Fine, if I can't upgrade my RAM without selling a kidney, I'm gonna finally get an OLED monitor for $650 with this 321UP Black Friday deal

An MSI 321UP OLED gaming monitor on a Black Friday backdrop.

(Image credit: MSI / Amazon)

Ah, what a beauty. This 32-inch QD-OLED gaming monitor is the sort of thing dreams are made of, thanks to its excellent color reproduction, superb contrast, and sheer size. A good 32-inch display is a wonderful thing to game on, and this is certainly one of those. Plus, being a 165 Hz refresh rate model, it's a lot cheaper than the 240 Hz equivalent. In fact, this is the cheapest we've found this screen for to date, making it a mega deal worth some serious consideration.

Key specs: 32-inch | 4K | 165 Hz | QD-OLED | 0.03 ms

Price check: Amazon $649.99 (OOS)

There are, by my count, two pressing upgrades I'd like to make to my PC this Black Friday. The first is a CPU to replace my ageing AMD Ryzen 7 3700x—which was the hot new thing when I bought it but is now so old it might as well run on whale oil—and a nice new monitor.

Unfortunately, upgrading my CPU would also mean upgrading my RAM, which currently costs 40 gajillion bucks a stick, so no dice there. But I am sorely tempted by Newegg's current 27% off offer on an MSI MAG 321UP OLED gaming monitor. My current monitor (an XB271HU) is even longer in the tooth than my CPU, and I guess at some point OLED monitors actually came down to vaguely sane prices? I gotta say, at $650, my purchasing finger is itchy.

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The 321UP is practically identical to the 321URX—our best gaming monitor—we wrote about last week, except it's $100 cheaper and has a 165 Hz refresh rate rather than 240 Hz. Frankly? I'm willing to eat the decrease in max frame rate to save the extra hundo—especially since I don't think there are many games I'd be hitting 240 fps in anyway.

Besides, think of the colors. My gaming time is split between my OLED television and my humdrum LCD monitor, and I'm vaguely resentful of it whenever a game compels me to use the latter (more often than not, by not supporting controllers).

The colors on my TV just look excellent, especially when Windows 11 HDR support deigns to play ball, and the thought of mirroring that experience on a monitor? I think I need it.

To be honest, perhaps the only thing holding me back is a vague fear of burn-in. I'm gonna have the taskbar down there all the time. Surely that will have its negative effects? Well, apparently not. That's not me saying that, it's science: one test that subjected a 321URX to "worst case" usage for 3,800 hours found the dread spectre of burn-in was pretty much a non-issue.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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