Black Friday Gaming PC Deals UK 2026: How to Judge a Prebuilt

Rising memory costs make Black Friday 2026 a harder time than usual to buy a gaming PC. Memory chips have become far more expensive since late 2025, and the cost is working its way into graphics cards, RAM and finished PCs, so the old advice, wait for November and prices will fall, is shakier than it's been for years.

There'll still be machines worth buying. But the reduction on the sticker matters less than what's inside the case, and prebuilt listings are good at leaving out the parts that decide how long a PC lasts.

The short version

• Buy or wait? If a machine you've chosen is already at a price you're happy with, there's little reason to hold out this year. If it isn't, note today's price and judge any November offer against it.
• Judge a prebuilt on the graphics card and its video memory first, then the processor, RAM, storage, the exact power supply, the platform and the warranty.
• To see what's on offer on a given day, our desktop deals page links straight to Amazon's own desktop deals.

When is Black Friday 2026, and when does Amazon's sale start?

Black Friday is on Friday 27 November 2026, and Cyber Monday follows on Monday 30 November.

As of 20 October 2026, when we last updated this guide, Amazon hadn't announced the dates of its 2026 Black Friday sale. Going by the last three years, it's likely to start the week before. In 2023 Amazon UK's Black Friday deals began on 17 November, in 2024 the sale ran from 21 November to 2 December, and in 2025 its Black Friday Week ran from 20 November to 1 December. Each time it ran on through Cyber Monday. Last year Amazon announced its dates on 13 November.

Specialist PC builders and retailers set their own dates, and plenty of them run offers for most of November. That gives you weeks rather than a single day to compare, which suits a gaming PC. It's a purchase that rewards a slow read.

Prebuilt gaming PCs to look at

These four prebuilts from our catalogue were in stock and sold new on Amazon when we checked on 20 October 2026, and they show what's on offer at three budgets. The specs below come from each Amazon listing, including the technical details and bullet points further down the page, which on these machines say more than the title. We list Amazon because that's where our stock and condition checks run; specialist UK builders sell direct too, so compare. We don't print prices: the link under each one opens today's price on Amazon.

Entry level: 1080p gaming

• CyberPowerPC Wyvern (Ryzen 5 8400F, RTX 5060): the Wyvern pairs a Ryzen 5 8400F with an RTX 5060 and its 8GB of video memory, plus 16GB of DDR5, a 1TB NVMe SSD, Wi-Fi 5 and a 650W power supply, on an A620 motherboard. The Ryzen 8000-series processor puts it on AMD's current AM5 platform (see the checklist), though A620 is AMD's entry-level chipset for it. The listing gives the power supply's wattage but not its make or efficiency rating, so ask. The warranty is listed as two years' parts and five years' labour. Check today's price on Amazon
• ionz Gaming PC APEX Mini (Ryzen 5 5600, RTX 5060): the same class of graphics card, an RTX 5060 with 8GB, beside a Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB of DDR4, a 1TB NVMe SSD, Wi-Fi and a 650W 80+ power supply. The Ryzen 5000-series sits on AMD's older platform, so it suits someone who'll keep the PC as it is rather than upgrade it, and the "80+" is only the basic efficiency label. Its listing gives a 24-month parts and labour warranty. Compare the two on price on the day. Check today's price on Amazon

Mid-range: the RTX 5060 Ti tier

• CyberPowerPC Wyvern (Ryzen 5 8400F, RTX 5060 Ti): the entry Wyvern with the next card up. It keeps the Ryzen 5 8400F, 16GB of DDR5, 1TB SSD and 650W power supply, and moves to an RTX 5060 Ti, which the listing gives as the 8GB version rather than the 16GB one. That matters if you keep a PC for years, because the 16GB card copes better as games ask for more video memory, so confirm it with the seller if it's a deciding factor. The warranty is listed as two years' parts and five years' labour. Check today's price on Amazon

High end: 1440p and beyond

At this level the card does most of the work, so start with an RTX 5070 Ti or RX 9070 XT with 16GB, then make sure the rest of the machine doesn't hold it back: 32GB of RAM, a 2TB drive and a power supply from a named maker with a real efficiency rating. We have one example in this tier.

