After 20 years in the business and too many Prime Days to mention these are my favorite Big Deal Day

Well, hi there. Dave here, editor-in-chief on the hardware side of PC Gamer, so let me take you by the hand and lead you through the morass of PC gaming deals over the next few days.

I'm going to be running the rule over all the potential options in a whole host of different categories, and I've already picked a few goodies out that I think are great deals right now. So, stay tuned here for my top recommendations.

This is exactly what I mean when I say that it doesn't need to cost an absolute fortune to create a great gaming setup, and gaming monitors is the perfect case in point. A lot of the talk right now is about the rise of OLED gaming monitors, and sure, they do look stunning, but for a genuinely good one you're still looking at near $800 at best.

But this 27-inch ASRock is just $157 and offers 2560 x 1440 as the native resolution, with a 165 Hz refresh. For $157. That sort of spec would have been around double that this time last year, which is pretty ludicrous. It's not some dim wee panel, either, this is a bona fide 550 nits display which will deliver a surprisingly good HDR experience, too.

But if you are looking to get yourself a whole new system to replace your existing gaming PC then there are some great options available already. This $1,300 Dell G16 is a great price for an RTX 4070 gaming laptop, and offers a ton of tech for the money. 

Obviously, you get the RTX 4070 GPU itself, offering gaming performance along the same lines as the RTX 3080 from the last generation, but alongside that you have the Core i9 13900HX CPU. That's a 24-core, 32-thread chip that's great for multi-threaded creativity performance as well as with enough single-threaded grunt for gaming, too.

One thing to note, however, is that while 16 GB DDR5-4800 is an okay amount of memory for a gaming laptop, it's notably just a single stick in this build. That will offer half the memory bandwidth of a dual-channel setup, which is a shame. But it's also worth noting that it's an easy upgrade, and .

With all those internal gubbins, you also get a lovely 1600p 240 Hz display, too. So yeah, lots of good things, in actually quite a large package.

It actually feels weird to be kicking off talk of deals and be leading with a pair of Dell/Alienware systems. Though, to be fair, we do say you should always wait for a big discount before pulling the trigger on an Alienware gaming PC, so this excellent discount on the Aurora R16 really does stand out.

This is the sort of price you could realistically expect to see around an RTX 4070 PC, so the fact that you're getting a full system for $1,500 is excellent stuff. Yes, Alienware rigs have proprietary parts inside them, but when the discount is this healthy I can happily overlook that here. After all, you're getting a 1 KW PSU, so you shouldn't have to replace that anytime soon, either.

I'm kinda disappointed, as a PC gamer of late '90s and early 2000s, that Alienware machines look very much like pretty standard Dell PCs. They're just boxes now, so no more shiny curvy Giger-ish chassis from Alienware, though sadly still with proprietary parts inside.

Still, good deal, eh?

This is my boi. I genuinely love this keyboard and it's my daily driver in home setup. It's the best compact gaming keyboard I've ever used, and the Mountain-own keyboard switches feel great. I was going to remove all the ones that came in my own unit with a set of Halo True switches from an older board of mine, but the typing experience is already so good I've never felt the need to do it.

At the full price I was already into this board, but now it's just $50 for a full, dampened mechanical 60% keyboard, that has hot swappable switches, it's an outstanding deal.

It's an absolutely brilliant keyboard for a genuinely stellar price.

Gaming chairs are super expensive, right? Well, yeah, they really are. If you want the , like the Secretlab beast, you're going to be spending well over $500 on that. But what if there was another way? What if you could buy an outstanding gaming chair for $220?

That's where we are here: a really beautifully finished chair, that is super-comfortable and oozes quality, while it doesn't require you to take out a second mortgage just for the privilege of somewhere to park your butt.

I was a big fan of the when it first came out. For its $500 sticker price it was delivering the sort of gaming performance that you would have had to pay $650 - $700 for in the previous generation. That, admittedly, is the sort of generational improvement you want, nay, expect, to see but still given some of the pricing shenanigans of the green team in the RTX 40-series it's not a given.

