As muscular as the GTX 1080 is, there have been some not-entirely-unwarranted grumbles about its underlying tech; specifically, that it’s basically a GTX 1070 with more of the GPU’s cores enabled. The GTX 1080Ti is much bigger break from the rest of Nvidia’s 10-series, and a much more overtly ‘high-end’ card. It uses the bigger, beefier GP-102 GPU, same as in the bonkers-expensive Titan X and Titan Xp, and wields 3584 processing cores to the GTX 1080’s 2560. Its 11GB of memory is the most you’ll find in a mainstream card, too.

Obviously, these upgrades will put a proportionally larger dent into your finances. The MSI GeForce GTX 1080Ti Gaming X Trio I’ve been testing – with its factory overclocking and custom triple-fan cooler – is £750, and generally the cheapest GTX 1080Ti I can find still asks for £698. With the GTX 1080 dropping as low as £500, this card needs to prove it’s not just a list of fancy-sounding specs.

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After too many years and far too many mice which now clog up a desk drawer, I thought I’d found my ideal mouse. Wireless, multi-device, speedy and responsive but without looking like a broken piece of someone’s Gears of War Halloween costume. A gaming mouse that did not look like a gaming mouse: Valhalla indeed. Logitech’s G603 is so, so close to being the rodent to end all rodents – but for one fatal flaw. My quest continues.
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After a weekend of gorging yourself on turkey and elbowing people in the face to get that last discounted something or other in the shops, now it’s time to settle in and continue those deal hunts from the comfort of your own home. For today is Cyber Monday, the day that’s reserved for purely online-only deals following the shopping bonanza that was Black Friday.

This year, we’ve done the hard work for you, as we’ve scoured the web for the best Cyber Monday deals money can buy. These aren’t just re-heated Black Friday deals, either, as most retailers usually have completely separate discounts running today, making it a great time to pick up another bargain if none of the deals last week took your fancy. As always, we’ll be updating this article throughout the day, so make sure to check back at regular intervals just in case something new appears. We’ve also got tips on the best places to browse, and how to find out if those hot discounts are really as good as they seem.

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Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Black Friday 2017 may have come and gone, but the deals just keep on coming. Many of them, in fact, are still running until Monday November 27th (the delightfully-named Cyber Monday for those fluent in Black Friday parlance), with many more carrying on until the end of the month.

We’ll be highlighting the best Cyber Monday deals at the beginning of next week, but before then we thought we’d gather together the very best Black Friday deals from the week all in one place, saving you the hassle of reading through our admittedly gigantic Black Friday hub list (sorry), or searching through our respective graphics cards, SSDs, monitors and mouse, keyboard and headset articles. With that in mind, then, let’s get straight to the best of the best of what Black Friday still has to offer.

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You can’t seem to go three days in November without some big, new AAA game being released, so if your PC’s been struggling to play the likes of Assassin’s Creed Origins, Nioh, Wolfenstein II or Middle-earth: Shadow of War recently, you’re in luck. For Black Friday is precisely the time of year when graphics card prices plummet and you can nab yourself a bit of a bargain.

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Your mouse and keyboard are vital parts of your PC setup, but they also break the most often, making Black Friday a great time to get a good deal on a new mouse and keyboard without spending an arm and a leg. We’ve also got some great deals on the best gaming headsets here as well, just in case you fancy upgrading your audio setup as well while you’re at it.

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The sale event to end all sale events is here. That’s right, folks, Black Friday 2017 is here, and this year’s sales frenzy is set to be bigger than ever as we head into the Christmas shopping period. In all honesty, they should just rename it Black November, as there have been deals going on throughout the month in preparation for the big day.

To save you trawling through the web in search of a good bargain, we’ve created this handy guide containing everything you need to know about Black Friday 2017. If you’re on the hunt for a new graphics card, a bigger and better monitor, want to splash out on a fast SSD or upgrade your gaming headset and get a more reliable mouse and keyboard, this is the place to be. We’ll be updating this hub page on a regular basis as new deals get announced, too, so make sure to keep it in your bookmarks if you fancy grabbing yourself a bit of a bargain before Christmas. We’ve also got tips on the best places to browse, and how to find out if those hot discounts are really as good as they seem.

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Black Friday is a great time for upgrading your PC, whether it’s buying a new graphics card, or getting a more up-to-date monitor to make the most of it. It also happens to fall right in the middle of video game Christmas, where all this year’s biggest releases also have the biggest install sizes. As such, why not grab yourself an SSD deal and upgrade your storage as well while you’re at it?