• CyberPowerPC Luxe (Core Ultra 7 265KF, RTX 5070 Ti): a Core Ultra 7 265KF with an RTX 5070 Ti and its 16GB of video memory, 32GB of DDR5, a 2TB NVMe SSD, liquid cooling and a 750W power supply on a Z890 motherboard. It's a step up from the RTX 5060 Ti machine above, since the RTX 5070 Ti sits one tier above the RTX 5070 in Nvidia's range. Intel and AMD use an "F" suffix for processors without built-in graphics, which doesn't matter while the graphics card works but leaves no fallback display if it ever fails. The power supply's make and rating aren't given; the warranty is listed as two years' parts and five years' labour. Check today's price on Amazon

Example	Graphics card	RAM	Storage	Power supply
Wyvern, RTX 5060	RTX 5060, 8GB	16GB DDR5	1TB NVMe	650W, no rating given
ionz APEX Mini	RTX 5060, 8GB	16GB DDR4	1TB NVMe	650W 80+
Wyvern, RTX 5060 Ti	RTX 5060 Ti, 8GB	16GB DDR5	1TB NVMe	650W, no rating given
Luxe, RTX 5070 Ti	RTX 5070 Ti, 16GB	32GB DDR5	2TB NVMe	750W, no rating given

None of these titles mentions the RAM speed or whether the memory is in two sticks, and three of the four give a power supply wattage with no brand or efficiency rating. That's normal for prebuilt listings, and it's why the full description and the seller's specification sheet are worth reading before the sale rather than during it. Warranty terms are listing terms as shown on 20 October 2026: ask who pays to send the PC back under warranty, because that differs between builders.

To judge a sale price, look up what the same configuration has actually sold for recently with a price tracker, and compare the delivered total across a few UK sellers. A crossed-out RRP on its own doesn't prove a saving.

Why gaming PC prices are under pressure in 2026

The companies building AI data centres are buying up memory, and everyone else is paying more for what's left. The Guardian reported in May that Microsoft, Samsung and Dell had raised prices and pulled cheaper models, and that Lenovo and others had raised prices too. In July the analyst firm TrendForce said memory supply would stay "extremely tight" through the third quarter of 2026, and that graphics memory, the GDDR6 and GDDR7 on graphics cards, was also short and rising in price. Its early talks on fourth-quarter contracts point to further increases.

A gaming PC feels this twice, through its system RAM and again through the memory on its graphics card. TechRadar went as far as telling mainstream graphics card buyers in September not to wait for Black Friday at all. PCMag UK made a related point in May: finished prebuilts had mostly held their prices while loose components spiked, but that was likely to change as builders restocked at the new costs.

None of that tells you what any one PC will cost on 27 November. It might be cheaper. It might not. A big discount tells you less than usual this year. Look at what you're getting for the money.

Is it worth waiting for Black Friday?

Less often than the adverts suggest. The consumer group Which? tracked the Black Friday 2024 prices of 175 home, tech and health products at eight retailers, including Amazon, for a full year. Every one of them was the same price or cheaper at some other point in the six months either side of Black Friday. For Amazon's Black Friday deals in particular, Which? found the price was matched or beaten outside the sales period 88% of the time. Its advice is to decide what you want before the sales start, and that if you weren't planning to buy it, it isn't a deal.

Which? didn't look at gaming PCs specifically, so don't read that as a promise either way. The sensible approach is to choose two or three machines now, write down what they cost, and judge any November offer against that rather than against a crossed-out figure on the listing.

How to read a prebuilt gaming PC's spec sheet

Prebuilt listings lead with the graphics card and processor because that's what sells. The parts that decide whether the PC is still good in four years are further down, or missing. Work through them in this order.

The graphics card, and how much memory it has

The graphics card does most of the work in games, so decide which one you want before you look at anything else. Then check its video memory. 8GB is the least you'd want for new games in 2026, and some already want more at high settings and higher resolutions. Watch the RTX 5060 Ti in particular: Nvidia sells it with either 8GB or 16GB of memory under the same name. If a listing just says "RTX 5060 Ti", find out which version it is before you buy.

