I build multiple PCs a month: here’s what I’d recommend this Black Friday

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2025-11-26T17:16:40.185Z

SSD deal

Settle for less? That’s not the PC gaming way. Here’s a speedy PCIe 5.0 SSD for a pretty reasonable price, considering it’s 2 TB and runs at up to 13,600 MB/s. Even the random performance is pretty good on this one, as we found out in our Crucial T705 review.

There’s also a price drop on the even speedier T710. This runs up to 14,500 MB/s and if those numbers seem meaningless, that’s because they generally are. Random performance matters most for gaming and the T710 is very competitive in this department. Again, we’ve reviewed it and really liked it.

2025-11-26T17:05:08.392Z

Best prices on RAM (not a deal)

Uh, so with RAM prices through the roof, we won’t be finding any decent RAM deals. However, if you’re stuck partway through a PC build or ready to bite the bullet on some overpriced RAM anyways, here’s the best kit we could find. It’s DDR5-6000 with a genuinely good CAS latency, as some of the cheaper kits are slower and/or higher latency.

2025-11-26T14:55:02.588Z

Help choosing a graphics card deal this Black Friday

There are a couple of cards that offer the best value for money, and some which are really not great value at all (RTX 5050).

Here’s our Nick on which are the best offers around today in graphics card land:

“At $480, the RTX 5070 is a superb buy and will be able to turn its hand to almost any kind of gaming, though you will need to lean on DLSS 4 to help out at higher resolutions and settings. The RX 9070 XT is even better, and at $600, there isn’t anything else as good for the money.”

I’m also going to throw in the RX 9070. While it launched a little too close to its bigger sibling, the XT, it is discounted down to a price over Black Friday that makes it worth considering. It has more VRAM than an RTX 5070 and at a price that’s not too much more. If I couldn’t stretch to the XT, I’d land on the 9070 instead.

2025-11-26T14:39:51.491Z

Motherboard and RAM deal

RAM prices are spiking as demand for AI datacentres shoots up. Though you don’t have to worry about that if you buy either of these two motherboards. Newegg’s chucking in a compatible and capable RAM kit for free.

It’s a 16 GB kit of DDR5-6000 from Team Group. We’d like 32 GB but, hey, this is still a huge saving. The RAM alone would cost nearly as much as the motherboard to buy separately, so getting two-for-one brings down the cost of a new PC build significantly.

2025-11-26T14:12:19.777Z

PSU deal

Platinum efficiency, plenty of ports, and a 1000 W capacity—all for $110. That’s the sorta PSU deal we like to see. This box will power just about any PC you can think to build and comes with a 10-year warranty for peace of mind.

2025-11-26T12:57:45.582Z

Liquid cooler deal

(Image credit: Future)

This is not the best value liquid cooler on the planet, but it might be the most ridiculous. I’d never usually recommend it at full price, an utterly absurd $250, but with over half off for Black Friday, it is one of the better deals on a liquid cooler with a screen.

Do you need a liquid cooler with a screen? God no. I’m not even that fussed on the concept myself. But I know some people are, and this is one of the most vibrant and fully-featured. Plus it doesn’t mess with your monitors in Windows on account of being an entire little computer in itself.

2025-11-26T12:51:10.866Z

Screwdriver deal

If you’re in any way lazy or just want to look cool, these electric screwdrivers might be a good purchase. In fact, I’m hoping to receive one over the holidays myself. They’re all the rage on TikTok for building PCs, anyways, and I’m nothing if not obsessed with new gadgets.

2025-11-25T15:00:02.463Z

Graphics card deal

If you’re looking for a graphics card without breaking the bank, and you’re planning to play on a 1080p monitor, you can get by just fine with the 8 GB of VRAM offered here. The 16 GB version of this card is still $350, so you get a pretty decent saving currently by losing half the VRAM.

That said, I’d still like the 16 GB version if I could afford it. It helps at higher resolutions, keeps the card relevant for longer, and it will also help with any AI gubbins you might plan on doing.

2025-11-25T14:55:02.417Z

Motherboard deal

If you did want a cheaper option than the X870 below, this B650 is a pretty good pick. You miss out on USB4 and Wi-Fi 7, but it offers plenty of connectivity on the rear I/O, NVMe slots, and PCIe slots.

2025-11-25T14:49:29.960Z

Motherboard deal

My favorite pick for a motherboard has just increased by $20, but here’s a decent deal on an X870 I’ve spotted. It’s only a little more expensive than some B850 motherboards right now, but you still get all the usual trappings of an X870, such as USB4 support. I’d want that if I were building a mid-range gaming PC on the AM5 platform, so I’d opt for this X870 over the slightly cheaper options.

2025-11-24T16:21:51.889Z

CPU, cooler and motherboard deal

Check out this combo. Our Nick passed this by my desk; it’s a stonker of a deal, as they say.

For $450, you get your hands on three products: Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU + B650E Aorus Elite X AX Ice motherboard + a 240 mm MSI CoreLiquid A15 240 liquid cooler. The CPU alone is around $380 or more, so you are getting a lot more for your money.

