Planning to build a cheap gaming PC this Black Friday? I've found the best deals on 6 essential components
Whether it's an AMD or Intel platform, these are the bits you'll need for a well-balanced build on the cheap
If you’re a canny planner, you’ve been holding out for all the best Black Friday PC deals to scoop up the components you need for your new PC build or upgrade. Mad props to you for that, you clever shopper. Now that the deals are flooding in, it’s time to pick and choose, and to save you a whole lot of time and, well, money, I’ve gone ahead and found some particularly choice offers you can use to assemble your new battle station.
These are the essential bits you'll be needing regardless of which CPU, motherboard or graphics card you're basing your build around. Whether you're building from scratch, or just upgrading a component here or there, these are the deals I've found that can make that happen for less.
PSU
This Thermaltake Smart WS 700W is going for a nutty AU$71.20 right now. It’s ATX 3.1-compatible, though isn’t modular. Who cares? We’re after power and savings, not beauty.
If you need a little more juice, Corsair’s RM850x is a great choice. Our mates over on Tom’s Hardware praised it in their review, saying “Corsair managed to improve the already great RM850x, offering even higher performance and a magnetic levitation fan.” It’s sitting on a 24% discount right now.
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Corsair's RM-series have been well regarded for many years, and this 850W unit is the sweet spot for most new gaming PCs. It's modular and fully ATX 3.1 compliant.
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If you calculate that your rig can sing happily with a 700w PSU, then this Thermaltake is looking good at AU$71.20 for Black Friday.
AIO CPU cooler
A 240mm AIO ought to do the job for most builds that aren’t aggressively overclocked, and Corsair’s Nautilus 240 RS offers good cooling and it’s pretty quiet. It's AU$97 on Amazon at the moment, which is nice for this quality brand.
If you are running a hotter CPU and want to get the maximum from it, and need a 360mm AIO, we found this Thermalright FW360 for just AU$90. That’s even cheaper than the Corsair above! The reviews on Amazon sit at 4.5/5 for this one (we haven't reviewed it ourselves), and you can have black or white, though the White is AU$116.90, which is still good value.
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A simple, no frills CPU cooler is all you need, and this 240mm from Corsair is a gem. There's no RGB, but it's cheap, quiet and effective for most CPUs.
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Finding a quality 360mm AIO from a reputable brand for just AU$90 is a rarity. It even has an LCD display. This is a remarkably low price for an AIO, and if you were considering air cooling this might just change your mind.
RAM
Well, this is the hot potato in the room. As the Great Memory Apocalypse gets worse day by day, finding affordable yet decent memory is an uphill battle. Here’s some, in a rare find for a Corsair Vengeance 32GB 6400MHz DDR5 kit that’s actually well priced in the first place, is from a good brand and even has the RGB sparkles. This is not one to wait long on.
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Prices are going way up for memory right now, and finding a quality kit for a reasonable price is rare now. That makes this Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR5 kit all the more appealing. There's limited stock for this, unsurprisingly, so don't think about it too long.
SSD
This is a component that's hard to find discounted at the moment, as the data centres of evil snap up new stock. But sitting quietly in a corner of the internet, waiting to be added to a loving cart, is this Orico 2TB Gen4 drive. TechRadar rate it at 4.5 stars out of 5. So AU$209.09 for 2TB is pretty sweet and it’ll probably be all the storage you need in your new PC.
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Orico isn't a well known brand in Australia, but the company has a good reputation for making solid SSDs. This Gen4 drive should hit up to 7400MB/s, which is as fast as you'll need.
Case
Corsair is going hard with the Black Friday deals, and the 3500X is 26% off for Black Friday. It’s a pretty standard case that’s easy to build in and comes with a set of three 120mm RGB fans pre-installed. Tom’s reckons it’s a very nice design, and only complained about the price. Well it’s on sale now so that just leaves the good news.
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If you're after a basic case with classic styling, the Corsair 3500X ticks all the boxes. It was already good value at its regular price, and discounted for Black Friday it's a real deal.
Fans
Whatever case you buy, you will need a few more fans for the top and rear, most likely, and again it’s Corsair with the deal. This three-pack of 120mm ARGB fans is down to AU$53. They can be daisy chained and offer very good performance without being too loud thanks to the magnetic dome bearing fans, something Corsair’s particularly good at.
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This 3-pack bundle has a matched set of quiet 120mm fans that you can daisy chain to minimise the number of connectors you'll need for your motherboard or ARGB controller. This deal works out at AU$17.85 per fan, which is pretty good.
Ben thinks he’s probably the most experienced PC gaming editor and writer in Australia. After working on the legendary Hyper magazine in the early 1990s, he founded the even-more-legendary PC PowerPlay mag in 1995, and remained as editor for the first five years during that period of explosive PC gaming evolution. After that he founded Atomic magazine in 2000, shifting his focus a bit more towards PC gaming hardware. After a few years as Atomic editor, Ben took over PC Authority magazine, and is now the editor of APC. He likes 48-hour Sins of a Solar Empire binges when he’s not sitting in his sim racing rig manhandling his precious German equipment.
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