Reza Pahlevi

Sift through the Amazon Prime Day sales on clothes, outdoor furniture, and beauty products, and you’ll find some surprisingly good deals on PC components and networking gear. While the offerings aren’t nearly as complete as previous years (you can’t build a whole PC with Prime Day PC component deals), those looking to upgrade or grab a few pieces for a project can still save a solid chunk of cash. Here are the best deals we’ve found on CPUs, monitors, cases, routers, and more during Day 1 of Amazon’s sale blowout.

Last updated 6/21/2021 12:34pm: Added additional storage and motherboard deals

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In the war to prove who’s better at high-resolution gaming performance, Nvidia on Monday added three more allies: Rust, Doom Eternal and Lego Builder’s Journey are joining the more than 55 other games to support its DLSS technology. The company also said Linux gamers would soon get access to DLSS through Proton for Vulkan.

DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling, taps the AI Tensor cores on Nvidia’s 2000- and 3000-series GPUs to render games at a lower resolution, with comparable visual quality when increased to a higher resolution. We’ve tried DLSS, and it’s like black magic.

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Our editors have been hard at work combing through Amazon’s Prime Day deals, as well as competing deals from other major online retailers. The result is a compilation of the best deals out there in all the popular tech categories: smart home; TV and audio; PC parts; laptops—you name it. We’ll be updating our recommendations as new deals surface, so bookmark this page and check back regularly.

Prime Day shopping tips

• Deals can expire before their slated end time if quantities run out, so don’t wait too long if something appeals to you. 
• Read our tips on the best way to snag Lightning Deals.
• To qualify for Amazon’s Prime deals, you can sign up for a 30-day Prime membership if you haven’t already done so in the past.
• Some retailers offer free 2-day shipping through ShopRunner, which many credit cards offer as a free perk. You can also sign up for a 1-year trial through PayPal.
• Using PayPal for online purchases? Sign up for the company’s free return program, which foots the bill for return shipping on up to 12 purchases.

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Each year, laptops improve across the board—between technology advances and the pressure of competition, the hardware inside offers better performance in greater leaps and bounds.

That means you don’t need to spend on a premium model to get a solid notebook. Whether it’s a traditional clamshell or a convertible with a 360-degree hinge, spending between $600 and $1,000 can get you a laptop you’ll enjoy using. Moreover, it’ll last the length of the work or school day without trouble.

Enough options exist now that finding the right model for you can take some time, so we’ve highlighted our top picks to make the hunt fast and easy. Read on to find your match. (To find laptop recommendations that span all price ranges, see our comprehensive guide to the best laptops.)

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Amazon Basics Computer Speakers are indeed basic. That hasn’t changed from when we initially reviewed them two years ago. From the packaging to the design, this USB-powered budget set has a spartan vibe. You won’t find glossy paper finishes or a thick manual full of details here. Instead, a plain brown box will land on your doorstep, with two plain, compact black speakers and a very thin user guide tucked inside. That’s it.

What has changed is the price. Back in 2019, these budget speakers could be found for as little as $10 for the set. These days they hover at $18, which starts to butt up against the cost of the superior Amazon Basics with Dyanmic Sound speakers—thus making them ripe for reevaluation.

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In this episode of The Full Nerd, Gordon Mah Ung, Alaina Yee, Adam Patrick Murray, and Brad Chacos talk about the all-AMD Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition laptop, and what was hot at E3.

The Full Nerd crew kicks it off with talk of the all-AMD Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition laptop, which features a Ryzen 9 5900HX and Radeon RX 6800M. Gordon breaks down what the laptop is good at, what it's not good at, and whether it's a good buy.

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If Windows 10 was supposed to be the last version of Windows, why is there a Windows 11? Great question.

Like the answer to many questions, the answer is, “it depends.”

The authenticity of the concept of “Windows as a service” began in 2015, when Microsoft launched Windows 10. Over time, Microsoft said then, the company would simply deliver ongoing updates, adding features and patching bugs on the “Windows 10” platform. But, as we know now, whatever Microsoft adds to Windows, it’s still Windows. 

But Microsoft representatives never said that Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows—not really. That comment was actually made by Jerry Nixon, a Microsoft developer evangelist who spoke at the company’s ”Tiles, Notifications, and Action Center” presentation about Windows 10 at Microsoft’s Microsoft Ignite conference in 2015. According to the transcript of the session, Nixon’s comment was more of a throwaway line, one that he literally referred to as a segue. Microsoft developers could never talk about what they were currently working on, he said, only what they had worked on and released. That changed with Windows 10, because it was all one platform.

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Anyone who uses a PC should have an external drive. It can back up your precious data or store your overflow, and it can transport or transfer files between computing devices. Xbox One X users, especially, would be wise to invest in an external drive to augment the console’s measly 1TB hard drive (the external drive needs to be USB 3.0-compatible and will be formatted when you insert the drive). 

Two things are for sure: No one ever said they wanted less storage space, and no one ever said they wanted a slower drive. Our latest picks for best external performance drive (SanDisk’s Extreme Pro Portable and Samsung’s T7) are blazing-fast—great news if you’re transferring large amounts of data. We’ll also walk you through our other top picks, and everything you need to know to select the best external drive for your needs.

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