A little birdie tells me that you play your games on a PC – neat. I feel your pain, though. You put a lot of time and effort into affording your current rig which you bought during the pandemic days, right before DDR5 became the desired norm. Understandably, you’ve been putting off the switch to a DDR5-ready powerhouse for the last few years because it requires a whole new motherboard, and your current build can still play most of the games you want it to.
But it’s late November now, which means that Black Friday prices are rolling in, and the jump to DDR5 is more affordable than it’s ever been. If any of this sounds applicable to you and your gaming setup, I’m duty-bound to tell you that Newegg’s ABS Cyclone Aqua PC might be the perfect solution to your problems. Packed with an RTX 4060 Ti graphics card and an Intel Core i7-14700F, this versatile PC has been reduced down to $1,199.
I actually just reviewed a gaming PC with this GPU/CPU combo, and I can tell you it’s surprisingly powerful, and will almost certainly let you feel a substantial performance bump if you’ve been locked to older components until now. The iBUYPOWER build I tested was already priced fairly at $1,299, but Black Friday gaming PC deals have brought this $100 cheaper. Not only that, but you get 32GB of DDR5 for your troubles.
But why this rig in particular? Well, I believe it’s a versatile and futureproofed configuration that will keep you satisfied for years to come, especially since this is likely the 14th Generation of Intel processors will likely be the last to be made for the LGA1700 motherboard socket. SImply put, you won’t need to upgrade it for years, and if you do, there are i9 options in that group to aim toward. Similarly, the Nvidia GeForce 4060 Ti is a great graphics card that can service all three major resolutions. Depending on the display you play on, this graphics card and CPU combo will actually give you a noticeable boost without you overspending into the high-end 4K territories.
It’ll really depend on what specs your currently rocking right now, but I think for most players on a DDR4 motherboard, this configuration is going to give you decent a decent performance-per-dollar.
Should you buy a DDR5 gaming PC this Black Friday?
The best gaming PCs always get more affordable at this time of year, and so do their internal components. So what makes this a good year in particular to upgrade to a DDR5-compatible motherboard? Well, since the latest generation of RAM for gaming arrived on the scene, we’ve now had the Intel 12th, 13th, and 14th generation of processors. We’ve also had the Arrow Lake wave arrive more recently, but that requires an even newer motherboard, so let’s not go there right now.
On the AMD side, we’ve had the Ryzen 7000 family, the Ryzen 8000G wave, and the latest Ryzen 9000 Series. All of these are DDR5-compatible, and with a total of six CPU batches ready to be slotted into place, they’ve all become beautifully affordable compared to when DDR5 memory first arrived.
As if that wasn’t enough, the RTX 50 Series is said to be launching early in 2025, which means that the 40 Series options that have clung to high price points until now are more affordable than ever. In short, now is probably the best time there’s ever been for upgrading to a DDR5 platform, and the price of the rig above is a testament to that.
Of course, you could assemble the parts you want and build a machine yourself, and if you currently own a gaming PC with one of the best graphics cards in it, that might be the way to get the best value. Building isn’t for everyone though, and that’s okay. If that does sound like a better fit for you, check out the components in the window below.
Shopping around for more gaming hardware this month? Check out Black Friday gaming chair deals, Black Friday VR headset deals, and Black Friday CPU deals.