I crafted the cheapest Black Friday gaming PC build again. It’s brutal this year

I enjoy hunting for deals during Black Friday. I specifically like poking around for solid PC parts that I can combine for high-quality-but-affordable gaming PCs. I love it so much that I’ve sat down every year since 2016 to write up my findings—and over the last nine years, I combo-chained well enough to help others save hundreds on their 1080p and 1440p builds.

Y’all. This year is grim.

Sky-high RAM prices (which continue to climb) are obviously a major factor. But the effects of this year’s US tariffs also show clearly in the thin spread of discounts. You can still find good deals—but getting them to coalesce into a single computer will be extremely hard.

For select gamers, hope still is out there for now. I think these results paint a clear picture of where we’re at and what we can expect for 2026.

This article is part of a series about the cheapest Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) gaming PC you can build. For fun, you can compare this year’s results to 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016. We’ve now reached 10 rounds of this annual tradition!

The $570 Black Friday starter gaming PC build (aka “Ouch”)

In recent years, I’ve been putting the bare-minimum gaming PC build at the ends of these articles. It served to illustrate both performance and cost if you cut that deep.

This year, I’m starting with this APU build to set the scene. On Black Friday 2024, you could build this system for $485—and that was with 32GB of memory. This year, you’re facing a 17 percent price increase and a downgrade to just 16GB RAM.

Build notes:

1. Storage is anticipated to rise in cost through 2026. As a hedge, you may want to consider upgrading to this $80 1TB Crucial P310 SSD.
2. If you anticipate upgrading this system to a more power-hungry graphics card, you can opt instead for the MSI A750GLS 750W Gold+, which is a fully modular supply. It costs $60 after $10 mail-in rebate and signing in to an MSI account for a $60 discount.

Boy, RAM prices have shot through the roof. Last year, I listed a 32GB memory kit because it cost only $74 for Black Friday and wasn’t much more than a 16GB kit. Not so this year.

Would I still recommend actually building this PC? Yes, in limited cases, like parents seeking a starter gaming PC for a kid or people on ultra-tight budgets. This computer is set up for simple expansion down the road whenever a discrete graphics card becomes necessary or affordable, all without limiting options by relying on older parts.

Normally I’d say wait, but with climbing memory prices (which could have knock-on effects industry-wide), if you think you’ll need to spin up a new PC in the next 6 to 8 months, this is a decent hedge.

The $900 Micro Center 1080p Black Friday gaming PC build

Next, for illustrative purposes, is a Micro Center build—and that alone limits its feasibility. (In other words, it’s buildable if you live near one, but there aren’t many locations nationwide.)

Micro Center is legendary among PC builders for its in-store deals. I now live near one (yoooo), so I’ve extra-avidly tracked the best possible PC I could scrape together between its combo-bundle-deal madness and the other random gems you can find online.

This build looks a little different than I would have approached it in previous years, and that’s absolutely due to the oncoming hardware apocalypse that keeps getting forecasted in the news.

Build notes

1. This deal has come in and gone out of stock over the past week. Its return seems uncertain, but it’s worth checking at this price. Otherwise, if you don’t mind less performance to save money, you can swap in this $260 ASRock Intel B580 12GB card instead. Use coupon code BFEFE234.
2. Storage is anticipated to rise in cost through 2026. As a hedge, you may want to consider upgrading to this $80 1TB Crucial P310 SSD.
3. This power supply is just around the minimum recommended wattage for the RTX 5060 Ti. For a larger cushion, opt instead for the MSI A750GLS 750W Gold+, which is a fully modular supply. You’ll pay $60 after $10 mail-in rebate and a $60 discount for having a free MSI account.

Typically when I write this article, I look to keep costs down while still picking high-quality parts… so sometimes I’ve ended up with more modest hardware. This year, the pickings were slim and memory prices were high, resulting in $600 to $700 PCs that felt like scraping the barrel. (A particularly sad sign during Black Friday.)

So instead—with a dire future predicted for next year regarding memory, storage, and GPU prices—I chose to build out a PC that could weather at least 3 to 4 years of use. May as well invest a little extra to sail through the storm comfortably! But even then, you’re starting with a CPU that released three years ago.

The $830 sold-out 1080p Black Friday gaming PC build

You could have built an excellent and decently-priced mid-range gaming PC during Black Friday this year without Micro Center’s help.

But you had to have been ready to shop starting a couple of weeks ago—plus been quick on the draw.

Build notes:

1. This bundle was available almost three weeks ago, during the second week of November.
2. This deal has come in and gone out of stock over the past week. Its return seems uncertain, but it’s worth checking at this price. Otherwise, if you don’t mind less performance to save money, you can swap in this $260 ASRock Intel B580 12GB card instead. Use coupon code BFEFE234.
3. Storage is anticipated to rise in cost through 2026. As a hedge, you may want to consider upgrading to this $80 1TB Crucial P310 SSD.
4. This power supply is just around the minimum recommended wattage for the RTX 5060 Ti. For a larger cushion, opt instead for the MSI A750GLS 750W Gold+, which is a fully modular supply. You’ll pay $60 after $10 mail-in rebate and a $60 discount for having a free MSI account.

I wish I had precognition. I would have told everyone looking to build a new mid-range PC this fall to buy that 9600X bundle from Newegg when it was still available. You’d have AMD’s latest generation of CPUs as the backbone of your machine. Plus, who the heck can get a cooler, motherboard, and precious, precious RAM for that price now, only two sad weeks later?

This deal, along with the one for that MSI RTX 5060 Ti 16GB graphics card, came and went pretty fast. But had you been quick on the draw, you would have scored a pretty sweet 1080p build. Yet even last year the same amount of cash would have put you in 1440p territory.

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