The CPU and motherboard are last-gen, in that we’re now onto the Ryzen 9000-series, but that’s not much of a reason to ignore the potential here. The chip is still a mighty impressive thing, delivering excellent gaming frame rates courtesy of the extra cache onboard via 3D V-Cache

2025-11-24T15:57:24.756Z

Liquid cooler deal

(Image credit: Future)

There are some really good deals on liquid coolers this Black Friday. Notably, the one I highlighted previously, the Cooler Master MasterLiquid Core II 360 for $60. But that is a pretty, let’s say, vibrant design. It’s covered tail to top by RGB lighting. This Corsair, while more expensive, is much less garish. And it doesn’t require iCUE, either.

2025-11-24T14:44:30.504Z

CPU deal

(Image credit: Future)

We’re big fans of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, even going so far as to name it our best CPU for gaming. The champ. The novel application of cache underneath the CPU core complex aids in gaming frame rates and makes this thing pretty much unbeatable for the money.

There are bigger X3D chips with more cores and the same sorta cache that offer the best of both gaming and content creation performance, but those cost a lot more. For gaming and even most casual content creators, the 9800X3D is the one to go for.

The 9800X3D is very popular and for good reason. That’s why we don’t see many discounts on it, nor is this a particularly big discount. But, hey, it’s the cheapest this chip has been in a few months on Amazon and that’s at least worth a shout if you’re in the market. Put that money saved towards a bigger, badder GPU.

2025-11-24T14:18:58.075Z

Graphics card deal

Not a bad way to score yourself 16 GB of VRAM in the big ’25. Graphics card memory is a hot topic right now as some suggest it might go the same way as system memory in terms of hefty price increases. We’ve not seen that yet, as proven by this deal, but that’s not to say we won’t see some adjustments in future.

But back to the card at hand. The RX 9700 launched a little too close for comfort alongside the more powerful RX 9700 XT, which had initially seen us recommend the latter card instead. However, you can push the RX 9700 to near-XT levels and both cards love a little bit of undervolting. Moreover, the XT option is still at MSRP around $599, so you’re actually grabbing the 9070 here at more the sort of price we wish it launched at. Altogether, you a great graphics card from the red team with lots and lots of memory onboard.

2025-11-24T13:37:03.765Z

Best prices on RAM (not a deal, but close as we can find)

(Image credit: Future)

These are not deals. Let’s make that clear from the get go. However, they are pretty much the best blend of speed, capacity and value that we can find right now. Global demand for RAM has surged and memory manufacturers are milking every last cent out of that extra demand, so prices are sky-high. Though if you are building a fresh PC, you will need some, and the RAM pricing fiasco doesn’t look to be ending anytime soon.

Here’s what RAM we could find that’s still a crappy deal but not quite as crappy as the rest.

2025-11-24T13:28:34.760Z

Hey, hey. We’re back at it from a brief break over the weekend. My vitality has been restored and I’ll need every drop of sanity to survive this week: We’re now into Black Friday week.

So, prepare yourselves, and if you have your eye set on something for Black Friday, now is the time to start looking.

2025-11-21T17:30:21.078Z

Thermal paste deal (important)

You can never have enough thermal paste. I say this as a man that bought a 45 gram tube (very large) of MX-4 a while back and I’m still working through it. I’ve still got over half left. You probably don’t need this much at hand unless you’re bashing together PCs commercially, but a little spare won’t hurt. Here’s a deal that brings the newer, better MX-6 paste down to the same price as MX-4.

2025-11-21T17:13:14.477Z

SSD deal

(Image credit: Future)

The Crucial P510 is a stunning drive. It’s not top-tier, just to make that clear right away, but a cheaper PCIe 5.0 drive is still a lot faster than even the best PCIe 4.0 drives. It holds its own through a combination of a new controller from Phison and a superb price tag. Right now, it’s even cheaper, at just $90 for 1 TB, or $140 for 2 TB.

I’ll drop the charts from our testing below. You can see how well it runs considering the price tag: it fends off even some older PCIe 5.0 drives that cost a helluva lot more money when they came out. A sign of the times, I guess. PCIe 5.0 drives are getting better, cheaper, and cooler, and the Crucial P510 is leading the charge.

2025-11-21T17:01:42.573Z

Liquid cooler deal

(Image credit: Future)

This might prove an unbeatable deal for cooling this Black Friday. If it is beaten, I’ll be very impressed. This is the Cooler Master MasterLiquid Core II 360, a liquid cooler I reviewed earlier this year and gave a score of 88%, and it’s now just $60 at Amazon.

This is a good quality all-in-one that I’ve used in a few builds since. It performs extremely well in testing, even putting the superb Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro on the ropes, and it’s not too loud, either. My only real complaints are the tubes are the standard 400 mm, which isn’t great in some rare circumstances (like my testbench) and it didn’t come with thermal paste. But it seems to come with some pre-applied these days and there’s a deal on thermal paste I’ll post above if you need more.

It supports AM5, AM4, LGA1851 and LGA 1700. So all the bases covered. It looks good, with an infinity mirror effect on the pump unit, and the fans are daisy-chained together for easy install. It also comes in white for the same discounted price right now.

2025-11-21T15:01:02.622Z

Motherboard deal

There’s something very satisfying about a shiny new motherboard, but I fear one feature is often overlooked. That’s USB4. This speedy standard ensures you should hit at least 40 Gbps over a single Type-C connection, which is enough to plug in a dock with a mighty number of USB ports and keep everything well fed with data.

So, here are some of my top picks for motherboards, all of which offer USB4.