21 Sales That Weren't: This Week's PC Part Deals, Checked

Stores dropped prices on 166 PC parts this week. That sounds like a good week to buy. It mostly wasn’t.

We took the 96 clean US price drops in our tracker (verified offers, no Amazon, no listings flagged as a possible error, a marketplace seller or an uncertain product match) and asked three questions of each one. Twenty-one of them were not really sales: some store had already sold the same product at that price, or lower, on most of the 60 days before the “discount” started. Only 30 were genuine 60-day lows.

This is the written edition of the first Comparator Weekly. The video covers the same ground in under five minutes:

All prices below are new, US, and were checked on October 24, 2026 at 15:09 UTC. They move every day, so each item links to its live page.

The market this month: GPUs up, CPUs and boards down

Each figure is the median 30-day change per product, measured on a fixed basket of products we have tracked since July (motherboards since mid-August), so new launches cannot fake a trend.

Current-gen graphics cards are up about 35% since July. If you are waiting for a GPU, this week did not help. If you are planning a processor and a board, the market is quietly on your side: more of them got cheaper than pricier.

How we judge a deal

Six price drops, checked

Deal: ASUS TUF Gaming B850-PRO WIFI7 — $209.99

• $209.99 at the ASUS store and at B&H, below its usual price at both. It is a new low for this board in our tracker.
• Newegg still lists the exact same board at **$309**, so picking the right store saves about $100.
• If you only need a working AM5 build, a basic B850 board starts at $110.99**, and the product page itself points to the ASUS B650E MAX GAMING WIFI as doing the same job for around **$167.

For full ATX and Wi-Fi 7 at this price, this is the real deal of the week. ASUS TUF Gaming B850-PRO WIFI7 on The Comparator

Fake sale?: Intel Core Ultra 7 265K — $382.32

The largest-looking CPU drop of the week: 21.7% below its usual price at MemoryC.

• On every one of the 58 days before this sale, at least one store in our tracker had the 265K at or below $382.32. Its 60-day low was **$324** on September 26.
• Newegg has it at $338.80 today.

So the reduction is measured from a price nobody needed to pay. If you mostly game, there is a second reason to wait: the Ryzen 7 9700X gets the same gaming grade (A) for $227.30. The 265K earns its price in heavy multi-core work, where it holds an S grade; buy it, but not here.

Core Ultra 7 265K · Ryzen 7 9700X · Core Ultra 5 245K ($189.99, A for gaming and work)

Trap: G.SKILL Ripjaws 32GB DDR5-6000 CL30 — $564.84

To be fair, this is a genuine 60-day low for this kit: 14.7% below its usual price at MemoryC. But the Klevv FIT kit has the same capacity, the same speed and the same CL30 latency for **$472.99** at Newegg. That is $92 for the brand on the heat spreader. All 32GB DDR5 kits by price

Fake sale? and trap: Intel Core i7-8086K — $158.10

The biggest percentage of the week, 39% below its usual price at Newegg, on a processor from 2018.

• It was cheaper than $158.10 on **11 of the 13 days** before the sale (60-day low: $145).
• For about $5 more, the **Ryzen 5 9600X** ($163.60) is a full grade better in games (A versus B) and more than twice as fast in multi-core (847 versus 397 in our multi-core score). The 8086K also needs a motherboard from its own generation.

Only worth it if you are upgrading an old system you already own. Ryzen 5 9600X

Fake sale?: G.SKILL Trident 32GB DDR5-6800 CL34 — $1,261.97

The most absurd tag of the week: 14.2% below its usual price at MemoryC, at a price where the same kit was as low as **$691** in the previous 60 days, and below the sale price on all 43 days we have before the drop. For comparison, the median 32GB DDR5 kit costs about $570. G.SKILL Trident 32GB DDR5-6800 CL34

Okay: ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E HERO — $539.99

10% below its usual price at the ASUS store, and a real 60-day low on a real flagship. Just know what you are paying for: an X870E board starts at $185 (MSI X870E GAMING PLUS WIFI). The HERO buys features and overclocking headroom, not more frames. ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E HERO

What about graphics cards?

The only US GPU drops in the list this week were two RTX 5060 listings, reduced to about $615 and $650. The same card is $459.99 at Newegg today. RTX 5060 prices

The scoreboard

News that matters for your next build

• DLSS 5 model update. NVIDIA says the new neural-rendering model uses 20% less video memory and processes neural workloads up to twice as fast — good news for 8GB cards. (Tom’s Hardware, October 18)
• FSR 4.1 reaches older Radeons. AMD’s FSR 4.1 now runs on Radeon RX 6000 cards, Xbox Series X and S, and Ryzen AI Max, AI 9 and Z2 chips, with a small performance cost. (Tom’s Hardware, October 20)
• **A $470,000 RTX 5090 shipment vanished** at São Paulo's Guarulhos airport. One card later appeared on a marketplace for over $6,000, identified by the serial number in its photos; police have identified three employees. (Tom’s Hardware, October 18 · October 22)
• Rumor, unconfirmed: a leak claims a 10% price increase on AMD graphics cards and chipsets this quarter. Neither AMD nor TSMC has confirmed it, and TSMC had pointed to 2027 for its next increase. Not a reason to panic-buy. (DigitalCitizen)

The one thing to take into Black Friday

One in five clean sales this week was not a sale, and the single biggest percentage off was a fake. The percent off tells you nothing on its own. Three things tell you nearly everything:

That is what The Comparator checks for every product, every day.

See today's verified price drops →

How this was measured. Price drops come from our daily list of verified offers that fell at least 10% and $20 below the same listing’s time-weighted 30-day price. “Fake sale?” means the sale price was matched or beaten by at least one tracked store on half or more of the 60 days before the drop began. Market changes use a fixed basket and the median per-product change. Amazon listings are excluded from this roundup and Amazon prices are never shown. Some store links on the site are affiliate links; they never change prices, rankings or grades. The video narration uses an AI-generated voice.