Looking to buy a GPU on Black Friday? Read this before you do.

ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3070 Ti Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Cardinal

Promotional periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are keen for the bottom line of retailers and companies, but information technology's often viewed as a waste since many people buy things they don't necessarily need and feed into the consumerism machine. We pride ourselves hither in recommending deals that we'd purchase ourselves and on stuff you lot'd really want to purchase, like the best Black Fri PC parts deals.

This is why we've non published any GPU "deals". You may have spotted a few listed on retailers (or classified sites like eBay) that mask themselves every bit discounts merely are withal considerably higher up the MSRP of the card released by NVIDIA or AMD. We've chosen to not include whatsoever of these in our Black Friday and Cyber Monday coverage.

That doesn't mean it's impossible to buy a GPU, it just requires a little more cash upfront and some time. The best way right at present to buy even the all-time graphics card is to actually purchase a pre-congenital PC. That's right, even if you already take a desktop PC, we're recommending you buy a completely new machine.

Want a GPU? Buy a pre-built PC.

Hp Omen 30l Source: Daniel Rubino / Windows Key

This isn't an early April Fool'southward joke. You should absolutely buy a pre-built desktop PC for a graphics card. We've been closely monitoring the best Blackness Friday pre-built gaming PC deals with this in mind. Let's take the incredibly powerful (and expensive) NVIDIA RTX 3080 equally an example here.

You need to be smart when buying a GPU and think outside the box.

Looking at retailer pages and classified listings, you can look to pay in the region of betwixt $1,500 and $2,000, if you're lucky. That'southward for a GPU with an MSRP of just $700! I've seen some bidding wars go comfortably into the $2,000 bracket. You could spend $two,070 on the HP Omen 30L, which is a fantastic gaming PC by the way, and score yourself an RTX 3080 GPU.

But what about the rest of the HP Omen 30L PC? That'southward the all-time office. Sure, you've laid down $2,000 for the PC, the same every bit the GPU itself, but y'all've now got a machine without a GPU that can be resold. You can put your old GPU within it and sell it on or but equally parts, it's up to y'all. Even recouping $ane,000 from this would bring down your full cost of the GPU to $1,070.

This is still more than the $700 MSRP, but you're getting much closer and aren't wasting money on scalpers. You need to be smart when ownership a GPU and think outside the box. When asking yourself how to buy an NVIDIA RTX 30-serial GPU on Blackness Friday, recall about means to minimize the amount you have to pay on height of the MSRP.

What should you look to pay?

How much yous should look to spend on a GPU depends largely on which graphics card y'all desire. Once yous've got the MSRP, try searching for listings for the carte du jour or pre-built PCs with the GPU installed and (for the latter) piece of work out just how much you could feasibly inquire for the residuum of the PC parts. Try and get equally close to the MSRP equally possible.

Here's a listing of all the MSRP prices either set or for cards released by the manufacturer.

Category	MSRP ($)	MSRP (£)
AMD RX 6900 XT	$999	~£899
AMD RX 6800 XT	$649	~£599
AMD RX 6800	$579	~£529
AMD RX 6700 XT	$479	~£429
AMD RX 6600 XT	$379	~£329
AMD RX 6600	$329	~£299
NVIDIA RTX 3090	$1,499	£i,399
NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti	$one,199	£i,049
NVIDIA RTX 3080	$699	£649
NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti	$599	£529
NVIDIA RTX 3070	$499	£469
NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti	$399	£349
NVIDIA RTX 3060	$329	£299

If y'all don't want to purchase a pre-built PC?

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 review Source: Harish Jonnalagadda / Windows Central

If you don't feel comfortable ownership a pre-built PC for a graphics carte or observe it a waste of fourth dimension and money, there's not actually much else y'all can do aside from bookmark retailer pages and hope for the all-time. Stock is existence replenished just the demand is and then great that you'll need to be fast earlier it's gone.

Best Buy: Y'all tin can snag a GPU deal at a reasonable toll
Newegg: Aforementioned as Best Purchase, the Shuffle is worth entering
Amazon: While I wouldn't usually go here, at that place are some "okay" deals

You also need to question whether you actually demand a new GPU, to brainstorm with. Are you sticking with the same monitor? You may be okay to hold off until the supply issue is remedied slightly. If you lot're moving from 1440p to 4K (and we've got the best Black Friday gaming monitor deals, past the fashion), the chances are you'll demand a new GPU if you don't have at least an RTX 2080.

Merely if you already take an RTX 2060 and are sticking to 1440p, I'd suggest remaining where you are for now. I haven't bought a GPU this Black Friday or Cyber Monday and neither should you.

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