Black Friday is arguably the best time to save big on technology. If you’ve held off from not one, but two Prime Days worth of computer sales, plus some seasonal and semi-annual discounts from Dell, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are still to come, but you can start saving now.
The Best Black Friday Deals on Desktops
While not as portable as a laptop, desktops are typically more powerful and they are much easier to upgrade, if you’re the hands-on sort. You can customize your rig to suit your needs more easily, too, whether you want more processing power to multitask, a better GPU to run games or video- and photo-editing software, or more storage in order to keep more files.
Alienware Aurora R14 Ryzen 7 RTX 3080 Ti
Alienware’s Aurora Ryzen Edition R14 desktop is nearly $700 off its retail price. This configuration has a speedy AMD Ryzen 5000 series processor and a super powerful RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, which will be able to play any modern day game in ultra settings. Alienware towers are built with upgrading in mind, so this desktop can change as your needs do. Plus, the brutal action shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is included with your purchase.
Lenovo IdeaCentre 5i Intel i7 RTX 3060
With a 12th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, RTX 3060 graphics card, 512GB SSD, and 16GB RAM, this Lenovo IdeaCentre Gaming 5i desktop is the perfect entry-level gaming configuration that won’t break the bank. While the current price isn’t technically a sale, it’s still a great value for what you’re getting. Plus, Best Buy price matches, so if it does go down in price for the holidays you’re good to go.
HP 24 Intel i3 512GB SSD 8GB RAM AIO 24″ Desktop
All-in-One desktops are a great fit for those with limited desk space. There’s no need for a tower; the screen houses all the components, including an 11th Gen Intel Core i3 processor, 512GB SSD, and 8GB RAM. Those looking for a beast to load up the latest games or resource heavy programs like Photoshop should look elsewhere, but if you need a budget-friendly computer for everyday tasks, this will do the trick. As an added bonus, the wireless keyboard and mouse are included.
Dell Inspiron 3910 Intel i5 256GB SSD
This Inspiron 3910 series desktop features a 12th Generation Intel Core i5 processor, 256GB SSD, and 8GB RAM.. This is an entry-level desktop for those who don’t need too much processing power for media editing or gaming and just want something to multitask between word processing, surfing the web, and streaming music and video. For the price, you can’t go wrong with this configuration as a daily-use desktop.
How much should I pay for a desktop computer?
Your money goes further with desktop PCs and their components versus laptops. You can find complete mini PCs for very light work or display-signage duty for less than $400, and perfectly serviceable small towers for $400 to $600. Gaming desktops with dedicated graphics cards start at around $500 to $600. You can also find all-in-one (AIO) desktops, with the display and all of the computing components built into a single device, starting at around $400. The sky’s the limit once you get into high-end gaming PCs and business-workstation power desktops, but the prices above are the right range for most mainstream buyers.
Is it better to get an all-in-one computer or desktop?
Traditional tower desktops offer the most upgrade and power flexibility, at the cost of bulk. Most towers have generous interior space and full-size motherboards, so you can install one or more (sometimes, many more) secondary storage drives, more RAM in empty slots on the motherboard, and a video card (if the PC doesn’t come with one). PC gamers will want to stick with a traditional tower.
An all-in-one desktop‘s big appeal is saving you lots of space, since the PC is built right in, with the components living behind the display. It comes down to how much you care about the desk area your PC uses up, and whether you happen to be shopping for a desktop monitor at the same time. Budget AIOs with basic feature sets are common, but spending more can gain you some combination of a touch-enabled screen, a panel with high native resolution, roomier storage, and a more muscular processor. Higher-end AIO desktops tend to cater, though, to content creators and productivity-app power users, not gamers,
Is it cheaper to build a PC or buy one right now?
It depends, largely, on the kind of desktop you are looking to buy or build. At the low end, economies of scale for the components, plus the cost of single Windows 10 or 11 licenses, tend to make buying a prebuilt PC a better deal. It’s when you get into the $1,000-and-up zone that building your own starts to make more sense, especially if you can reuse parts from an existing PC build. For the last few years, the inflated cost of graphics cards made building your own PC a lot less attractive. That price pressure has relented in 2022, though.
How much does a good budget PC cost?
Expect to pay a solid $400 to $500 for a basic, competent small tower for day-in/day-out productivity and web work. You’ll find plenty of models below $400, especially in the mini PC class, but you should insist on at least 8GB of system memory for any Windows machine, and, for anything beyond very basic productivity work, a Core i3 or Ryzen 3 processor.
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