adminBlack Friday and Cyber Monday are the best time of year to build or upgrade a PC, because that’s when the best deals happen.
After looking through thousands of Cyber Monday deals, I put together these three gaming builds for different budgets. The parts I chose aren’t necessarily the parts with the biggest sales, they are the parts I think are the best deal considering all of the sales. These builds are meant for gaming performance, and will also work exceptionally well for most other computing tasks. Non-gamers could save money and keep the great performance by buying less expensive graphics cards.
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Feel free to ask any questions about these builds in the comments below, and don’t forget a copy of Windows if you need it.
$525 Budget Contender Build
This build packs a lot of performance for the low price. This build will get about:
- 70 FPS in Battlefield V with Ultra quality settings at 1080p
- 50 FPS at 1440p
- 30 FPS at 4K
- 40 FPS in Assassins Creed Odyssey with Very High quality settings at 1080p
- 30 FPS at 1440p
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AMD RYZEN 5 2600$ 160 Fantastic value CPU. 6 cores, 12 threads at up to 3.9 GHz. I guess it was already too good a value to put on sale! |
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GIGABYTE Radeon RX 570$ 130 150 after $ 20 rebate (a discount of $ 20 or 13 %) Will get about 55 FPS in Battlefield 1 at 1440p with Ultra settings |
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ASRock B450 PRO4 AM4$ 60 80 after $ 15 rebate (a discount of $ 20 or 25 %) Excellent value Ryzen motherboard. 2 M.2 slots, 2 PCIe 16x slots, lots of ports |
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GeIL 8GB DDR4-2400$ 50 65 (a discount of $ 15 or 23 %) Cheap because of bad reviews |
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Crucial MX500 2.5″ 500GB$ 65 83 (a discount of $ 18 or 22 %) Fast and inexpensive. Feel free to replace with a larger SSD, or cheaper HDD, or add a large HDD for extra space. |
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CORSAIR CX Series CX650$ 35 60 after $ 20 rebate (a discount of $ 25 or 42 %) Quiet, bronze efficiency, reliable for the low price |
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Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01$ 25 60 after $ 20 rebate (a discount of $ 35 or 58 %) An excellent case for this low price. Feel free to get something fancier if you prefer. |
$1260 Power Gaming Build
This is a very powerful gaming computer that will get you smooth framerates with max settings in most games at 1440p, or better. This will also work well for VR headsets, although you would have to reduce the settings in some games to get a smooth 90+ FPS. To play the most demanding games in VR, it would make sense to upgrade to the RTX 2080.
- 125 FPS in Battlefield V with Ultra quality settings at 1080p
- 95 FPS at 1440p
- 55 FPS at 4K
- 90 FPS in Assassins Creed Odyssey with Very High quality settings at 1080p
- 70 FPS at 1440p
- 40 FPS at 4K
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Intel Core i5-9600K$ 250 270 (a discount of $ 20 or 7 %) Arguably the best current high end gaming CPU, before you start paying a lot more for little additional performance. A Ryzen 2700 and compatible motherboard would also work very well, trading a bit of single threaded performance for multithreaded performance. |
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Gigabyte Radeon RTX 2070$ 480 500 with promo code ” CMAD099 ” (a discount of $ 20 or 4 %) As much a deal as you’ll find on a 2070. Free BF V. Will get about 115 FPS in Battlefield 1 at 1440p with Ultra settings |
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ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4$ 100 140 after $ 15 rebate (a discount of $ 40 or 29 %) Excellent value Z390 motherboard. 2 M.2 slots, 2 PCIe x16 slots, strong power regulation. The SLI/ac version ups the quality and adds AC wifi, Bluetooth, and bling, if you want to pay another $50. |
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CORSAIR RGB 16GB DDR4-3000$ 125 140 (a discount of $ 15 or 11 %) DDR-3000, with RGB LEDs for fun |
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CORSAIR Hydro Series H55 $ 50 80 after $ 10 rebate (a discount of $ 30 or 38 %) |
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Intel 660p 1TB M.2$ 135 200 (a discount of $ 65 or 33 %) Way faster than any SATA SSD, for SATA SSD prices! Feel free to add more storage if you’ll need it |
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Rosewill PRISM S500$ 117 230 (a discount of $ 113 or 49 %) A fantastic deal on a very clean case, with a high quality 700W 80+ Gold power supply included. Feel free to get a different case if you like, just remember that you would also need a PSU. |
$3260 Beast
This build has the best gaming CPU, and the best GPU. Adding a second RTX 2080 Ti would give you the most gaming performance possible. This build is not nearly as much value as the cheaper builds, because the manufacturers know they can charge high prices for the best.
- 180 FPS in Battlefield V at 1080p at Ultra settings (ray tracing off)
- 140 FPS in Battlefield V at 1440p
- 85 FPS in Battlefield V at 4K
- 105 FPS in Assassins Creed Odyssey at 1080p at Very High settings
- 90 FPS at 1440p
- 60 FPS at 4K
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Intel i9-9900K$ 550 580 (a discount of $ 30 or 5 %) 8 cores and 16 threads at up to 5 GHz. The highest single threaded performance that you can get. If you’re doing some sort of specialized work that can take advantage of more threads, trading that single threaded performance for the multi-threaded performance of a threadripper CPU (and motherboard) would be more optimal. |
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Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro WIFI$ 175 195 after $ 20 rebate (a discount of $ 20 or 10 %) A full featured Z390 motherboard with built in WIFI |
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Corsair H115i water cooling$ 100 140 (a discount of $ 40 or 29 %) Excellent, reliable 280mm water cooling for your CPU |
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ASUS RTX 2080 Ti$ 1310 1350 (a discount of $ 40 or 3 %) The fastest GPU around. Free copy of Battlefield V included. If you want the absolute best gaming performance possible, get two of these. |
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CORSAIR 32GB DDR4 3000$ 240 280 (a discount of $ 40 or 14 %) Lots of fast RAM |
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Samsung 970 EVO 2TB$ 548 600 (a discount of $ 52 or 9 %) 2TB of ridiculously fast storage. Feel free to get more or less storage, or add HDDs. |
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CORSAIR HXi 850$ 170 190 after $ 20 rebate (a discount of $ 20 or 11 %) Very high quality, usually silent, platinum efficiency, with plenty of power to add a second RTX 2080 Ti |
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NZXT H700i$ 165 200 (a discount of $ 35 or 18 %) A pretty case! Nice to work with and quiet. Feel free to get whatever ATX case you prefer that will handle a 280mm radiator. |