There are plenty of great prices for the holiday season on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, but this year’s big new games — from Fallout 4 to Star Wars Battlefront to Rise of the Tomb Raider — are all best played on a PC. Some of these deals for components, accessories and high-end gaming laptops and desktops are available now, others start on Black Friday, but all will have you up and running at higher resolutions and higher detail settings before the year is out.
Origin PC
This top-tier boutique PC gaming company is launching its Black Friday sale starting at 9:00am ET on November 25.
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Deals vary by product line, but most systems will include a 500GB Samsung SSD; digital copies of new games, including Rainbow Six: Siege, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Just Cause 3; an Amazon gift card (up to $100); and your choice of free shipping or a gaming peripheral, such as mouse or keyboard.
Velocity Micro
The PC maker is offering a wide variety of deals, including set discounts on products, plus free shipping and game bundles.
The Signature 17 laptop line, a big bulky system that uses desktop-level processors, gets a $500 instant discount, plus free shipping. The slimmer Raptor MX50 laptop line gets a $200 discount.
Dell/Alienware
One of the Dell deals starting November 25 is a decent price for a 15-inch Alienware gaming laptop, with a new sixth-gen Core i7 CPU and an Nvidia GeForce 970M graphics card. It will be $1,199, $300 off the non-sale price.
Syber Steam Machine
Feel like trying one of the new Steam Machines running Valve’s Steam OS? We reviewed the $499 Alienware Steam Machine here, but PC maker Syber has a very similar Steam Machine — essentially a small desktop PC that looks and feels like a Steam-powered console — for $299 after a $100 discount and a $100 mail-in rebate. Note that this deal is good until the end of November 23 only.
Cyberpower PC
This boutique PC maker has instant discounts on several desktop and laptop systems. The oddly named Fangbook III is a 15-inch gaming laptop with a Core i7 CPU and a mainstream Nvidia 960M GPU, now $1,025 after a $400 Black Friday price cut.
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iBuyPower
A long-standing build-to-order gaming PC maker, iBuyPower is offering a stock 5 percent off orders of $999 or higher with the code “thanksgiving.” Some configurable desktops and laptops are getting hard drives automatically doubled in capacity. I’m a big fan of the Asus ROG line, and iBuyPower is also offering an Asus ROG GL55, with a 15-inch display, Core i7 CPU and Nvidia 960M graphics, for $929.
Newegg
If you’re upgrading your current gaming rig, Newegg has a long list of Black Friday deals that are already available. A Western Digital My Passport 2TB external USB 3.0 hard drive, well-suited for both gaming PCs and the Xbox One, is $79 after a $20 instant promo code.
Samsung 4K U28E590D PC monitor
Best Buy, Amazon and a few other retailers are all offering this 28-inch 3,840×2,160-pixel display for $399, which is $200 off the usual price. Great for enjoying some 4K gaming while your console-playing friends are stuck at 1,920×1,080.
Stay tuned for updates on other PC gaming sales, and be sure to check out CNET’s Black Friday laptop and desktop deals for more.