The best PC gaming deals on Black Friday 2018

Extraterrestrial

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If it’s time to upgrade your gaming PC, there’s no better time of the year than Cyber Monday. It’s the shopping 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 — neither Black Friday or Cyber Monday hosted 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

SkyTech Gaming Shadow Mini pre-built desktop w/ Ryzen 7 2600, Radeon RX 580, 500GB SSD, and more for $629 (normally $1,000) at Walmart

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 (usually $1,100) at Walmart
Dell G5 15 gaming laptop (8th gen i7, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 Max-Q 6GB, 256GB SSD +1TB spin drive) for ~~$1,000~~ $1,099 (usually $1,300) at Dell

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:

GRAPHICS CARDS

Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 AMP OC for $700 (usually $800) after coupon code at B&H, with a free copy of Battlefield V
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 for $479.99 after a discount code, and comes with a free copy of Battlefield V.
Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Mini for $350 (usually $400) at B&H and ~~Newegg~~ — comes with a free copy of Monster Hunter: World.
Sapphire Radeon RX Vega 64 for $400 (these cards are usually $500+) at Newegg, with three free games — generally considered GTX 1080-level in many games
MSI Radeon RX 580 8GB for $165 after promo code and $20 mail-in rebate (usually $200+) at Newegg, with two free games — note, some users warn it runs hot

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.

~~Intel SSD 545s 512GB~~ ~~for $55 (normally $120) at eBay via Newegg~~
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB for $73 (normally $110) at Amazon, B&H, ~~Newegg~~ ~~($70 with promo code)~~ or Walmart for $80
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB for $128 (normally $178-$200) at Amazon, ~~B&H~~, ~~Newegg~~ or $130 at Best Buy
Samsung 860 EVO 2TB for $297 (normally $400) at B&H, ~~Amazon~~, ~~Newegg~~ or $299 at Dell
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB M.2 SATA stick for $130 (normally $200) at B&H, Dell and Samsung
Samsung 860 EVO 2TB M.2 SATA stick for $298 (normally $400) at B&H, ~~Amazon~~, ~~Newegg~~

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.