If you're in the market for a gaming laptop on a seriously tight budget, Acer's Nitro 5 in the entry-level AMD flavor is a good one to consider and seeing of the best tech deals (opens in new tab). It comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U CPU, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and an AMD Radeon RX 560M graphics card. These aren't the specs of the best gaming laptops (opens in new tab), but they're certainly not shabby considering the price point. It's now down to just $460 at BestBuy (opens in new tab).
After owning the laptop for a while, it's possible that you'll find yourself aching for something slightly zippier. But worry not. Standard, this Nitro 5 notebook comes with just 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, but you can upgrade it to add another 8GB of memory and install a SATA-based M.2 SSD (opens in new tab) (Acer says (opens in new tab) it won't support NVMe SSDs (opens in new tab)). Those two upgrades won't cost you much, and in the meantime, you can jump in on a gaming laptop without splurging on a more high-end configuration.
Other specifications include a 15.6-inch 1080p (opens in new tab)resolution display, 802.11ac Wi-Fi support and a backlit keyboard. The laptop measures 1.1 inches thick and weighs a hair under 6 pounds.