Blackfriday 2025.

[tp4tissue]

OK, so

RAM, mission-impossible, overpriced

PC Build, no bueno.

Potential plan, if you buy the CL36 samsung sticks, they're not as-crazy overpriced, and can overclock to slightly faster than stock hynix CL30 ram.

CPU, DO NOT spend extra on X3D, NEXT GEN is coming.  Get a 9700x or 7700/x or 8700F to hold the line.

Motherboard, GET B650,   B850 is a lie.

-- Avoid Asrock, the CPU KILLER.


GPU, 9070xt or 5070ti, those are the ONLY OPTIONS,

-- DO NOT BUY ANY OTHER GPU
-- GPUs slower than those have bad price to performance ratio.
-- GPUs faster than those are a waste of money, AMD next gen is going to be bananas.

Audio DAC, (usb soundcard)  SMSL SU1 on sale right now for $70, buy it.

Amplifier, FOSI audio, don't think about it, there's nothing to think about. Anything better is a waste of money, your in-room distortion is 4-orders of magnitude larger than the output of ANY well designed Class-D amplifier.


TVs

TCL still the king,  Hisense a bit weaker this year.

OLED, samsung all the way,   The S95F is actually worth it over the 90F.


Monitors,

HONESTLY,  nothing new has happened in monitors OF LATE. 

ALWAYS BUY CURVED,  Don't buy flat monitors.

OLED, any oled is good, they all perform about the same, Samsung QD has significantly more vibrant colors.

-- 500hz vs 360hz,  not a huge difference, most games won't push that kind of framerate at 4K,  But it's good headroom for future GPUs.
-- Look out for PRO versions of the same monitors which come with DP2.0 ports instead of DP1.4, 2.0 gives you full 80Gigabit.

VA-monitors, KTC - H32S25E,  2560x1440, 240hz, 300nits, edgelit.  $260 regular sale price, should hit $240ish on blackfriday.

-- 4K VA monitors, not very many of these, samsung ones are way overpriced, you might as well buy oled.
-- Black smearing is still an issue, but it's much more slight on the newer panels compared to the Old ones.
-- MPRT (backlight strobe) gives you pretty decent motion clarity, but at the cost of brightness.
---- For example the KTC can only do 83nits with strobe turned on for 240hz, it can do 150nits @ 120hz. (duty cycle)
---- Oled will not have this issue, but Oled has persistence blur, so at anything less than 360hz@360fps, you actually get higher motion clarity on a strobed-LCD, VA or IPS.
---- Oled will surpass LCD motion clarity but ONLY if you can actually output 360fps+ @ 360hz and above. At 240hz even, Oled is not as motion-clear as you'd think it would be.  LCD can beat it.

IPS,  Tp4 is against IPS for general use, Contrast ratio is too poor, The image looks washed out no matter how good the IPS.

-- Movies lack depth watched on IPS panels.
-- There are miniled backlight versions of IPS monitors, NOT WORTH IT, the price -> Go OLED.


Laptops:

If you must buy one this year.

Look out for  AMD HX processor + 5070ti and above

If you get 5060 and 5070 (non ti), Vram is sorely lacking, no future durability.


Intel Lunar Lake, as you know, Tp4 has been main-ing intel's 258v lunarlake chip for a while, it's very fast for what it is, GPU is good, but support is not so great, lots of basic software bugs that are not solved.  Given that Intel is moving to Nvidia partnership, Tp4 can not in good conscience recommend ANY intel chip with their iGPU.

OLED laptops are affordable, don't spend money on LCD laptops unless you're at the $300-400 lvl.  If you're at $500 plus, it should have Oled.

Intel H series processor, It's alright if you get a good deal. 

-- Don't buy the iGPU only laptops with intel-H

AMD HX, iGPU only laptops, get HX370 and above, the lower ones are too slow.

 

[Findecanor]

Storage prices are high. I last bought a SATA-SSD two years ago, and the prices for the same models I looked at then are at least 33% higher now. Then I read in the press this week that prices could go even higher because of demand for AI data centres (...).
I need a drive for a Linux install on my mom's computer (she has Windows 10 that can't be upgraded).
I'm going to wait for the prices on Black Friday and maybe snatch one then. Otherwise I'd have to re-purpose an old one, but you shouldn't really do that with SSDs.

The other thing is a flat 27" 2560×1440 IPS monitor for me. Unless I can find a cheap ultrawide with 1800R or flat, with the same height but more width. I don't game so I don't need high frame rate, and the integrated GPU can't provide that at high resolutions either. I'd like good sharpness, viewing angles and colour reproduction.
It is also going to be mounted on a wall behind my desk, so that I could get some distance now that I'm a bit older. There are some monitors out there that are quite thick or have the connectors facing out instead of down: those would be directly disqualified.

[tp4tissue]

120hz is a quality of life experience, you don't necessarily need to game to enjoy using 120hz.

As for wall mounting, I'd recommend a gas or spring arm, there's no reason to put holes in a wall just for a small monitor, and you get more versatility with an arm, they're cheap now, not the $200 arms in Belkin's hayday.


Ultra wides are SMALL, Universally, SMALL, You'll miss the vertical space.

Depending on how old the iGPU is, it may or may not support higher refresh @ 4K.


27" is a no go for 4K, huge mistake.

4K 32 inch are Very affordable.

Dell S3225QS, flat 120hz, 4k, wide gamut, $280

But Tp4 would recommend something like, CRUA 32, 4K, $360, CURVED, 160hz, wide gamut. <if you buy from amazon, and get dead pixels, you can always exchange>   The other thing is, with these monitors, they typically have better driver chips.

^^ this should go to $300 by blackfriday.