Cyber Monday deals for gamers
You've all seen the $4.99 World of Warcraft deal, but if you're looking to speed up your gaming PC or get your hands on some new peripherals, Cyber Monday is going to be one of your last big sale days before Christmas. Here's a quick roundup of some of the US-based deals out there.
Starting with the peripherals, Steelseries is running a Cyber Monday sale which includes some WoW mice and mouse pads at up to 40% off. They also come with a free set of touchscreen controls for your tablet and free shipping. You'll also find some headsets and other accessories on sale at Steelseries. Once you make the move to a mechanical keyboard, there's no going back. Newegg has one on sale for $49.99 after rebate. They also have a 27" IPS monitor half price at $199.99.
PC hardware deals
I believe that the single greatest upgrade you can make for your PC's overall performance is to get a SSD (solid state drive). Even a small sized one will be enough to hold your Windows installation, some applications, and a few games including WoW. Games will load quicker, and your entire PC experience is smoother and more responsive. Amazon.com has a large list of SSDs on sale, as does Newegg.com. A good rule of thumb for SSDs is that anything 60 cents per GB or below is a pretty good deal, but you will obviously pay quite a bit more for performance brands.
WoW doesn't need the best GPU in the world to run at a decent frame rate, but if you're stepping up to a new 2560x1440 resolution monitor, or want to turn on some extra bells and whistles such as anti-aliasing and ambient occlusion, you will need a pretty decent video card. Something such as this Radeon 7870 for $139.99 AR, or this GTX 660 for $169.99 AR will handle WoW like a champ at almost any setting. Once you reach that GPU threshold, WoW is really more of a CPU bound game when it comes to performance. Newegg has almost all of the Intel processors on sale. The Core-i5 processors such as the 3570k or 4670k are the best bang for the buck for gaming. Stepping up to something like a i7-4770k won't improve gaming performance that much, but it will help with multi-threaded applications and heavy multi-tasking.
Laptops and pre-built PCs
If you want to go the pre-built route for your desktop, and have a lot of money to spend, Alienware is running a sale on their desktops and laptops today. For a good deal on a high end gaming laptop, you can get the MSI GS70 which comes with free 50" HDTV. For something a little more affordable in the gaming laptop realm, there is the Lenovo Y510p for $799.99 with the listed promo code.
If you're searching for a WoW-related gift, you can get the mammoth hardcover edition of The Art of Blizzard Entertainment for $40, or the World of Warcraft: Ultimate Visual Guide for $14 today only if you use the coupon code BOOKDEAL at checkout.
