Early Black Friday 2018 Deals: SSDs, RAM, 4K Monitors, & Misc. Tech

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are upon us again. ‘Tis the season, as they say, for unrepentant, gluttonous consumerism. The official dates are Friday, November 23^rd and Monday, November 26^th; however, that doesn’t stop retailers from enticing would be buyers early – we’ve already seen Newegg doing their “Black November” discounts.

Amazon has announced they’ll be dedicating an entire week to the event, and Newegg has deals going live as early as November the 19th (that’s today). Many deals will go live on Thanksgiving Day, with all deals going live on the day after, presumably at midnight.

We’ll be rounding-up the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for computer hardware, heading into the holidays. This should help those looking for advice on where and how to shop. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, as well, or hit YouTube for our larger audience.

Amazon and Newegg remain the premier options for PC enthusiasts this time of the year, but Dell, Best Buy, Walmart, Fry’s, and Micro Center will all have deals going. We’ll try to aggregate all relevant deals on the homepage, but if some of you spot something, keep us apprised.

What to Expect – SSDs & RAM

This Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we expect to see deals on memory and storage. As prices have been trending downwards lately, this year could net some of the lowest priced RAM kits we’ve seen in some time. Last year, the Holiday sales were right in the middle of the global memory shortages – and perhaps price fixing – and sales were next to nonexistent.

A kit of Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB memory (3000MHz, CL15) is now priced significantly lower than last year, for instance. 16GB is also becoming more standard, and like this Vengeance kit, is typically in the price range of ~$130 at time of posting.

SSDs are already on a steep price decline, as we’ve been detailing in our weekly HW News videos. 1TB SSDs are now often under $200, making it easier than previously to buy multiple for RAID or NAS solutions. We expect to see prices slashed even further as we approach the holidays. This should also extend to other storage, like 4TB HDDs, NVMe drives, and external drives.

What to Expect – Monitors & Peripherals

Peripherals and monitors are almost always marked down nicely for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as these tend to be high-margin products. For instance, last year we saw some good deals on Corsair and SteelSeries’ high-end keyboards. We also saw a lot of budget 4K displays. Right now, some 4K monitors can be had for under $300, which is a testament to the direction that GPUs are going. UltraWide monitors have also carried popularity through 2018, with 3440x1440 displays becoming more affordable than previously.

Graphics cards have finally returned to mostly normal pricing, as we’ve outlived the great cryptocurrency-induced shortage. We don’t expect many deals on NVIDIA’s RTX series, but many retailers and vendors should be looking to clear out inventory of 10-series cards and RX 580 cards like this one (now marked down). These have already been priced really well, but Black Friday and Cyber Monday should yield even better numbers.

Amazon Deals

Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum RGB Gaming Mouse: An old standby of sorts, in the world of high-end gaming mice. Although there’s a newer version in the G502 Hero, the G502 Proteus is still a popular choice for tunable gaming mice. We have some older G502 Proteus Hands-On content, should that be of interest. At $35 – and just generally under $50 – the G502 is an excellent choice for a high-end gaming mouse. Don’t let the new price betray its quality: This mouse was among the best we’ve ever used when it launched, and newer replacements have driven down its price substantially.

HP Pavilion 15-Inch Gaming Laptop: There should be more than a few deals on gaming laptops going into sales events, but this is one of the first we’ve seen. This HP 15” model offers an i7-8750H, a GTX 1050 Ti 4GB, 16GB of RAM, 16GB of Optane memory, and, at time of posting, a rough ~$950 price tag. The price, of course, is subject to change.

MSI GV62 Gaming Laptop: Another 15” gaming laptop, but from MSI this time. The GV62 has similar specs to the above HP model, with exception to an i5-8300H and only 8GB of RAM.

Samsung 860 Evo 500GB: An all-time low for one of the more popular SATA SSDs. The 860 EVO is among the speediest SATA-based SSDs and, at this price, if you’re looking for an SSD for a boot or media drive, there hasn’t been a better time to purchase. We’ve also included the 860 Evo in a few of our build guides. There should be more deals on storage going forward, like NVMe drives and HDDs.

Cooler Master Hyper T2: This deal always comes and goes. You’ll have to check back regularly on this one, as we’ve seen it drop as low as $5 or $10 around this time of year. If you’re looking for a compact HSF style cooler, watch this one.

Newegg Deals

Mad Catz RAT4 Gaming Mouse ($30): Via Newegg, this is another decent deal on a gaming mouse. The Mad Catz RAT4 is among the few mice that lay claim to being modular. The mostly means the chassis can be tweaked to fit different drip styles. Typically goes for $45-$50.

G.SKILL TridentZ 16GB DDR4 3200MHz ($120): Memory is of particular interest this year, as prices are on the decline. If you’ve been following our HW News recaps, then you likely know why. This 16GB DDR4 3200 kit from G.SKILL for $120 isn’t the best deal, but it isn’t bad either. It also gives us hope that these kits might finally fall south of $100.

Wal-Mart Deals

Nintendo SNES Classic ($70): While not a fantastic deal, the Nintendo Classic Editions are rarely discounted. Use code “ELLEN10”.

Nintendo NES Classic ($60): Same as above. Use code “ELLEN10” to get $10 off. Not a bad deal if you were already intending to buy one of these. And yes, we know you can build one with a Raspberry Pi.

Dell 27” SE2717HR 1080p Monitor ($119): Although the list price is $199, this display normally sells for around $160. That said, this is a pretty good deal on a Dell monitor that offers an IPS display, FreeSync, and a 75Hz refresh rate.

As we’ve mentioned, watch this space for updates as we pull in more deals. We may also put together a build with some of the better deals. Leave us a comment, or tweet at us if you have questions or want to let us know about deals.