Now, with the Prime Day/Big Deal Days pricing pressure we're seeing a healthy chunk chopped off the price of our , making it just .

That's a full $100 cheaper than the cheapest GPU we've found for sale, but with broadly similar straight gaming performance. Of course, if you're into ray-tracing heavy games, such as Cyberpunk 2077 et al, then the RTX 4070 will deliver higher shiny frame rates, but for standard rasterized gaming performance the RX 7800 XT has it down.

For anyone sitting on a laptop with just a 512 GB SSD inside it, and an endless merry-go-round of game library installing and uninstalling to get your games to fit, here's an affordable solution: a capacious, speedy 1 TB SSD.

At you're looking at top-end PCIe 4.0 SSD speeds and enough storage to hold a whole bunch of your currently played games. Of course, you could spend a little more for a slightly slower 2 TB drive, such as the Team Group MP44L, if you can spare another $30 for your upgrade budget.

Yes, it's a little slower, but you're arguably never going to notice that performance delta, not when you have twice as much space...

MORNING! Well, it's actually actual Prime Day Big Deal Days todays, and so there's going to be some members only deals popping up across Amazon over the next 48 hours, but all the other retailers are in the game, too, so there will be goodies worth grabbing even if you're not in the Bezos crew.

I'm going to be honest, I did not expect Dell to be the one propping up Prime Day with the best gaming PC and laptop deals, but here we are. Not only have we seen an on offer for the cheapest price we've seen, but Dell's also got a doing the rounds, too.

And now it's also shipping the cheapest RTX 4060 gaming laptop I've spied today. The Dell G15 is a bit of a classic around sales times, regularly getting discounted, but rarely to a point where it's the go-to deal. That smol 512 GB SSD is my only real problem with the spec as that's pretty tiny for today's bloated game installs.

But the G15 is easily opened, and swapping the main drive is only a pain in that you'll have to either clone the existing SSD or start with a fresh Windows install. 

Otherwise you're getting a great budget lappy, with plenty of RAM, a decent 165 Hz 1080p screen, and a Ryzen CPU packing one of the best integrated GPUs if you wanted to shut down the RTX 4060 when you're on the road to boost its battery life.

I love a glossy gaming monitor. Most of the time I'm not gaming in a brightly lit office, so I don't need an anti-glare coating robbing my display of contrast. Which is why I love the Dough Spectrum One glossy screens. I've got one hovering on my desktop right now, and it's a stunning 4K IPS panel, with vibrant colors and actually pretty damned good HDR performance.

It's only rated to DisplayHDR 600, but is capable of beyond 700 nits in terms of peak luminance. The backlighting zones admittedly are pretty limited, but in games you're only going to really rummy master see a sharp, HDR image that pops.

Now, I know there are historical issues with Dough née Eve monitors, and the way it's handled past mistakes has not covered the company in glory. But you can at least be confident here that buying from Amazon that you actually will get the screen you've paid for.

One other thing to note is that you don't get a monitor stand with the screen, you have to get that separately for another $100 if you don't go for a monitor arm. But if you already have a VESA compatible monitor arm then you're set.

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MSI MAG 321UP | 32-inch | 165 Hz | QD-OLED |
What a difference a letter makes... especially when it comes to gaming monitors. The code names give to monitors are often impenetrable, but the difference between this MAG 321UP and the MAG321UPX is the this one has a 165 Hz refresh instead of 240 Hz. That's the only difference between this and more expensive OLED, otherwise you're still getting a gorgeous 4K panel, with response times to die for, and pixel quality, I dunno, to live for? If you're not concerned about the refresh rate difference (and do you have the hardware to hit a matching 240 fps otherwise?) then this is where the smart OLED money is spent.