Below, we’ve rounded up all the best SSD deals we can currently find, but you can also find more deals for other types of components over in our central Black Friday 2017 hub. Of course, if you see a deal that isn’t listed below, let us know in the comments and we’ll get it added to the list.

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Black Friday 2017 is well and truly underway, so it you’ve been thinking about buying a new monitor for Christmas or simply upgrading your current setup to something a bit more substantial, now’s the time to get one. Here are the best Black Friday monitor deals we’ve found so far.

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Buying an SSD can be a bit of a headache when you’re constantly being bombarded with such friendly terms as mSATA and M.2 this, and NVMe and PCIe that, which is why we’re here to help you pick the best SSD for you and your budget. Below, you’ll find our current top picks as well as in-depth buying advice on how to pick your next SSD. Whether it’s for general performance or the fastest speeds money can buy, we’ve got you covered.

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Now that the RX 580, AMD’s patriarch of the Polaris architecture family, is finally back in stock and at reasonable prices, it’s time to reconsider its viability as the centrepiece of a mid-range build. For those unaware, the RX 580 comes in both 4GB and 8GB VRAM flavours. I’m covering the latter here, and it’s hard to make an argument as to why you’d consider the former: it’s not that much cheaper, but does essentially cut you off from the flashiest graphical stuff (like Ultra-high quality textures) in games which support them. Having less memory can also generally scupper you when running with higher resolutions, and considering that the RX 580 appears to have been made with 1440p firmly in AMD’s collective mind, 8GB just makes more sense.

Once again, it’s an Asus ROG Strix OC Edition I’m testing, though since the overclock in question has such a tiny boost speed upgrade from 1340MHz to a maximum of 1380MHz, it should be representative of most partner-made RX 580s. This costs £330, which is a lot considering MSI, Gigabyte and XFX all have alternative models for around £280 or less. Here, however, you do get three fans, a sturdy backplate and an extra HDMI port for VR kit for your trouble.

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Back during the Great Mining Drought of a couple of months ago-ish, the RX 570 looked like the saving grace of AMD’s ludicrously price-inflated Radeon lineup. Admittedly, this was mainly due to the 8GB RX 580 being hurled violently though the £300 barrier, but even with fewer ‘stream processors’ (i.e. cores) and just 4GB of memory, the RX 570 was offering another FreeSync-enabled, 1080p/1440p alternative at a much, much lower price.

Now that the whole cryptocurrency thing has (mostly) died down, however, the RX 580 is in a much better position to not just resume its jostling with Nvidia’s GTX 1060 for mid-range supremacy, but also to relegate the RX 570 back to the status of an awkward middle child: not powerful enough to consider over these other two cards (4K, for instance, is beyond it), and too expensive to consider over budget alternatives like the RX 560 and GTX 1050 Ti. Can the RX 570 still justify itself?

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As my quest for a comfy pair of headphones continues, today I’m looking at one of Turtle Beach’s entry-level headsets, the Recon 150. Available for just £40, the Recon 150 is about as straightforward as gaming headsets come. Unburdened by fancy surround sound features or active noise-cancelling technology, this is very much a plug in and play kind of headset that doesn’t require any additional setup, driver downloads or any of that other annoying faff that comes with buying further up the headphone food chain. Indeed, its regular old 3.5mm jack connection means it’s just as good a fit for PC gaming as it is for consoles, giving it a welcome bit of flexibility after Sennheiser’s rather fussy work around on its more upmarket GSP 350.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a bit more from your headphones, of course, but if you’re looking to keep costs down or are simply after something simple for the kids, the Recon 150 is a great place to start. Read the rest of this entry »

Take one look at the AOC G2460PF’s price of £170 and you’d probably think it was a pretty standard kind of display. After all, 24in Full HD monitor prices often start around the £100-200 mark, and you can find several screens around the same £170 mark that don’t have anything to shout about other than a mildly adjustable stand.

AOC’s G2460PF, however, is anything but ordinary. Despite its low price, this monitor has a 144Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync support, plus a height-adjustable and rotatable stand. It’s not overly garish, either, as the only concession it makes to being a so-called ‘gaming monitor’ is a thin red strip that runs along the lower bezel. Otherwise, you can happily put this on any kind of desk and not be embarrassed about it.

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Acer’s XF270HUA has been around for about a year, but this 27in monitor is still a great buy while stocks last. With a resolution of 2560×1440, a high 144Hz refresh rate for super smooth gaming and superb picture quality, this is one display you won’t mind dropping £500 on.

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