Black Friday/Cyber Monday Gamer Haul

 It's that time of year again where we share what we bought over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shop-a-thon.  For me I nabbed a few gamer things!

 First up was what my teenager has been waiting for: his own gaming PC.  We ordered all the parts which will make up his holiday haul.  He is also getting some hand-me-downs from my recent upgrade (GPU and PSU).  We went with an AMD build again; Ryzen 7600X CPU, 5700 XT GPU (hand me down), 2 TB NVMe SSD, and 32 GB memory.  I'd say I got great deals but it was pretty lackluster as far as deals go this year.

 Next I snagged a couple items for myself.  First I jumped on Glorious's free shipping deal to get my Model I wired mouse.  I have a Model O wired currently and it sold me on the lightweight mouse.  The only downside of the Model O for me is that it has only two side buttons.  The Model I brings three side buttons and a fourth "sniper" button (defaults to lower DPI for sniping in FPS games).  It will take a bit to retrain myself to the four buttons but so far so good and it keeps the same lightweight feel!

 I was nostalgic for some holiday season tunes ringing through the halls (home office) so am finally filling the "no speakers" gap for my home PC.  I grabbed this soundbar to fill the role.

 Lastly I surfed the board game sales and like PC parts... it felt like a down year as far as deals go.  I did end up grabbing the Arkham Horror The Card Game Revised Core Set which was at an all time low.  This was on my "want to try" list and now that I have a teenager in the family it felt like the right time to adult our co-op games.  Looking forward to giving this a whirl.

 

 

GPU upgrade time: XFX Double Dissipation R9-290X-EDFD Radeon R9 290X

It was 2009 when I last upgraded my computers GPU (aka video card) to an EVGA GTX 260.  That little baby has served me for over five years and is still ticking away without problem.  However, it was becoming extremely noticeable in games like Guild Wars 2 and Bioshock Infinite that I was playing on outdated hardware.  Even though I had more ram and a SSD speeding things up the message was all but clear as my machine continued to come to a crawl during intensive graphical encounters.

So I waited all Black Friday and no great deals surfaced (at least ones I could get to before they sold out).  I checked all weekend.  I checked all of Cyber Monday.  Nothing.  Then the day after, Giving Tuesday as it is apparently called, an R9 290X surfaced for $299 after rebate via NewEgg.  Not as great as the $249 R9 290X deals I missed on Black Friday, but good enough for me to pull the trigger.

Proud new owner of this:

Cyber Monday Gaming Deals

Amazon.com

Rotating hourly lightning deals in gaming (varies based on time, check in often)

Steam

Last day to cash in on the Steam sale!