Price check:

If you want the best gaming monitor tech right now then it's got to be OLED. Sure, there are concerns around full-screen brightness, and a lingering low-level panic over burn-in, but if you want vibrant colors, unbelieveable contrast levels, unprecedented response times, then OLED is the only way.

I'm tapping away staring at a 32-inch 4K OLED using the same QD-OLED panel as this right now. It is the way.

And, while the can be prohibitively prices in the $1,000+ region, MSI has been working away to bring the price down. This MAG 321UP is the result of some slight cuts to the feature set which means you can now get a 32-inch 4K OLED for just $760—that's the cheapest I've ever seen an OLED gaming monitor I would actually want.

It's done away with a USB Type-C connection offering 90 W of power delivery the top MSI model has, and it's down-shifted the panel to a maximum of 165 Hz in terms of the refresh rate, but that is still plenty fast. And chances are you're going to struggle to match the pricier screens' 240 Hz refresh with your 4K frame rates anyways.

It's a great price for a great screen.

😳 Oh no, that bargain Alienware Aurora R16 with the RTX 4070 Ti Super in it is...

Luckily this one isn't out of stock - it's a Lenovo Legion gaming PC, so another reliable brand, but this time with none of the proprietary parts shenanigans that Dell pulls with its Alienware machines. That makes it a lot easier—and cheaper—when it comes to upgrading down the line.

It's also actually a better spec, too. You don't have to mess around looking for more memory, because this comes with a full 32 GB of the stuff, and a powerful eight-core, 16-thread AMD Zen 4 chip at its heart. It may be a last-gen chip now, but it's got more than enough about it to keep that hungry RTX 4070 Ti Super fed and makes for an outstanding gaming PC for the money.

And now it's even cheaper! Already our favorite budget gaming chair, and it already had a discount in place yesterday, but as of right now it's had another discount taking it below the $200 mark. Boom.

🪑

So, what do you do if you want to buy a graphics card around Prime Day? Are there any deals worth a damn, and what if you actually want an Nvidia GPU, but have been put off by talk of an imminent RTX 50-series on the horizon?

Well, our gang—Messrs Nick and Jacob R.—have been running the rule over the around right now and have picked out the absolute best GPU offers you can buy.

With rumours of an over-supply of AMD GPUs, and talk of that new generation of Blackwell GeForce cards, there actually are a selection of good graphics card deals. These two are probably my personal picks though, one an outstanding mid-ranger from AMD and the other a much improved Nvidia GPU that's at its lowest ever price.

When everything else is getting ludicrously expensive—looking at you, Jen-Hsun and your big fat graphics cards—it's been super gratifying to see gaming monitors becoming more affordable. Maybe it's because the premium end of the market is being swallowed up by OLEDs and as they get cheaper it's harder to try and command a high price for any old IPS or VA panel.

All the better for us, especially when a bona fide LG Ultrawide (hey, that rhymes) can be had for just . That's half the price it was at launch, and even if that is the Prime member price for Big Deal Days, it's still only $250 without being part of the Band of Bezos.

It's a lot of monitor, for sure. I love ultrawides; the expansive screenscape makes a big difference in games, and the 3440 x 1440 resolution isn't actually much more demanding of your GPU's resources compared with a now-standard 2560 x 1440 screen.

I'm still a massive fan of Razer's BlackShark V2 Pro gaming headset. Outside of the mighty —my absolute favorite wireless cans—the Razer set is the one I keep coming back to. They're the headset that I use every day in the office and it's great to see them getting . That's not an especially bargainous price, considering it's regularly been down to that level, but it's still a great headset and worth the money.

If you want ludicrous battery life, however, the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless is only a little more expensive at , and that will last you around 300 hours on a single charge. But I don't have nearly as much affection for that headset.

