DDR5 prices are ridiculous right now, and have been for weeks. Even if you jumped on any Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals, prices were already inflated, and the outlook for 2026 isn’t very good due to the AI boom with critical players like Micron killing off Crucial memory (and storage). If you need to upgrade now, you’re in a pickle price-wise, but Newegg has a great combo deal that will get you an Asus ROG Strix B850 motherboard and Team Group 2x8GB DDR5-6000 RAM for $229.99 (a whopping $149.99 off retail).
Although we didn’t have a chance to review the Asus ROG Strix B850-A Gaming Wifi R2 motherboard ($189.99 full price), we’ve liked Asus’ B850 implementations and have no qualms about suggesting it as a foundation for your new AM5 system. The board supports AMD’s AM5-based processors and is compatible with future AM5 CPUs such as the Ryzen 7 9805X3D we’ve recently started seeing. Even though it’s from the mainstream B850 chipset, Asus packs in four M.2 sockets (one PCIe 5.0), integrated Wi-Fi 7 (though ‘only’ 160Hz) and 2.5 GbE, a mid-range audio codec with a third-party Savitech amplifier, and the robust power delivery supports any processor you want to use, even with overclocking.
The ROG Strix B850-A Gaming also looks the part of a gaming motherboard. The silver PCB and heatsinks give way to black connectivity, creating a stark color contrast. A ROG-themed RGB element sits in the oversized RGB heatsink (the only RGB feature), and the Strix naming is emblazoned on one of the plate-style heatsinks. Asus also has a slew of AI features (AI Advisor/Networking II/AEMP) and a DIY-friendly design (Q-features like PCIe Slot Q-Release, M.2 Q-latch/slide/antenna/dashboard, and more, which help build or swap out parts). It’s one of the rare ‘good’ motherboards in these combo deals.
The RAM kit, Team Group’s T-Force Delta (white) 16GB (2x8GB) DDR5-6000 gets you in the AM5 door on the cheap and looks good in the Asus board. It’s not the fastest kit around, but DDR5-6000 is within AMD’s ‘sweetspot’ for memory speeds. The 16GB kit runs at CL38-38-38-78 and 1.25V, with SK Hynix A-die under the hood, so there is some flexibility to raise the speeds, lower timings, or both to further performance.
With 16GB of RAM, you shouldn’t have a lot of issues with most desktop activities, but could run into problems if you have a lot of browser tabs or other work up and try to load a memory-intensive application like a game. Just be aware that you don’t have the same freedoms to leave things open as you would with a 32GB kit.
That caveat out of the way, the real star of this combo, and likely future ones with the way we’re going, is the price. Essentially, for $229.99, you’re buying the motherboard at $189.99 (launch price was $289.99), and getting the $189.99 RAM for $30, an incredible deal to get into the latest platform.
For more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard, or CPU Deals pages.
