If it’s time to upgrade your gaming PC, there’s no better time of the year than Black Friday. It’s the season when manufacturers throw out deep discounts on laptops, desktops, components, and peripherals; and when stores like Amazon, Best Buy and Newegg sometimes compete to make those discounts even deeper.
Every year’s different — Black Friday 2018 doesn’t have amazing deals on processors or PC memory — but this year, the solid state drive (SSD) sales are pretty phenomenal. If you’re still running Windows off a traditional spinning magnetic hard drive, well… just trust us, it’ll make your entire PC feel like new.
To the deals list!
Note: Most of these deals are available right now. We’ll use strikethrus when items are out of stock.
Complete gaming rigs
Perhaps you’re not looking for parts, but rather a pre-built gaming rig? That’s a perfectly respectable decision, and there’s no need to make you wade through a giant list of parts to get there. Here are the best deals we’ve spotted so far:
Desktops
Skytek Legacy pre-built desktopw/ i7-8700K processor, RTX 2080 GPU, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD, 1TB HDDis $1,500 (usually $1,800) at Walmart- HP Omen Obelisk pre-built desktop w/ Core i7-8700 processor, RTX 2080 GPU, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 2TB HDD for $1,500 (normally $2,000) at Best Buy
Cyberpower pre-built desktop with Ryzen 7 2700X, RTX 2070, and morefor $1,150 (usually $1,400) at Newegg (replacing earlier GTX 1080 deal, which is sold out)- SkyTech Gaming Shadow Mini pre-built desktop w/ Ryzen 7 2600, Radeon RX 580, 500GB SSD, and more for
$619$699 (normally $1,000) at Walmart Intel Hades Canyon NUC 8 gaming mini-PC kit with AMD RX Vega M GH graphics+ 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD for $730 (usually $1,084) at Newegg —here’s my old CNET videoabout how cool this thing is
Laptops
- Razer Blade Pro for $500 off — e.g. 17.3-inch 4K touchscreen, GTX 1080, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD for $3,500 (usually $4,000) at Best Buy or Razer
- Razer Blade 15 for $200 off — e.g. 15.6-inch 144Hz 1080p screen, GTX 1060 Max-Q, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD for $1,889 (usually $2,200) at Amazon or $2,000 at Razer
- MSI GP63 gaming laptop w/ 15.6-inch 1080p display, GTX 1070 8GB 8th Gen i7-8750H 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD is $1,300 after $80 rebate (usually $1,700) at Newegg
- Acer Aspire 7 gaming laptop w/ 17.3-inch IPS 1080p display, GTX 1060 6GB GPU, i7-8750H processor, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD is $940 after $40 promo code (Usually $1,200) at Newegg, w/free mouse and software
- Lenovo Legion Y7000 gaming laptop w/ 15.6-inch IPS 1080p display, GTX 1060 6GB GPU, i7-8750H processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB PCIe SSD is
$800$850$900 (usually $1,300) at Walmart - Dell G5 15 gaming laptop w/15.6-inch IPS 1080p display, GTX 1060 Max-Q 6GB, i5-8300H processor, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD +1TB spin drive for
$850$900 (usually $1,100) at Walmart - Alienware 15 gaming laptop (8th gen i7, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD + 1TB spin drive, GTX 1070) for $1,500 (usually $1,950) at Dell
- Dell G5 15 gaming laptop (8th gen i7, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 Max-Q 6GB, 256GB SSD +1TB spin drive) for $1,000 (usually $1,300) at Dell
Graphics cards
As you’re well aware, a graphics card is the heart of any gaming PC, and one of the very few upgrades that’ll pay huge dividends even if it’s the only component you swap out. Sadly, there aren’t a lot of killer deals on the very latest GPUs, but here are some that stood out:
Update, 11/23 at 11:30 AM PT: Best deal yet on the RTX 2080, immediately below
Storage
Like I said, SSDs are starting to get down to incredibly reasonable prices now — at least if you’re OK with a drive that’s 1TB or less in size. At prices of between $0.12 and $0.14 per GB, the Samsung 860 EVO is practically an insta-buy.
But you’ve never truly seen speed until you’ve got a PCI-Express based, stick-shaped NVMe SSD in your life. If you’ve got a compatible slot on your motherboard for an NVMe SSD, I highly recommend picking one of these up.
Need a big, rotating magnetic drive?
CPUs and motherboards
Memory and power supplies
Gaming Headsets
Gaming Mice
Gaming Keyboards
Bonus Items
This article is from The Verge