• CyberPowerPC Gamer Master (🤢) | RTX 4060 Ti |
• Yeyian Tanto | RTX 4070 |

If I'm buying a whole new gaming PC around Prime Day this year then I am 100% going to be in a position where I'm agonising over these two gaming PC deals 👆

That's one of the most affordable gaming PCs I've seen this year and that makes the CyberPowerPC (I refuse to type out the rest of its stoopid name again) a hugely tempting machine, for a good price. As well as that GPU you've got 16 GB of DDR5 memory and a decently capacious 1 TB SSD. Pretty standard fair, but absolutely the sort of spec you'd want and expect at this price.

The CPU, however, is a bit of an oddity. It's the Ryzen 7 8700F. And when I first read that I initially thought it was some weird typo, and then I remembered AMD created these odd AM5 processors out of the Zen 4 mobile parts, but with the iGPU killed off. It's also had the PCIe 5.0 compatibility fused off, too, but is at least still an eight-core, 16-thread chip.

But not a proper chiplet Zen 4 chip. It's using the same Phoenix monolithic die as the Ryzen 7000-series mobile chips. So yeah, it's an oddity. Though it's in an AM5 motherboard, which will be upgradeable with proper Zen 5 CPUs and beyond.

But then there's the Yeyian Tanto. It's $170 more expensive, and that's probably where my main tension would come from. Going over the $1,000 mark for a new gaming rig is a step beyond most people... hell, spending even $930 on a new gaming rig rummy modern is beyond most people.

Though if you're going to stretch, that might be a stretch too far...

In the end, though, I think I'd probably feel it was worth it and not eat for a few weeks. I've got a ton of fat reserves I could live off, after all. The reason is the Tanto comes with the , which is a far superior graphics card to the RTX 4060 Ti. It's a 12 GB card vs. an 8 GB one, and you're getting effectively RTX 3080 gaming performance with the added benefits of DLSS 3.0 and Frame Generation.

It's also rocking a normal CPU. The Intel Core i5 13400F is still one of our ; it's got a great mix of single-threaded grunt and a decent amount of multi-threaded power, too. 

And just like that we're into 🥳day two of the Prime Big Deal Days event🥳, and it's probably very little surprise to see there still being a ton of great PC gaming goodies still available at great prices. 

I do want to note that rummy nabob even once the October Prime Day is done tonight, most of the best deals are likely to carry on throughout the whole week. So, ignore any of those 'hurry, before it's too late!' headlines out there; don't be rushed. After all, Black Friday ain't far away and the deals will be back...

Though it is worth stating that from next week up until the November prices on PC gaming gear is likely to go up in preparation for retailers to be able to claim sizeable discounts come Black Friday.

Straight away we've got a new winner of The Cheapest 1440p Gaming Monitor award 🏆.

The is a great deal. Some people might turn their noses up at VA panels, but you get great black levels and the color reproduction isn't a million miles away from proper IPS displays, either. And they're quicker in terms of response times, too.

I reckon 1440p is the sweet spot for PC gaming, and the Nitro proves you don't have to spend a fortune to get a great gaming setup anymore. Especially when it comes to screens!

At 170 Hz this FreeSync Premium monitor is no slouch when it comes to refresh rates. In short, if you're looking for a gaming monitor bargain right now, they don't come much better than this. 

But there is at least one which is still better. It may be more expensive by six dollars and 77 cents, but the ASRock has a panel that is more than twice as bright (250 nits for the Acer vs. 550 nits for the ASRock) and has a fully adjustable stand, too. Worth the extra for me.

If you're building a new PC—à la —then chances are you're going to need some DDR5 memory, and thankfully that doesn't mean it's going to cost you a fortune any more. Prices have tumbled to the point where you can get a sweet-spot DDR5-6000 kit for just $86 at Newegg replete with a full 32 GB of dual channel memory. Oof, that be cheap.

Even if you're rocking a modern rig with 16 GB of DDR5 you may be finding creativity apps getting stuck, or even your tabs pile of shame in Chrome periodically locking up your PC, so upgrading to 32 GB could be the answer. 

And this TeamGroup kit looks kindy pretty, too. Which is obviously important for memory sticks.

