Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals?

Post by **Philip** » Fri Nov 26, 2021 9:06 am

Has anyone found some good deals for Black Friday/Cyber Monday?

Just bought another USB flash drive, Samsung 256gb for $29 @ Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ldWqTl

Newegg has great prices on G.Skill DDR4 RAM and those Corsair NVME SSDs it seems, but I just don't need anymore at the moment, heh.
I need to buy a couple of Dell desktops for a business, but the ones I like seem to be ~$900 each, not a great discount (XPCs with 11th gen I7 processors, 1tb SSD).

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Fri Nov 26, 2021 10:17 am

It seems like storage is really cheap right now. Newegg is offering the Crucial MX500 1tb for $80 !!!!

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Mon Nov 29, 2021 2:12 pm

Not much of Friday....let's see.....oh, I had been waiting to get a "smart lock" for the front door, been researching for a while..decided on an UltraLoq U-Bolt Pro...and there was a great deal on Friday...snagged it.
Had ordered some smart thermostats via the electric co for $9.99 each (the model Honeywell I chose was normally around a hundred bucks...RTH9585). Via the electric company..max purchase is 2x, so I saw it on Black Friday sale for $85 bucks...but missed it. Not on sale today.

Building a platform bed for my daughter...so that's mostly lumber company stuff.

Today...Cyber Monday, I'd been pondering getting a smart watch. Looking a various Ticwatch Pros and Fossils...there's a good price on a Tickwatch Pro 3 ...it's in my cart but I haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Post by **Philip** » Tue Nov 30, 2021 8:50 am

Ended up not buying much else, seems Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals are too watered down lately, heh. Companies seem to try different approaches (flash deals, early Black Friday Deals, month of November deals, etc.)

I did buy a couple of Dell XPC desktops for a business and such, but they weren't discounted much.

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Tue Nov 30, 2021 10:08 am

My wife watches the prices on her favorite makeup and supplies like a hawk. One place did have a substantial Black Friday deal so we drove over the the mall and picked them up. Then... yesterday for Cyber Monday they had it again but for another $10 less. The sale is still going on today so I'm going to drive over and get some more at that prices. It's something she uses a lot so we might as well stock up.

Also, the music software I use (Cubase) has an incredible sale on an upgrade to their current version that is just too good to pass up. What was normally $159 is now $111. Other than the Deal on the Corsair M.2 for $124 I really didn't see any great deals.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Nov 30, 2021 12:23 pm

I passed on the Ticwatch Pro 3.

Post by **Philip** » Tue Nov 30, 2021 12:44 pm

Easto wrote:My wife watches the prices on her favorite makeup and supplies like a hawk. One place did have a substantial Black Friday deal so we drove over the the mall and picked them up. Then... yesterday for Cyber Monday they had it again but for another $10 less. The sale is still going on today so I'm going to drive over and get some more at that prices. It's something she uses a lot so we might as well stock up.

Also, the music software I use (Cubase) has an incredible sale on an upgrade to their current version that is just too good to pass up. What was normally $159 is now $111. Other than the Deal on the Corsair M.2 for $124 I really didn't see any great deals.

Christmas presents!

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Tue Nov 30, 2021 7:24 pm

been looking for a few 8+TB drives for archiving stuff and haven't really seen any great deals, so i will wait.

i did get a 4K TV and soundbar for the parents, their 720p TV is looking really bad and is really old.

i was hoping to build a new PC this winter, but am going to wait awhile longer i guess as prices of a few key pieces are just stupid high right now

Post by **Philip** » Tue Nov 30, 2021 8:47 pm

I have an old generation I3 Windows10-based HTPC I use, and it's starting to struggle with the newer h265 video codec if there are overlayed subtitles.. I was looking at Mini-ITX motherboards+processor+quiet heatsink, but couldn't see any good deals either. RAM/storage are cheap, but CPUs seem expensive, and MoBos with newer chipsets are expensive too.. Even harder if you try to find decent one with optical digital audio output, rather than just hdmi.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:34 am

Philip wrote:I have an old generation I3 Windows10-based HTPC I use, and it's starting to struggle with the newer h265 video codec if there are overlayed subtitles.. I was looking at Mini-ITX motherboards+processor+quiet heatsink,....

AMD Ryzen? I'm impressed with them, for the past 2 years been getting a few Lenovo computers (laptops, tiny's) with the Ryzen 5....they seem to surpass an i5 in performance, even nearly matching some i7's.
Happy with AMD's stock lately too, bumped 160 a day or two ago....

Post by **Philip** » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:34 pm

Yeah, but prices on Ryzens seem to be up, and only a handful of retail models (G, GE series) have built-in video, otherwise I'd have to squeeze in a video card in that crammed little box too. Haven't followed prices, but I couldn't find a Ryzen under $200 that I can use (65W or less TDP, built-in graphics). By the time I put a MoBo, heatsink and RAM I will be over $500 for an HTPC upgrade... For that price I could probably buy a new pre-made mini-barebone with similar specs, can't really decide which route to go, hence procrastinating

There are some barebone mini-PCs with the same/better specs for around 500, Intel NUCs, Gigabyte, ASRock, etc.
AMD does have much better deals in the barebones laptop/integrated CPUs market, maybe that's the route to go for a HTPC... looking at: AMD Ryzen 3 4300U (7.6k passmark score), Ryzen 3 5300U (10k), Ryzen 5 4500U (11.1k), Ryzen 7 4700U (13.7k), Ryzen 7 4800U (17k+)
This Gigabyte seems like a sweet deal actually, even for a desktop PC, heh https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-gb-brr7 ... klink=true

If I have to buy a comparable desktop processor with integrated graphics... Lets say Ryzen 3 5300g (13k passmark score) I'd have to spend $300 just on the processor hmm.

Edit, actually just found Ryzen 5 5600G for $239, (20k passmark).

Post by **Philip** » Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:09 pm

Ended up buying these, all at Newegg:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, $239
MoBo: ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING-ITX/AC AM4 AMD Promontory B450 SATA 6Gb/s Mini ITX AMD Motherboard, $99 (in retrospect I should've gotten the B520 chipset, but didn't see it before I bought, oh well)
Heatsink: Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 low profile, $37
RAM: GSkill Aegis DDR4 1.2v, 2x16GB, $85

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Dec 02, 2021 10:26 am

Nice...have you driven any Ryzens yet? I'm impressed with them...
When we got our new workstations at the office (Lenovo Tiny workstation P340)....our wholesaler didn't have any Ryzen models in stock at the time, else I'd have gotten those. Love the Lenovo Tinys...it's our "go to" workstation for clients over the past 2 years.

Post by **Philip** » Thu Dec 02, 2021 4:46 pm

Yes, I've been using Ryzens for the past couple of years... My main box has a Ryzen 7 3700X.. My daughter's desktop has a Ryzen, and I've built/helped pick some for friends/clients. I still buy Dells for business workstations. I just briefly looked up Lenovo Tiny's, seem to be a bit more expensive than Dell XPS desktops, otherwise the form-factor is great though.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Fri Dec 03, 2021 12:39 pm

Yeah the Lenovo "Think" models are their biz grade models which is what we use, ThinkCentre (desktops), and Thinkpad (laptops)...the T, X, and P models for laptops. 3 year warranty, always "Pro" version of Windows, driver update management tools.
Equiv for Dell would be Optiplex and Precision models for desktops, and Latitude and Precisions for laptops. One of our guys is a big Dell guy, I used to be but changed over to Lenovo a few years ago, I like their biz account reps responsiveness, and their margins are better. I feel their quality is at least comparable to Dells biz models.