Build or Buy: Here's how to get the best gaming PC deal during Black Friday

One of the eternal questions in the PC world is whether it's a better value to build or buy a PC. Sure, building may almost always be more fun, but money is important, too! We've seen it go both ways in recent years, based on supply and demand, but with Black Friday deals in full swing, we wanted to see how current pricing would affect the calculus.

To make our comparisons, we grabbed two pre-built PC configurations off of our Best Black Friday PC and Laptop deals page — one somewhat boutique, the other through a big box store — and tried to build something similar (with some adjustments that we could afford) to see how they'd come out.

With current pricing, and the help of some current deals, we were able to undercut both systems. But not by as much as you might think.

Boutique-ish: NZXT Player: Three

The NZXT Player: Three we found was on sale for $2,099, down from $2,499. It has an Intel Core i7-1700KF, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, 1TB SSD, 32GB of RAM and a 750W power supply.

For this build, we kept a few identical parts, including the same case, the NZXT H7 Flow, as well as the CPU. NZXT doesn't specify a specific motherboard or SSD you get (that likely has to do with supply), meaning we had some freedom to pick them. I matched the 1TB drive with a high-end WD Black SN850X, and frankly, I probably could've fit a 2TB SSD in here.

I also chose to go with an 850W PSU with ATX 3.0, rather than the 750W one in NZXT's build.

I could shaved a bit more money off our version by going with RAM or a CPU cooler not made by Corsair, but they fell well within the budget and still came in well below the prebuilt system.

Overall, our build saved us $275 before taxes and Windows. If you need an OS, see our feature on how to get Windows for free or cheap.

Big Box: Lenovo Legion Tower 5

The Lenovo Legion 5 is currently priced at $1,499.99, $430 off the regular price at Best Buy. Best Buy doesn't list all of the specs, giving us some room to be flexible. In other places, I chose to make some changes that I think will make for a better experience.

We stuck with the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, but made other component changes. For instance, Lenovo combined a 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD with a 1TB mechanical HDD. I changed that out for a single 2TB SSD, providing for more speedy space and easier installation.

I also chose to bump the PSU from 500W to 750W, which will make further upgrades easier.

Lenovo doesn't sell this case and motherboard separately, so we went with one of our favorite budget cases and an affordable mini-ATX motherboard (some might want a full-sized ATX, board which you could get for not much more).

All in all, Lenovo's price difference wasn't as stark as NZXT's here. But in that price range, we were also able to make a few improvements. Still, we'ved saved $152 before taxes and Windows.

Paying for labor

Of course, one thing we can't price is your time. For many of us here at Tom's Hardware, building a PC is fun. We'd probably spend a bit more to build, because it's fun, educational, and we get exactly what we want.

Many people buying pre-builts just want to have a PC show up at home, plug it in, download games, and get started. For them, they're paying for the labor to put it together, plus some profit margin. And they're saving a few hours of time, which never goes on sale. 

Just be sure that your desired system is in stock or ready to ship if you're going the prebuilt route. Often, if you opt for a custom configuration, it can take weeks before your PC actually ships, depending on the company you buy it from, the stock of parts that company has on hand, and how backlogged it might be with orders already.

Only you can decide how you value your time. But on price alone, you can, with some Black Friday deals, currently save a bit of money by building your own PC.