Black Friday 2020 is almost here. While the day itself isn’t until November 27th this year, several retailers have already confirmed they’ll be starting their Black Friday PC gaming deals much earlier than that, and heck, some have already started. So to help you make the most of this fabled day/week/month o’ discounts, I’ve put together everything you need to know about Black Friday 2020 right here, including what deals to look out for, and whether that shiny new peripheral you’ve got your eye on is actually as good a deal as it seems. I’ll also be taking a look back at the best deals from last year’s Black Friday to give you a better idea about the type of PC gaming deals you can expect to see over the coming weeks.
When is Black Friday 2020?
This year, Black Friday is November 27th 2020, the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US. This is still the day where we’ll likely see this year’s best Black Friday PC gaming deals, but as has now become tradition for a lot of online retailers, we’re expecting several deals to take place much earlier than that.
Most of the really juicy Black Friday PC gaming deals will still probably be confined to the week leading up to Black Friday, starting on Monday 23rd November this year, but it’s not unusual to see some good deals in the week before, too.
Amazon usually kick off their Black Friday deals two weeks before Black Friday proper, for example, and Newegg in the US often have deals on throughout the entire month of November. Indeed, with Black Friday taking place so close to Amazon Prime Day this year, other retailers such as Dell have already started their Black Friday deals drive and it’s not even the end of October yet – although having seen Dell’s Black Friday deals, the best ones are still going to be taking place in the week beginning November 23rd.
In short, while Black Friday itself might not be until November 27th, the Black Friday deals season has more or less started already.
Rest assured, though, we’ll only be highlighting the very best Black Friday PC gaming deals we think are worth shouting about over the coming weeks, filtering out all the dross to bring you the absolute cream of the deals crop.
Last year’s best Black Friday PC gaming deals
As with previous years, Black Friday can be a great time to nab some great PC gaming deals – particularly if you’re thinking about building a new PC soon or treating yourself to a long-awaited upgrade. All manner of PC components were up for grabs during last year’s Black Friday sale, from graphics cards and gaming monitors to SSDs and mice and keyboards. The quality of said deals, however, was pretty mixed. While there were SSDs and monitor deals aplenty, for example, the number of graphics card deals was pretty low.
However, given the number of new hardware launches we’ve had this year, Black Friday 2020 could give us a motherlode of great deals. Don’t expect to get a new RTX 3080 for half price or anything (if you can even find one in stock, that is), but if you’re looking to pick up some of last year’s best gaming CPUs or best gaming headsets on the cheap, then this could be a great time to do it. Here’s what we’re hoping will be on sale.
Black Friday graphics card deals
Graphics card deals weren’t quite as forthcoming as we might have hoped during last year’s Black Friday sales. There were some great deals to be had on AMD’s Radeon RX 590, plus a couple of Nvidia RTX card deals, but nothing particularly spectacular. Indeed, many of today’s prices are actually cheaper than the deals we saw during Black Friday 2019, so it’s hard to say whether we’ll get any truly mega discounts this year. That said, I’m hopeful there will still be a couple of stand-out bargains to be had in the run-up to the next-gen Nvidia Ampere and Big Navi GPUs, and the ones to keep an eye on are Nvidia’s RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 cards, as well as AMD’s Radeon RX 5600 XT.
Want to see the cheapest prices for today’s best graphics cards now? Check out our regularly updated graphics card deals hub.
Black Friday CPU deals
There have been a lot of new CPUs released over the last year, including Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake chips, and we’ve also got AMD’s Ryzen 5000 CPUs arriving on November 5th, to. While we don’t expect to see many discounts on Intel and AMD’s new processors, there should be some good deals on AMD’s older 3rd Gen Ryzen chips, with the Ryzen 5 3600 and Ryzen 7 3700X being the ones to watch.
Keep up to date with all the latest processor prices with our CPU deals hub.
Black Friday SSD deals
As for SSDs, the best deals were on Samsung’s 970 Evo Plus NVMe drives and T5 portable SSDs last year. The 1TB 970 Evo Plus fell to £155 last year, while 500GB T5s could be had for just £80. There were also good deals to be had on the WD Black SN750, too, with the 1TB model dropping to £128, which is quite a bit more expensive than today’s prices. Still, given how many discounts there have been on WD SSDs recently, here’s hoping we’ll see a fresh batch come Black Friday week, especially on our current top SSD pick, the WD Blue SN550.
