal posted, fear not:
[url=https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Micron/AK3T8TBY1A/<] Get em while they're hot![/url<] At 9.2c/GB that is about the cheapest SSD price around, and that for datacenter drive.
Yeah, I rather would have gone with that than the 750W Corsair unit I bought. Hmmm…
The past week in Michigan has probably resembled Savannah, GA in spring.
Upper 80s (30-32C), high humidity. It’d be perfect if not for the moisture in the air. It’s a sauna.
*cries in 35C average daily temp*
*cries some more in 85% RH*
Been over +30C the past few days in Timmins!!!
🙂
Ah, c’mon, it’s Calgary: if you don’t like the weather, wait 20 minutes.
9C isn’t that bad. Wear a light spring jacket and you’re good.
Ottawa had 9C weather for the past couple of weeks (that everybody complained about) and now that it’s 35C, everybody is complaining it’s too hot.
[quote<]more memory than you need[/quote<] No such thing. There's more memory than you can [i<]afford[/i<] (particularly when you're balancing components in a build) and you will inevitably hit a point of diminishing returns (at least for your [i<]current[/i<] workload) but you need more memory. You always do.
JUST CHILL SSK!
Yes, we all know single-day anecdotes hold more weight that long-term trends.
Sunburns? It’s 9C in Calgary today, and the stampede isn’t happy about it.
Legit trying to figure out if I should turn the heat on IN JULY. GLOBAL WARMING IS A HOAX
[url=https://www.newegg.com/seasonic-focus-plus-550-gold-ssr-550fx-550w/p/N82E16817151189<]Seasonic Focus+ 550W[/url<] = $49 after MIR and promo code EMCTCTV24 also. That's a pretty nice price for a high end PSU.