Let's face it, however many times you scour the Black Friday graphics card deals list you're not going to suddenly find an Nvidia RTX 4090 on there with any kind of discount. Hell, you'd be lucky to find one in stock and sold for anything like its original MSRP.
But surprisingly there are Black Friday gaming PCs with RTX 40-series graphics cards baked into them going on sale with actual discounts. Of course, GPU pricing being what it is, these systems are in the ~$3,000 range, but at least then you're looking at bagging a modern Ada Lovelace graphics card at somewhere akin to its 'normal' MSRP.
- We're curating all the best Black Friday PC gaming deals right here.
The iBuyPower system up top is actually cheaper than some RTX 4090 cards we've spotted on sale at Newegg. Those prices are ridiculous, and if anyone pays even $2,000 for a GPU you don't get any sympathy from me. Still, even at the $1,600 MSRP you're talking about half the price of the full build already.
Along with that you get arguably the best gaming CPU on the market today, the Intel Core i9 13900K and a free upgrade to 32GB of DDR5-6000. Though it must be said that I'm not 100% sure how 'free' the upgrade is, but still it's a lot of very, very fast memory.
The issue I have with this rig, however, is that SSD. While a 2TB PCIe drive of any sort will deliver a healthy chunk of speedy storage, the Samsung 970 EVO is an old drive today, and you'd maybe hope for a PCIe 4.0 SSD for this sort of cash. But if that's the compromise you have to make, well, it'll do.
A word on the lead times, however. The iBuyPower machine states an estimated shipping date of December 15 at the time of writing, though does stipulate an extra week is added due to the in-demand nature of the new GPUs. Those GPUs are also shipped uninstalled, so you will need to do the plugging in yourself.
That's actually the preferable option, if you ask me. These are massive lumps of silicon and aluminum heatsinks, and you don't want that coming dislodged during transit and trashing the rest of your new rig. It does provide PDF instructions on how to do it but really, it's just a matter of plugging in and screwing down.
If that's still too rich for your blood, we do have the RTX 4080-based options. Now, at its list price we struggle to recommend the Nvidia RTX 4080 as a worthy card on its own, but there are systems on offer for far less than RTX 3090-based machines that it will easily beat in a straight gaming frame rate race.
CyberPowerPC is presenting the Gamer Infinity XLC as $500 off right now. Which is only a couple hundred dollars below the iBuyPower system with the RTX 4090 inside it. That's a significantly better card, so if you can spare the extra $200 or so then that would be my recommendation.
If you're on a strict $3,000 budget (lucky you, anyways) then this beautiful looking system will still see you right. There's no particular weak point in the build, and the delivery expectation is set for December 12. There's always going to be a fear that with the high demand of these cards that might shift, but CyberPowerPC does at least guarantee delivery "before Christmas or earlier."
Where can I buy RTX 40-series gaming PCs?
- iBuyPower - extra 5% off any custom RTX 40-series desktop over $999
- CyberPowerPC - up to $500 off RTX 4080 gaming PCs
- Maingear - 7 - 14 days lead time on RTX 4080 builds
- Falcon Northwest - RTX 40-series Founders Edition builds
- OriginPC - save $200 on RTX 40-series gaming PCs
- DigitalStorm - save $150 on custom RTX 40-series PCs
- CLX - free component upgrades on select machines
- Build Redux - simple custom configurations
- NZXT - stylish custom RTX 40-series machines
