Technologies

Best Gaming PC Deals: See the Holiday Sales at Best Buy and Newegg

For the gamer on your holiday shopping list, here are the biggest discounts on gaming desktops right now.

If you aren’t up for the challenge of assembling the parts and then building your own gaming rig, a prebuilt system is a quicker and easier route to a new gaming PC. You can find some reasonably priced, off-the-shelf gaming desktops right now with Nvidia’s GeForce 3000-series GPUs. PCs with Nvidia’s next-gen RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 GPUs are starting to roll out, but they are prohibitively pricey. Thankfully, there’s a wide range of desktops with the previous-gen — and still highly capable — RTX 3000-series GPUs, many of which can be found at a discount. And we even found an RTX 4080-based system on sale for a reasonable sum.

PC gamers will find the lowest prices at Best Buy and Newegg right now. After taking a look at the gaming desktops on each site, here are the best deals I’ve found — from a desktop discounted to $790 with RTX 3050 graphics to fully loaded beasts with RTX 3090 and RTX 4080 GPUs.

Check back regularly; I’ll keep this list updated as I find new deals on RTX 30-series gaming desktops.

How to choose a good gaming PC deal

There are thousands of gaming PC deals to choose from, but not all of them are worth your hard-earned cash. As with any pricey purchase, it’s worth assessing your needs before diving in and spending big bucks. When it comes to gaming PC deals, that means looking at how demanding the games you plan on playing are, how your new PC will fit into your existing setup (how many displays it will be driving, for example, and at what resolution and frame rate) and of course, your budget. If you want multimonitor 4K gaming, you’re probably going to struggle with a budget of $1,000, so it’s best to be realistic with your expectations here.

Once you’ve considered those factors, it all comes down to the price-to-performance ratio on offer. The main considerations here are the processor, graphics card and RAM as these will have the most impact on your overall experience. Newer and more powerful parts are going to push the overall price up — just take a look at our list of the best graphics cards for gamers and you’ll see that these don’t come cheap — so consider machines with recent previous-gen components to save some cash.

Should I buy a prebuilt gaming PC deal or build my own?

Depending on how technically savvy you are, the proposition of building your own gaming PC will either excite you or strike fear into you. The main benefit of building a PC yourself is you get to choose every component, shop around for deals on individual parts, and ultimately get more bang for your buck. The downside is that it takes a lot of research, effort and a decent amount of technical savvy. There’s also the risk of something going wrong in the build process, which means you’ll end up damaging parts or pulling your hair out trying to figure out why things aren’t working as expected. With prebuilt gaming PC deals, you get to skip some of the more time-consuming and frustrating parts of the process, but you’ll pay for the privilege and likely spend more money overall.

Shopping for a new computer?

Use the CNET Shopping extension to compare prices of your favorite models at different retailers or add promo codes to your cart with a single click.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, June 7

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 7.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword could be tricky. 1-Down and 5-Down stumped me for a while, but the other letters filled it in for me. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Yoga class need
Answer: MAT

4A clue: Umlaut, rotated 90°
Answer: COLON

6A clue: «That is shocking!»
Answer: OHMYGOD

8A clue: «___ You the One?» (reality TV show)
Answer: ARE

9A clue: Egg cells
Answer: OVA

10A clue: One of two «royal» sleeping options
Answer: KINGBED

12A clue: Bar seating
Answer: STOOL

13A clue: Favorite team of the «Chicago Pope,» for short
Answer: SOX

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Slices of life
Answer: MOMENTS

2D clue: Olympic gymnast Raisman
Answer: ALY

3D clue: Request at the end of a restaurant meal
Answer: TOGOBOX

4D clue: Hayes of MSNBC
Answer: CHRIS

5D clue: Medium for Melville or McCarthy
Answer: NOVEL

6D clue: Wood used for wine barrels
Answer: OAK

7D clue: June honoree
Answer: DAD

11D clue: Sticky stuff
Answer: GOO

How to play more Mini Crosswords

The New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day’s Mini Crossword for free, but you’ll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

Technologies

Despite War of Words, Trump May Funnel Billions to Musk’s Starlink With BEAD Changes

Technologies

Square Enix’s Next Game Blends Among Us-Like Murder Mystery With Bloody Carnage

Unveiled at Summer Game Fest, Killer Inn is an upcoming multiplayer murder mystery pitting players against each other in the search for the true killers.

Bet you didn’t have this one on your bingo list. Developed by Tactic Studios in partnership with Square Enix, the game was unveiled during the Summer Game Fest livestream, and it’s far from the famed RPG maker’s bread and butter. Killer Inn, as it’s called, is a multiplayer murder mystery that takes Among Us-like gameplay and ratchets it up by handing players knives, guns and many other weapons to kill or be killed while they search for the original killer.

Killer Inn might be one of those games that is best understood after playing a few matches, but even from the reveal trailer, there’s a lot going on. In each match, 24 players enter a sprawling castle-turned-hotel to determine who the real killers are as they’re picked off one by one. There’s deduction and mayhem aplenty.

Killer Inn’s play phases are patterned after detective-style games, from Among Us to Ultimate Werewolf to Mafia. A match begins with most players as cooperative participants («lambs,» in Killer Inn’s parlance) mixed with a few secret killers («wolves»). Players complete tasks to earn tokens redeemable for items and weapons, while the killers quietly go about their business — until someone discovers a body. On the corpse are clues left by the killer, so the lambs can try deducing the true culprit (or culprits).

Then it’s all about collecting clues and identifying the wolves — but unlike Among Us, there’s no group discussion to present evidence or vote them out. Killer Inn skips the parlor scene and dives straight into action: If you’re sure someone’s the killer, take them out. Use those token-bought guns and blades to put down the villain. Unless you accidentally murder one of your innocent teammates — in which case, you’re turned to stone for the rest of the match. Bummer.

Lambs have another win condition: assembling four keys to escape on the ship that brought them to the murder island. There are other mechanics, too, like finding relative safety in rooms with hotel staff, who will identify any wolves that kill lambs in their line of sight.

Players can choose between 25 premade characters that each have their own unique appearances and abilities, the latter of which improve as the match goes on, often reflecting the nefarious dark sides of the participants. For example, Winston is a surgeon who kills more efficiently with knives and, when leveled up, deals extra damage while covered in blood. The Otaku, by contrast, gains 25 HP from finding clues and eventually builds resistance to status effects. Levels don’t carry over between matches — everyone starts fresh at level one.

Killer Inn doesn’t have a release date, but the game will kick off a closed beta test over Steam in the near future.