🚨$20 HALL EFFECT PC CONTROLLER ALERT🚨

Seriously? I thought Hall effect sticks for game pads made them super expensive. But no, it turns out that I'm a victim of Big Pad marketing ploys, and actually you can ditch stick drift forever without spending a fortune on a new controller.

This GameSir pad is our current favorite budget game pad and is on sale for Prime Day for just $20. That's a great price for a main controller or even just a secondary pad for your buddy.

Our , and that's not a word we use lightly on PC Gamer. Honestly, I'm on the flabbergast tip, too, having seen the price of this full RTX 4070 Super gaming PC. It's genuinely cheaper than most RTX 4060 Ti PCs we've seen this Prime Day, and I'd already gotten excited about seeing an RTX 4070 PC for this price.

If you're looking to buy a full rig this Prime Day 👆 this is the gaming PC that I would want to buy. You can argue that the last-gen CPU isn't particularly enticing, but it's still an eight-core, 16-thread chip and the AM4 motherboard platform has some life in it yet. Equally DDR4 memory will still serve you well for years to come, too.

Really, it's all about the performance of that , and that's a graphics card that I'm a big fan of.

This is my favorite budget gaming laptop I've seen so far this Prime Day. For $700 you are getting a whole lot of laptop for your money, and look, there's a rarely seen AMD mobile GPU in there. What a find?!

The actual gaming performance of the Radeon RX 7700S is a story that should be familiar to anyone who's been watching the industry over the past couple of years. The AMD chip can outperform competing Nvidia GPUs—the RTX 4050 and RTX 4060—in pretty much all straight rasterized gaming scenarios. But, as soon as you start to introduce ray tracing workloads to a game it really starts to struggle.

To be fair, so do both the low-end Nvidia cards, it's just that the RX 7700S struggles more. Realistically you're not going to want to enable RT effects with either GPU, so imma recommend this Radeon-powered laptop as the go-to budget gaming notebook de jour.

I've only just got back into a position where I can jam a steering wheel onto my desk and throw myself into some good ol' fashioned sim racing. You know, like they used to do in the olden times? 

It's purely because I've got a new desk which no longer doubles as my PC case; my served me well, but was too chonk to be able to clamp a steering wheel to.

I had the Logitech G29 for the longest time—which is the PlayStation equivalent of this Xbox-setup steering wheel—and it was the thing which got me into proper sim racing games over the usual arcade fare. It's a great wheel, with excellent force feedback and pedals. It may not stand up against the far more expensive Moza or Fanatec kit, but this is all you need to whet your simmy appetite.

Prime Day Prime Big Deal Days are getting close to their twighlight hours as we head deep into the final day, but it's safe to say there have actually been some really good deals this time around.

In fact I think these are the deals which have made it all but impossible to recommend much else.

• Laptop: Asus TUF A16 | Ryzen 7 7735HS | Radeon RX 7700S | 16-inch | 1200p | 165 Hz | 16 GB DDR5-4800 | 512 GB SSD |
• Laptop: Dell G15 | Ryzen 7 7840HS | RTX 4060 | 15-inch | 165 Hz | 1080p | 16 GB DDR5-4800 | 512 GB SSD |
• PC: Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 8 | Ryzen 7 7700 | RTX 4070 Ti Super | 32 GB DDR5 | 1 TB SSD |
• PC: Yeyian Yumi  | Ryzen 5 5600X | Nvidia RTX 4060 | 16 GB DDR4-3200 | 1 TB SSD |
• Monitor: ASRock Phantom PG27Q15R2A | 27-inch | 165Hz | 1440p | VA | FreeSync Premium |
• SSD: Lexar NM790| 1 TB | NVMe | PCIe 4.0 | 7,400 MB/s read | 6,500 MB/s write |
• Gaming chair: Corsair TC 100 Relaxed gaming chair | Fabric | Black | Lumbar pillow | 2D armrests |
• OLED monitor: MSI MAG 321UP | 32-inch | 165 Hz | QD-OLED |