Don’t bother with GPU deals on Black Friday. Do this instead

You’ve probably been patiently waiting to score a deal on one of the best graphics cards this Black Friday, and I don’t blame you. We’re not in a GPU shortage, but GPU prices aren’t where they should be. Add on top of that signs that RTX 50-series and RDNA 4 GPUs are right around the corner, and now looks like the best time to score a deal.

I just don’t see any good deals.

It’s possible that some rare flash sale will pop up on Black Friday proper, but those kinds of deals are few and far between. If you’re in the market for a graphics card, there’s not much reason to wait. Here’s what you should do instead.

Where we’re at

We haven’t seen good deals on graphics cards for the past couple of Black Fridays, and I don’t expect that to change this year. That’s because a lot of deals are already live, and they aren’t very good. In most cases, the sales simply bring already overpriced graphics cards back down to their list price. You’re not getting much of a deal at all.

For instance, you can score a for $80 off. Sounds pretty good for a graphics card we gave high marks in our RTX 4080 Super review. The problem is that the GPU retails for $1,100, bringing the price down to $1,020. The RTX 4080 Super has a recommended list price of $1,000, so even with the deal, you’re paying a premium.

Here’s another one — the is actually below list price. You can save $90 on it. It looks like a good deal, but you can pick up the much more powerful RTX 4060 for $300. It’s certainly worth spending $30 more on, sale or not.

I don’t know all of the GPUs that will be on sale once Black Friday rolls around, but I don’t suspect the situation will be much different than it is now. You’ll often find GPUs with the largest discounts pushed to the top of deals listings, and those are the same GPUs that were already overpriced to begin with. Even during a big shopping season, GPU sales mostly balance the scales rather than saving you a considerable amount of money.

There are usually an exception or two. Often, you’ll find one or two last-gen models that are marked down to very low prices during Black Friday, which usually sell out in a matter of hours. We’ll be constantly updating our list of Black Friday GPU deals on the day, so keep an eye out for anything that pops. But for the most part, you shouldn’t expect sweeping discounts on the latest generation of hardware.

How to get a real deal on PC hardware

Don’t worry. You can still save some money on your PC build during Black Friday. You just need to know where to look. Let’s start with GPUs because you can save a tiny bit of money on Black Friday as long as you’re smart. It’s usually not even enough to cover sales tax, but I certainly wouldn’t argue with an extra $10 or $20 in my pocket.

Whatever you do, don’t just stay on the Black Friday deals page regardless of the website you’re shopping on. Just looking at the deals, you completely lack the context of what a particular graphics card should cost. Take the RTX 4080 Super example above. It’s $80 off, but you can pick up a different RTX 4080 Super model for the , and it’s not even on sale.

Regardless, make sure to look up the list price of the graphics card you’re interested in before buying, and if you’re shopping on Amazon, use tools like CamelCamelCamel to check the history of sales. Especially with GPUs, you’ll find that some models have sold for less at various points in the months leading up Black Friday. That usually means they’ll sell for less after Black Friday, too.

Thankfully, you can still save money on Black Friday with PC hardware, just not usually with your graphics card. You’ll find discounts on basically every other component that goes into a PC, but there are two components in particular that you should pay attention to this year: storage and processors.

Storage is really the low-hanging fruit for any big sale. It’s always marked down, and on big shopping days like Black Friday, it’s usually marked down to historic lows. Even now, some of the deals are really good. For instance, you can get a for $260. That’s 4TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage for under $300 — I never though I’d see the day.

Truthfully, storage is kind of a shoe-in. It’s always a good buy on sale given the relatively stable prices of memory modules. This year, however, processors are also an especially good buy. That’s because AMD recently released its new flagship Ryzen 9 9950X and Intel followed up with its Core Ultra 9 285K, so you can expect big discounts on last-gen processors.

Some deals are already live. For instance, you can get the for 40% off, bringing the list price of $550 down to $327. This CPU hasn’t sold for list price in months, but this is still a historical low for the CPU.

On the Intel side, you can pick up the Core i5-13600KF — which is still one of the best processors you can buy — . That’s an insanely good price. Even considering the CPU’s status as a value-focused gaming chip, spending less than $200 for 14 cores and speeds above 5GHz is unheard of.

Not only do Intel and AMD have new CPU generations, these new generations aren’t exactly exciting. There are performance uplifts, but they aren’t enough to justify a processor upgrade for most. For Black Friday deals, that just means more money in the bank. Last-gen components are already being marked down, and given how close they are in performance to the latest hardware, you can get one heck of a deal.

There’s still plenty of reason to get excited about Black Friday if you’re a PC enthusiast, particularly when it comes to storage and processors. Just don’t hold out for a graphics card. You’re just wasting time, and you’ll probably waste some money, too.