I used these Black Friday deals to assemble a 1440p gaming PC with all-modern components, and it costs a lot less than I thought it would

A collection of PC components on a purple background with a GamesRadar+ Black Friday Deals stamp above it all — (Image credit: Future)

For most gamers who are yet to take the plunge into PC gaming or upgrade their aging computers, cost is the most commonly cited reason they don't. Consoles, handhelds, or laptops can be a smaller investment, so I don't blame people. Black Friday gaming PC deals are upon us though, and this wonderful time of the year makes it much easier to build a desktop system of your own.

Buying one of the best gaming PCs, or assembling the parts for one, doesn't need to cost as much as it usually does when you know how to use November's sales. I fully appreciate that a gaming PC is still the most expensive type of platform to invest in, but it's almost always the most futureproofed as well, and will give you better performance than more affordable alternatives.

Now, I had a few rules while shopping. I had to use discounted parts - while a few alternatives may be cheaper than what I recommend here, I'm trying to draw attention to the sorts of savings you can make on typically pricey components at the moment. I also wanted to use exclusively current-gen components where possible. Again, I appreciate that you could build an even more affordable gaming PC with older parts, but again, I'm trying to prove my point that even the most up-to-date parts aren't completely unaffordable at this time of year.

Let's build!

MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk MAX WiFi | $219 $189.99 at Amazon
Save $30 - Let's kick things off with the motherboard, since it's going to be the thing that the rest of the machine revolves around. If I were to build myself a new machine today, this would be the motherboard I'd choose. I helped a friend build his first gaming PC with this board earlier in the year, and I was amazed at the quality of life benefits it had which made building on it so easy. It's currently seeing its lowest ever price, and for its futureproofing features, I think it's a great deal.

UK: £225 at Amazon

NZXT H5 Flow | $119.99 $89.99 at Amazon
Save $29 - Next up, the case the PC will go in, which I've chosen as the larger version of my own PC's case. I rebuilt my gaming and work PC earlier in the year in NZXT's H3 Flow, which I'd recommend for our build today, but it's not big enough to take the motherboard we've chosen. I've decided on this case because it's essentially the exact same case, just a bit bigger, and it has three frontal RGB fans installed as standard which means we'll save money on them elsewhere.

UK: £69.98 at Amazon

ASRock Challenger Arc B580 | $269.99 $249.99 at Newegg
Save $249 - Alright, it's GPU time. Now, I haven't had any hands-on time with Intel's current generation of graphics cards, but I used to use the Intel Arc A770 as my daily driver, and that could comfortably play games at 4K with reasonable settings - and that was back when XeSS upscaling was still really establishing itself in a lot of games. From all of the critics and user reviews I'm seeing, this is a more than capable GPU at Quad HD. I understand if you'd rather look into a GPU that's got wider upscaling support though, so I've linked below to the most affordable RTX 5060 I can see right now.

RTX 5060: $279 at Newegg

UK: £239 at Amazon

Samsung 980 Pro 2TB | $168 $166 at Amazon
Save $2 - I'm going to level with you on this. SSD prices suck right now, and this is technically breaking my rule since it's a slightly older component. In fact, the faster Samsung 990 Pro and Samsung 9100 Pro are both out now, the latter of which would be my ideal pairing for our motherboard's Gen 5 SSD slot. To be completely honest though, I think those drives are too pricey to justify at the moment, and this very small discount is only subtracting from the 980 Pro's average price at Amazon. Long and short of it is, this is still a great SSD, its price is reasonable in the current economy, and I'll hear no more about it.

UK: £198 at Amazon

T-Force Delta RGB DDR5 RAM 16GB (2x8GB) | $149.99 $129.99 at Newegg
Save $20 - I knew going into this that finding RAM at a reasonable price would be the hardest part. Thankfully, T-Force has come to the rescue. Annoyingly, before AI drove up the cost of memory, you could have had 32GB of this RAM for a similar or less money. But as it stands, this is probably the most affordable RAM I'd recommend at present. The good news is, 16GB of DDR5 is enough for the vast majority of people.

UK: £194 at Currys

And there we have it! I haven't included the screwdriver, thermal paste, or the peripherals you might need for a desk setup, since that's not technically a part of the PC. I've focused on the things you actually need to build a gaming computer here, and because I expected the modern components to draw the price closer to $2,000, I'm actually pretty happy with the budget result.

All in all, for this full system, you'll spend $1,230.94 - which, for a very up-to-date, futureproofed, and capable 1440p gaming rig, is not bad at all. Keep in mind, you could swap out parts where you feel it's necessary, and you don't need to stick to the modern components I have here.

A Mini-ITX motherboard inside the NZXT H3 Flow — (Image credit: Future / Duncan Robertson)

It's hard to draw a direct comparison to a prebuilt PC here to see which would cost you less, but from the deals I've been looking at this year, that fits somewhere between an RTX 5060 and RTX 5070 gaming PC if you were to buy prebuilt. That said, prebuilts tend to skimp on some of the other components, and in this you're getting a futureproofed motherboard, an AIO cooler (which you don't usually get in a prebuilt of this price), and you're getting a decent SSD (which again, can be slower in prebuilds).

Keep in mind that if the RAM and overall specs you're looking for aren't fitting your budget right now, then take a look at the prebuilt deals. Newegg especially has some great offers available, and with the cost of RAM and SSDs as high as they are, you can get surprisingly good deals on PCs that so far, seem unaffected by those components seeing AI inflation.

RTX 5060 gaming PCs at Newegg
RTX 5070 gaming PCs at Newegg
RX 9070 XT gaming PCs at Newegg

There are more deals to check out at the moment. We've found some decent Black Friday VR headset deals, Black Friday gaming chair deals, and Black Friday Secretlab deals.

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One of my earliest memories is playing SuperMario64 and wondering why the controller I held had three grips, but I only had two hands. Ever since I've been in love with video games and their technology. After graduating from Edinburgh Napier University with a degree in Journalism, I contributed to the Scottish Games Network and completed an Editorial Internship at Expert Reviews. Over the last decade, I’ve been managing my own YouTube channel about my love of games too. These days, I'm one of the resident hardware nerds at GamesRadar+, and I take the lead on our coverage of gaming PCs, VR, controllers, gaming chairs, and content creation gear. Now, I better stop myself here before I get talking about my favourite games like HUNT: Showdown, Dishonored, and Towerfall Ascension.

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