Get all the latest SSD prices with our regularly updated SSD deals hub.
Black Friday gaming monitor deals
There were plenty of gaming monitors on sale during Black Friday last year, including our old favourite, the AOC C24G1, for just £135 / $145 at Amazon. There were deals across all sorts of different monitor types last year, from G-Sync and Freesync monitors to 4K and ultrawide monitors. It’s hard to compare exact prices, as several models have either gone end of life or been replaced by newer models since then, but I expect there to be a similar spread this year, with equally chunky discounts on offer. The one we’ll be keeping our eyes trained on is our current best gaming monitor pick, the AOC 24G2U.
For more monitor deals, be sure to check out our regularly updated gaming monitor deals round-up.
Black Friday gaming mouse deals
There were dozens of gaming mice on sale during last year’s Black Friday sales, and we saw plenty of our top gaming mice picks in there, too. Some of the mice we’re looking forward to seeing deals on this year are the Logitech G502 Hero and the Roccat Kain.
See the rest of our favourite gaming mice recommendations right here.
Black Friday gaming keyboard deals
Last year’s Black Friday gaming keyboard deals covered all sorts of different models, with several deals from Logitech, HyperX, Corsair, Razer and Asus. Pretty much all of our past and present gaming keyboard recommendations had a deal on at some point, so you can probably expect a similar spread of deals this year as well. One we’re particularly hoping to see is a nice discount on our current favourite keyboard, the Fnatic Streak.
See the rest of our top gaming keyboard picks right here.
Black Friday gaming headset deals
Those after a gaming headset had plenty of good deals to choose from, too, with several Razer, Corsair, Logitech and Steelseries headsets all going cheap. In particular, Steelseries’ Arctis 7 dropped down to £99 / $100 last year, and fingers crossed we get to see a repeat of that deal (or better), as well as some good discounts on our current favourite budget headset, the Logitech G432.
For more gaming headset recommendations, have a look at our favourite gaming headsets to see what else we rate.
Black Friday RAM deals
If you’re looking to upgrade your PC with some newer, faster RAM, then there are plenty of great sets to choose from these days. There have been some great deals on Corsair’s Vengeance LPX RAM recently, and we’re hoping these price drops will continue through to Black Friday 2020.
Black Friday gaming laptop deals
If you’d rather ditch your desktop for some portable PC gaming around the house, then Black Friday can also be a great time to pick up a good deal on a gaming laptop. If Prime Day’s laptop deals were anything to go by this year, we could see hundreds of pounds / dollars shaved off some of this year’s top models, so keep those eyes peeled right here for the best bargains.
In the meantime, you can find all the best budget gaming laptop deals under £1000 / $1000 in our regularly updated round-up.
How to get a good Black Friday deal
Install a price-tracker
The best way to see if you’re getting a good Black Friday deal – on Amazon, at least – is to install a price tracker extension in your web browser. I use CamelCamelCamel and Keepa for Chrome when I’m writing about deals for RPS, and they’re extremely useful to see how prices for individual products have changed over time. The former hasn’t been tracking as many Amazon products since the start of the pandemic, so you may wish to stick with Keepa (which is also available for other web browsers) instead to get the best information.
Alas, tracking prices on other websites is much harder unless you start making (and checking) your own dedicated list. However, even if you want to avoid Amazon like the plague, installing a tracker like Keepa can still be a useful tool to help you check deals elsewhere. Amazon hardware prices are usually a pretty good barometer of how much things have cost over time, for example, and Keepa lets you look back at some pretty historic pricing information, too. You can filter it to show prices from the last week, last month, the last three months, the last year, or even the entire product’s pricing history if you want the complete lowdown. As a result, you can use this information to compare with other deals you see around the web to help you get a good price – even if you don’t end up shopping at Amazon.
Follow our detailed deals coverage for all the best discounts
Myself and the wider RPS team will be keeping track of all the best Black Friday deals as we get closer to the big day, so be sure to check the RPS homepage, our dedicated Black Friday deals hub and our games and hardware deals page where we’ll be rounding up all the best discounts as they get released.
