PC gamers hoping to upgrade their rigs are staring down the barrel of a very tough Prime Day. Deals are set to arrive next week, and competing sales at Newegg have already started. But with the RAMpocalypse dooming stock levels and pricing of all kinds of components and rigs, Prime Day PC deals are looking lean.
If you're trying to build the best gaming PC possible in these trying, trying times, Newegg's motherboard bundles might just be your best hope of securing the new specs you desire. I've already spotted two bundles in the retailer's FantasTech early offering, which gives you a price guarantee that things won't get cheaper for the remainder of the sale.
Not only does this offer give you some of the best RAM for gaming from one of the biggest and most popular brands, but it gets you a damn good motherboard at the same time.
About a year ago, I helped a good friend of mine build his very first gaming PC, and he had chosen this motherboard as the foundational bedrock. I was absolutely delighted with it, because having worked with a lot of boards that seemingly didn't care about the ease of building a PC, MSI had thrown tonnes of quality-of-life issues into the mix.
For starters, it has an easy-to-access M.2 port that came off at the push of a button. As someone who's reviewed loads of SSDs and is pretty sick of using a screwdriver just to take a simple heatsink pad off, this was a big relief. Similarly, the GPU release catch wasn't located next to the PCIe slot; it was moved around to the side so that, y'know, you didn't have to squeeze your fingers under a GPU in order to press it.
These two things are becoming more normalized on a lot of gaming motherboards, but they're still uncommon enough that I'd point to them as a reason to shoot for this bundle. Not only that, you get great value for money, and solid rear IO connectivity compared to similarly priced options from other brands.
With an X870 chipset, you'll have access to AMD's Ryzen 7000, 8000G, and 9000 CPU series, which gives you loads of scope to grab a decent DDR5 processor, and room for upgrading later since support for AM5 has been extended through 2029.
If you're on the Intel side of things, and you're up for spending even more on a mobo bundle, I also spotted one that gets you an ASRock Z890 Pro RS board, 32GB of G.Skill Trident RGB RAM, and an Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus CPU, all for a price of $769.99 at Newegg (saving you $229.98 in the process).
RAM Shortages are certainly making these bundles more pricey, but they might hold the key to letting you get that upgraded PC you've been hoping for. If there's one bit of advice I can offer to PC builders this Prime Day, it's that smaller components for your build are the thing to try and save on. Fans, AIOs, cases, and even motherboards might just be the thing to focus your spending at while offers are around, because even if you can't upgrade your RAM and storage right now, smaller modifications to your PC can still help it feel new.
Hunting down other components? Check out the best CPU for gaming, the best graphics card, and the best computer speakers.
