The Memorial Day sales have been here all week and there will be more bargains arriving across a host of different retailers over the weekend too. Okay, grabbing a stellar PC gaming deal around Memorial Day 2020 might not have been at the forefront of your mind, but retailers are taking the opportunity to provide discounts on a range of different products… and not just the barbecue sets and garden furniture you might expect.
As always though, when it comes to seasonal sales, it pays to be wary about what’s on offer. Just because something might have a discount sticker attached to it that does not necessarily mean you’re getting a bargain. Whether you’re buying a product from Amazon or not, using price comparison sites, such as camelcamelcamel, will give you a good idea of the historic cost of a particular item before you pull the trigger.
But these holiday periods are a great opportunity to take a look around and see what’s on offer. If you’ve been hankering for a new graphics card, gaming laptop, or processor, then it will be worth having a scout around to see if the model you’ve had your heart set on has seen a recent drop in price. You might get lucky.
The Memorial Day sales may not offer the same vast range of discounts you might get on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but that’s why we’ll be there digging around the intermawebs to unearth the best deals on the best PC gaming tech for you. Leading up to Memorial Day on May 25 we’ll be adding new deals and offers to this page, so be sure to check back throughout this coming week.
Memorial Day sales 2020
Where to look for early Memorial Day deals…
Gaming laptops
With a host of new gaming laptop tech hitting the market, in AMD’s Ryzen 4000 mobile chips, Nvidia’s RTX Super graphics cards, and Intel’s new 10th Gen CPUs, there are a lot of new notebooks going around. Which means there’s a lot of competition, and potentially some great prices on the new tech.
It also means there ought to be some bargains coming our way on last-gen devices too. The mobile CPUs and graphics cards of last year are still absolutely relevant, just make sure you’re not overpaying for technology that’s not technically the latest.
Read our full best gaming laptop guide to see what’s worth your cash.
ASUS TUF | 15-inch | $799 at Walmart ($45 off)
This budget gaming laptop will be able to handle most games just fine, thanks to its GTX 1660 Ti graphics card, and it just dropped another $45. However, the 8GB RAM might not be enough for the most demanding titles and the CPU is decidedly last-gen.View Deal
MSI GF65 | 15-inch | $999 at Newegg
This gaming laptop from MSI is surprisingly good, nailing Nvidia’s promise of RTX 2060 notebooks for under $1,000. You get a 120Hz high refresh rate screen, ray tracing support with the GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card, and a decent Intel Core i5 processor. View Deal
Desktop gaming PCs
With more and more of us working from home, we’re going to need new machines if we’re going to be spending all our time sitting in front of them. And there’s no point just buying a PC for work, you want it to be gaming-capable too, right? There are a good few gaming PC deals going around this Memorial Day sales week too.
As ever, just because something is cheap does not necessarily mean it’s worth the money. Make sure the components in the build are relevant; they don’t have to be the latest, but make sure they’re at least still competitive and priced to match.
Check out our guide to the best gaming PCs for the sorts of builds we’re currently recommending.
Gaming monitors
Things have maybe hit a bit of a lull in the PC gaming monitor world, but while that’s not necessarily a good thing when it comes to pushing the industry along, it does mean that a panel from a few years ago will still be an excellent gaming screen today.
So don’t worry if some of the discounted products have been around for a while, just make sure they’ve got the key specs you’re after—high refresh rate and IPS or VA panel—and you will still be able to find a great gaming monitor.
Check out our best gaming monitor guide for the low-down on what makes a great PC display.
Graphics cards
It’s a tough market out there for those trying to find a new graphics card. Stock can be scarce in places and that makes it harder and harder to find those all-important GPU bargains.
But while there may not be a huge number of specific GPU deals out there, we’re at a point in this generation where all the cards are on the table, so to speak, and the competition is such that almost at any price point there is great graphics silicon with your name on it.
Check out our guide to the best graphics cards so you know what to spend your hard-earned money on.
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 8GB | $399.99 at Newegg
The GeForce RTX 2070 is a great option for playing games with ray tracing at 1440p (and some titles at 1080p). This model from Gigabyte is one of the cheapest RTX 2070 cards available at the moment, but it doesn’t cheap out on performance. View Deal
Processors
By the time Memorial Day kicks off on May 25 Intel will have launched its latest chips, the Intel Comet Lake processors, but historically the CPU manufacturing giant doesn’t do discounts… but AMD does.
There are some fantastic prices on not only the last-gen Ryzen 2000-series processors, but there are also some decent deals for the latest Ryzen 3000 CPUs too. There will be new AMD chips at the end of the year, but that’s a long way off, and Ryzen offers some serious CPU performance right now.
We’ve got the full skinny on the best CPUs for gaming.
Gaming headsets
If there’s one thing I love more than a high-end graphics card it’s a good gaming headset. Audio really is all-too-often ignored when it comes to building the perfect PC gaming setup, and the impact having a great set of cans will have on your experience can be incredible.
There are some stunning gaming headsets out there right now, ones that will deliver such sonic wonders to your ears you’ll wonder how you ever coped with the tinny monitor speakers or those rubbish console-fodder headphones.
To get up to speed on the latest tech check out our best gaming headset guide.
Gaming keyboards
Peripherals are likely to be the main bits of PC gaming gear that get discounts around the Memorial Day sales, but you don’t just have to limit yourself to specific gaming keyboards to make sure you get the best experience. Non-gaming boards may well come in cheaper, some still offer mechanical switches, and a whole lot of extra functionality besides.
But still, if you want that serious per-key RGB rainbow effect then you’re going to want to make sure that whatever board you’re chasing is a gaming keyboard. But that still doesn’t have to cost a fortune; the alternative mechanical switches to the classic Cherry MX are getting better, and you’ll see some big brand boards sporting switches made in conjunction with manufacturers you might not necessarily expect.
Check out our guide for the low-down on the best gaming keyboards.