The secret to building a PC during the RAMpocalypse are bundles — here are some of the best ones, and why they’re so popular
Unless you have several extra hundred dollars to burn, it’s virtually impossible to build a PC right now, even as Prime Day deals start rolling out. You’ll spend more than twice as much (sometimes three times as much) on a kit of DDR5 memory as you would just a year ago, and SSD prices have shot up so much that a decent NVMe drive can rival the price of a graphics card. The key to skirting the worst part of these price hikes is to shop for bundles.
If you regularly browse Tom’s Hardware, you’ve probably seen us cover bundle deals before. We’ve seen a massive increase in their availability and discount rate over the past few months, specifically when a CPU and motherboard are bundled with RAM and/or an SSD. That isn’t an accident. It’s a concentrated effort by retailers, motherboard vendors, and CPU brands to move product in a time when RAM prices have hamstrung the consumer market.
Those bundles are starting to proliferate online. Originally starting at Newegg online and Micro Center in-store, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of bundles available just about everywhere. Some of these bundles will unlock a reasonable price for building a rig. Others offer little more than some pocket change for the trouble of shelling out money at inflated prices. We’re going to help you separate the wheat from the chaff.
We’re going to run down a few bundle deals that are live for Prime Day to kickstart your next build, as well as provide a bit of context on why we’re seeing so many bundles and why the discounts on them are so high. Our focus here is DDR5, as that’s the biggest hurdle you need to overcome when building a new PC right now. DDR4 bundles are available, as well, though much of the focus is on newer platforms.
Bundle deals typically sell out quickly. We will try to keep this list updated with new bundles as we go throughout Prime Day, so check back throughout the week for fresh deals.
A midrange DDR5 bundle with the Ryzen 5 9600X and 1TB of storage for $635
If you want to get started on a DDR5 build, this bundle from Newegg has everything you need. It includes the Ryzen 5 9600X at the heart of the machine with six Zen 5 cores and 12 threads, alongside a 16GB kit of Team Group memory clocked at DDR5-6000 and a 1TB Patriot P410 SSD. The motherboard is a MSI Pro B850-S, which is decent considering the entry-level design.
The motherboard is a full ATX design, so it should fit in most PC cases outside of small form factor options. I/O is fairly limited, but you still get an internal USB-C header, along with two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port, four USB 3.0 ports, and 2.5Gb Ethernet. The board also has two M.2 slots attached, along with a block of four SATA 6 Gb connectors for additional storage.
As for the Ryzen 5 9600X and Teamgroupe memory, it’s all you need to get started with a modern gaming rig. 32GB of memory is ideal, but the 16GB kit included in this bundle only occupies two of the four DIMM slots on our motherboard, so sizing up down the line is always an option. The Patriot P410 is a PCIe 4.0 SSD and it comes with 1TB of storage, giving you plenty of room to install your OS and apps.
For a kicker, Newegg includes a free $80 Cooler Master Elite Liquid 240 all-in-one liquid cooler with the bundle. Although the discount may not seem like much, this bundle essentially cuts the DDR5 price down to normal levels while maintaining the list price of the Ryzen 5 9600X and Gigabyte motherboard.
A high-end Intel build with the 270K Plus for under $800
For most builds, 32GB of DDR5 memory is the sweet spot, so it’s no surprise that we see bigger discounts on bundles that include 32GB. Such is the case with this Core Ultra 7 270K Plus bundle, which includes the chip, a midrange Z890 motherboard from ASRock, and 32GB of G.Skill Trident Z5 memory at DDR5-6000. The bundle is 22% off, but that really sells short how good of a deal it is; the memory alone normally costs $510. That extra $260 buys you a Z890 motherboard and Intel’s most impressive CPU to date.
Although Arrow Lake has earned rightful criticism, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is among the best CPUs for gaming. It’s one of Intel’s two ‘Arrow Lake Refresh’ CPUs that come with massive performance improvements over the base range. Even at its affordable price, the 270K Plus is Intel’s fastest productivity CPU around, and it’s just a hair short of outclassing the Core i9-14900K in games.
The motherboard is ASRock’s Z890 Pro RS, which critically includes a Z-series chipset, allowing you to overclock the 270K Plus. It comes with dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, along with two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and four USB 2.0 ports. There are four M.2 slots on board, one of which supports PCIe 5.0 x4. Two others support PCIe 4.0, while the last one can operate in either PCIe 4.0 x4 or SATA3 modes. This particular board lacks Wi-Fi (and by extension Bluetooth), so you’ll need to purchase a separate add-in card.
Finally, the Tridzen Z5 RGB memory. This is the memory we use on our own CPU test beds here at Tom’s Hardware, and it’s on the Qualified Vendor List (QVL) of most major motherboards (including the board included here).
Top-shelf gaming performance with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D for $900
The gold standard for a gaming PC these days is one of AMD’s 3D V-Cache CPUs, and in particular, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D or 9800X3D, AMD’s most recent eight-core X3D parts. This bundle includes the last-gen 7800X3D, which, despite being slower than the 9800X3D, still beats everything else in our CPU benchmark hierarchy. Alongside the chip is a 342GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5-6000 memory and an MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk Wi-Fi motherboard.
Despite coming from the Tomahawk range, this MSI motherboard is solid. It includes Wi-Fi 7 and 5Gb LAN for networking, along with a PCIE 5.0 x16 slot for your GPU and two Gen5 M.2 slots (alongside two Gen4 slots). Around the back, you get two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, three USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and four USB 2.0 ports, alongside dual 40Gb USB-C connections.
For the memory, we’ve found that 6000 MT/s is the sweet spot for Ryzen CPUs, and even then, X3D chips don’t need super-fast memory. The kit here is a 2 x 16GB kit, giving you two free DIMM slots to expand in the future.
Why bundle deals are so popular, and why we’re seeing more of them
Most bundle deals aren’t anything to get excited about. How they typically work is that a retailer wants to move more product, and in order to do so, they offer a small discount on multiple products in a bundle. This move is a major factor in why physical Micro Center locations are still so popular; bundle a CPU and motherboard together, and get them for $20 or $30 off. What we’re seeing today is different.
Outside of retailer bundles, we occasionally see bundles that are subsidized elsewhere. Maybe Intel or AMD, or a motherboard vendor, is running a promotion, and so they offer a rebate on components bundled on sale to a retailer. With current RAM and SSD prices, we’re seeing everyone pitch in.
Vendors tell Tom’s Hardware that motherboard sales have been hit hard by RAM prices, and industry reports suggest sales have dropped as much as 37% at some retailers. Motherboard vendors are in a unique position. Unlike the GPU shortages of years past, motherboards are downstream from RAM. If you can’t afford RAM, you’re probably not going to buy a new CPU or motherboard, even if the prices on those components are good (and they are right now).
So, AMD and Intel, alongside motherboard vendors and retailers, are working together to subsidize these kits. Module houses (the companies that package memory) might be kicking in, as well, but it’s hard to say. Most companies I’ve asked tell me that the specific details of each deal are different, so it’s some combination of all these companies working together on bundle deals.
Regardless, it’s in the interest of AMD, Intel, motherboard vendors, retailers, and, to a lesser degree, even module houses, to get prices down. As long as they’re inflated, the downstream sales impact hits all of them, and bundles allow all of these companies to split the burden of subsidizing high RAM prices.
