I love a good graphics card as much as any other gaming PC enthusiast, but the thought of spending $560 or so for a mid-range GPU as an upgrade isn't a nice feeling. Especially when you can spend that kind of money on a full platform, i.e. a new CPU, motherboard, RAM, and cooler.
Better yet, thanks to the October Prime Day sales bonanza, you can bag yourself a really nice platform upgrade, namely one of AMD's latest Ryzen chips, a feature-rich motherboard, and a spiffy-looking cooler and memory package. Why, thank you very much, Jeff.
Quick links
- AMD Ryzen 7 9700X: $250 @ Amazon
- MSI MAG Tomahawk Max WiFi: $190 @ Amazon
- Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 Digital ARGB: $37 @ Amazon
- V-Color Manta XSky 32 GB DDR5-6000: $88 @ Newegg
AMD's Ryzen 7 9700X was a bit disappointing when it first appeared last year, but thanks to motherboard BIOS, CPU microcode, and Windows updates, it's much better now, and it's our top recommendation for the best mid-range gaming CPU.
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And that's at its normal retail price. Big Jeff's Prime Day Deals price of $250 makes it a veritable bargain, and if you've been putting off upgrading the base platform of your gaming PC, now's the perfect time to do it. AMD's Zen 5 architecture sips away at power, runs really cool, and blasts through games like nothing else.
There are cheaper AM5 motherboards and there are way more expensive AM5 motherboards, but very few come close to this one from MSI in offering so many options for this price tag. Admittedly, the $86 discount is playing a big part here, but even at full price, the MAG B850 Tomahawk Max WiFi is a solid motherboard.
With three PCI Express slots, four M.2 SSD sockets, and ten USB ports on the rear IO panel, you're getting a huge number of connectivity and expansion options. There are some compromises, of course, because the motherboard uses AMD's B850 chipset, rather than the top-end X870E one. So if you load up every single slot and port, you'll find some of them will run quite slow.
But even so, there is a mountain of other features, and the whole package is very solidly built, just like all of MSI's Tomahawk models.
Thermalright's Peerless Assassin CPU air coolers are all brilliant and not just because they're so cheap. They're extremely good at cooling just about any desktop processor around, and while the fans do get a bit noisy at full speed, it's fine to live with. I should know because I have four of them in use at any one time in my various test PCs.
If you wanted to, you could save a few more pennies and get the base PA120 model, but if you're doing a full upgrade, why not treat yourself and get this one with a fancy LCD screen and ARGB lighting? Whichever one you get, it'll handle a Ryzen 7 9700X with absolute ease.
AMD's Ryzen 9000-series processors really need fast DDR5 RAM to reach their full potential and the sweet spot for speed is 6,000 MT/s. That's roughly the fastest the CPU's memory controller will comfortably go without having to switch to a mode where it runs at half the RAM's clock speed.
It's not just about clock speeds, though, as the RAM's timings also play a big part in how snappy and responsive your gaming PC is. The good news here is that you're getting a 32 GB dual-channel kit with 30-38-38-96 timings and that gets the thumbs up from me.
You might not have heard of V-Color before but they've been around for a good while, plus they use quality RAM chips from SK Hynix. In other words, this DDR5 kit is top notch.
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1. Lenovo LOQ 15 | RTX 5060 laptop | $810 (save $490)
2. Lexar NM790 | 1 TB SSD | $66 (save $24)
3. Corsair TC100 Relaxed | Gaming chair | $160 (save $110)
4. MSI MAG | 32" 4K OLED | $750 (save $150)
5. ASRock RX 9070 XT | 16 GB GPU | $640
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