Whether the processor suits the card

A capable graphics card held back by an old, slow processor is the classic way a cheap prebuilt hits its price. The opposite mismatch wastes money too: a flagship processor beside an entry-level card. As a rough guide, a mid-range card wants a current six-core processor, and a high-end card wants something stronger.

Older platforms can also limit newer cards. AMD lists the Ryzen 5 5500, still common in budget prebuilts, as a PCIe 3.0 processor, a generation or two behind current cards. Some newer mid-range cards also use eight PCIe lanes rather than sixteen, and the two together cut the bandwidth between card and system, which tends to hurt most on 8GB cards when they run short of video memory. If a budget build pairs an older processor with a new card, ask about it.

RAM: how much, and in how many sticks

16GB runs today's games. 32GB is worth having for big open-world games, especially with a browser, Discord or a stream running alongside. Planning to keep the PC for years? Adding RAM later costs much more than it used to. Whether a 32GB machine is better value than a 16GB one depends on the rest of the spec and the price gap, so compare the whole machine. Two matched sticks run in dual channel and are faster than one stick of the same size. Few listing titles say which you're getting, so check the full specification and how many memory slots are left free.

Storage

A 1TB NVMe SSD is the sensible minimum. Big games regularly run past 100GB each now, so 2TB is worth paying for if you keep several installed. Adding a second SSD later is usually straightforward, so this is the one place where a smaller drive now isn't a disaster.

The power supply

This is where cheap prebuilts most often save money, because it doesn't show up in a benchmark. The wattage should cover the graphics card maker's recommended system power with something to spare. An 80 Plus rating (Bronze, Gold and so on) tells you about efficiency, not build quality or protection, and "80+" with no tier doesn't tell you much at all. What you really want is the exact power supply make and model, so you can look it up, plus its warranty. If the listing doesn't give it, ask the seller. Our guide to PSU wattage explains how to size one.

The motherboard and the upgrade path

Almost no prebuilt listing title names the motherboard, yet it decides what you can upgrade later. AMD's AM5 platform (Ryzen 7000, 8000 and 9000) is current; AM4 (Ryzen 5000) is the older platform, still fine for gaming but with little left to upgrade to. If you plan to keep the PC for years and swap the graphics card later, a current platform and a power supply with spare capacity are worth more than a slightly faster card today.

Cooling, Windows and the warranty

Check the case has room to breathe, with intake fans at the front rather than just a glass panel and RGB. Make sure Windows 11 is included and activated, not a trial. And read the warranty: how long it is, what it covers, and whether it's collect and return or you post a heavy PC back at your own cost. It matters more on a prebuilt than on almost anything else you'll buy this Black Friday.

The rest of the setup

Budget for what plugs into it. Match the monitor to the card and the frame rates you want: an entry-level card suits a 1080p screen, and the RTX 5070 class and up is usually bought for 1440p or higher. A high-refresh monitor only shows its benefit when your games and settings run above 60 frames a second, so match it to what you play. Check whether a keyboard, mouse and Wi-Fi are included, and allow for delivery and for the seller's support if anything arrives damaged. Our gaming hub covers monitors, keyboards, mice and headsets.

Should you build your own instead?

Sometimes a prebuilt really is cheaper than buying the same parts, because builders buy components in bulk and the Windows licence is included. With loose RAM as expensive as it is, that's more likely than usual in 2026. Building yourself still wins on control: you choose the power supply, motherboard and memory, and nothing is hidden. To price up the alternative, our UK guide to building your first gaming PC walks through the parts, and our graphics card guide covers the card at every budget. If you only want a new graphics card for the PC you have, see our Black Friday graphics card guide and our upgrade path guide.

Where to check today's prices

Once you've got a shortlist, our desktop deals page takes you straight to Amazon's own desktop PC deals, which is a quick way to see what's on offer during Black Friday week and over Cyber Monday. Amazon sets the savings shown there, so read anything you find against the checklist above before you buy.