This Asus ROG RTX 3060 gaming PC with Ryzen 7 CPU is $250 off at Best Buy
This very capable gaming system is down to $1,249 for Black Friday.
If you're looking for a pre-built gaming PCs, we've got a list of sweet Black Friday gaming PC deals starting as low as $870. You can find even more good stuff in our big list of the best Black Friday PC gaming deals. But if you'd like a specific recommendation, here's one: Best Buy has knocked $250 off the price of an AMD Ryzen 7-based Asus ROG gaming desktop, dropping it to $1,249.99 for Black Friday.
The unit is built around an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU and 16GB of DDR4 RAM, backed by a 12GB RTX 3060 GPU. Storage comes in two formats: A 256GB SSD boot drive, and a 1TB HDD for conventional storage. There are six USB 2.0 ports and a pair of USB Type C ports plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and it all comes stuffed inside an appropriately-lighted case with a big honkin' side window.
Mouse and keyboard—also illuminated in the gamer style—are included, and Windows 11 is pre-installed.
This is not the heavyweight champ of gaming PCs: The CPU is last-gen and the SSD is very small, enough to get your PC fired up and store one or two of your favorite games, and not much else. But despite the age of the Ryzen 7 3700X (and let's be honest, it's not that old—my own Core i5 6600K is considerably older and still serves me well), it's still a very capable eight-core, 16-thread chip, and SSDs are cheaper than they've ever been if you decide that you want to upgrade at some point down the road. (And hey, you probably will.)
Asus ROG gaming desktop | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X | Nvidia RTX 3060 | 16GB RAM | 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD | $1,499.99 $1,249.99 at Best Buy (save $250)
This gaming laptop comes in a familiar chassis, one we've used a whole lot. It houses an RTX 3060 GPU, which will be plenty to run the laptops 144Hz panel at 1080p with high frame rates. A little more memory and storage would be nice, but this is a great budget machine. Some Best Buy members also get their money back if this deal goes down in price any further, so a little peace of mind for early shoppers.
In other words, this is a solid, mid-range gaming PC that'll handle whatever you want to throw at it now, and can be easily upgraded if you see a screamingly good deal on, say, a big ol' SSD, like maybe one you find in our Black Friday SSD deals roundup, for instance. It also spares you the headaches and hassles of purchasing individual components and building your own rig. Some PC gamers enjoy that aspect of the hobby, but for a growing number it's just an unnecessary obstacle on the path to what's really important: Playing the games.