Black Friday and the holiday season are fast approaching and we want to help our community get the most bang for their holiday bucks. Start digging for deals and building out your parts lists soon because our Best Black Friday Builds competition ends at 5:59 PM Eastern time on November 30, 2020. The winners will have their builds featured on the Tom’s Hardware homepage leading up to the New Year.
There are three (3) different price points to show off your sleuthing and technical skills, with the winner being the build that gets the best possible performance per dollar spent.
Your bank account doesn’t need to worry about this contest, participants simply compile parts lists for hypothetical builds, as has been the tradition for our previous events.
Let’s dive into the event and explain how it all works.
First, submit your build. To do this, just head over to the PCPartPicker System Builder and put together a system. Again, there's no need to actually order the parts and put it together yourself -- the completed PCPartPicker list is enough.
Once you have your system 'built,' all you need to do is copy its BB Code, which you’ll be able to do with a button in the upper right hand corner.
Then, head over to the appropriate forum thread -- you can find the proper link below.
Next, hit the BB code toggle in the toolbar in PCPartPicker, then paste your build’s BB code to the forum and post.
The Tom’s Hardware staff will pick the top five builds for each category. We’ll judge primarily on the quality of components, the price and theoretical system performance.
Once the top builds are picked, Tom's Hardware readers will vote on their favorite build for each category.
Finally, we’ll feature the winning builds for each category on the Tom’s Hardware homepage so our readers can benefit from your knowledge as they head into the holidays.
Build Categories
Links to all three build categories are below.
Rules
Before you submit, though, there are a few ground rules to keep in mind.
- Only one build per budget category, per user. Multiple builds from a single user or duplicate accounts will be disqualified.
- Do not go over budget.
- Use only Amazon or Newegg to source parts.
- DO NOT USE Amazon third-party sellers to source parts.
- Use list prices only: coupons, rebates, bundles or any other limited-time offers will not be accepted.
- Do not include shipping or tax in your final budget.
- Do not include an operating system, monitor, keyboard, mouse, VR headset or gamepad.
- All builds must have a name.
- Do not put your forum handle in the name of your build, and avoid odd capitalizations and symbols.
- We encourage users to use PCPartPicker's System Build for speedy construction.
- Do not post a link to your build. Instead, please be sure to export as BBCode for a quick copy/paste to the forums
This is your chance to get creative and show your expertise to the world! We’re excited to see what you come up with. Remember, submissions close on November 30, 2020!
More information is available over on the forums.