PC gaming has become an expensive hobby; I'm experiencing that firsthand. Still, hardware occasionally drops to a more sensible price, and it can happen where you least expect it. Walmart's 'Deals & More' event is still live, running until October 11, and I spotted some tempting discounts for gamers.

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Indeed, we already passed the cutoff for Amazon's 'Big Deal Days' pseudo-Prime Day tease, but Walmart constantly surprises me with how much PC hardware it stocks. If you're looking for a new portable rig or just an upgrade to your existing desktop, I've hand-picked a few obvious winners, like MSI's RTX 5070 gaming laptop for $1,349.00, down from $2,099.00.

MSI is synonymous with these kinds of events, almost always appearing with more affordable gaming laptops. The 15.6-inch Cyborg AI gets its name from the AMD Ryzen 7 260 processor, which includes an NPU for local AI tasks, though its other hardware is far more interesting.

You'll get an FHD (1080p) display that supports up to a 144Hz refresh rate, backed up by NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 mobile GPU and the DLSS upscaling technology that helps it reach those kinds of matching frame rates. Essentially, it's a mid-range gaming laptop that's fallen below its typical price range.

Its 1TB SSD has plenty of space for games, and 16GB of DDR5 RAM is a good match for its components, all packaged in an RGB-laden chassis. Wi-Fi 6E means fast wireless networking, though you can always rely on the included Ethernet LAN port for the fastest possible wired speeds.

If you already have a gaming laptop or a desktop PC with limited storage space, you could always upgrade it to a hefty 2TB with the Optimus GX 7100 for $399.00. It's a PCIe Gen 4 drive, which is about as common as it gets, though it'll still work in a PCIe 5.0 socket if you don't need anything faster — and frankly, most of us don't.

And, once again, I'm advocating for 1440p monitors as the best balance of clarity and value. At 27 inches, this $269.00 Acer Nitro QD-OLED display offers up to a 240Hz refresh rate, which is arguably more beneficial than pushing higher resolutions. I've seen enough QD-OLED panels to know that the increase in contrast is totally worth it over IPS LCD, if you can stretch your budget for it.

Peripherals make for the best value upgrades

Sure enough, sometimes all you need is a new mouse or a controller. It depends on how you play; if you're mostly sticking to cloud gaming, then the $39.99 GameSir G7 HE joypad is a wired option with drift-proof Hall-Effect sticks that should last for years and years.

Otherwise, the $49.99 Razer Viper V3 HyperSpeed is a wireless esports option that we called an "affordable gaming mouse that reigns supreme" in our review, and that's even more relevant now that it's dropped from its original $69.99 launch price.

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For 48 hours during Amazon's Big Deal Days event (don't call it Prime Day), Samsung's fastest-ever (up to 14,700MB/s) 9100 PRO M.2 solid-state storage drives had dropped in price twice. The 1TB 9100 PRO was down to $196.64 $243.27, edging somewhat closer to the lower prices I preferred before the memory crisis, so it was actually a great time to buy.

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These are PCIe Gen 5 drives, which provide the fastest read and write speeds for commercial storage drives, as long as you have a compatible motherboard. If not, they'll fall back to PCIe 4.0 and can be transplanted into an upgraded rig later. Similarly, the 2TB 9100 PRO (had) dropped to $334.99 $399.99, which seems like it would sting, but was a relatively decent price for double the space.

For those with more of a stretchy budget, you could have also sprung for more space, since the 4TB 9100 PRO was 'down' to $734.99 (now, even further to $712.49). You can see where the value multiplier starts to slip, but it's still slightly better than it has been in the past. If you're lucky enough to own one of the rarer motherboards with two PCIe 5.0 slots, you'd perhaps consider picking up two 2TB drives instead.

On the other hand, you could go completely overboard and grab the 8TB 9100 PRO for.. $2,279.50. That's not a typo. It might be listed as a deal, but that's still within the realms of fantasy for most, especially when the dollars-per-gigabyte metric falls off so hard.

Then again, I know people with these kinds of drives. They're usually in massive home server units, powering self-made servers, but these things do sell. Either way, I have a couple of the 1TB 9100 PRO drives in mine and my wife's desktop PCs, and they've been running strong since day one. It was an expensive adoption, but I've had no regrets. This price was much more like it.

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