One of the main drawbacks to buying a pre-built gaming PC is the elevated cost compared to building your own system. Of course, a pre-built has some perks — like a more straightforward warranty handled (usually) by one company and a system that works out of the box — but for many people, it’s a tough decision between economy and convenience.
The ABS Cyclone Aqua with an Intel Core i7-14700F processor (CPU), NVIDIA RTX 4060 graphics card (GPU), 32GB of DDR5-6000MHz RAM, and a 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD is currently discounted by $400, bringing the total down to $1,099.99 at Newegg. I put together a similar system with the cheapest hardware available, and you’ll actually spend less on this pre-built than if you build your own PC. The deal ends today, so don’t wait too long.
🎃The best early Black Friday deals🦃
Save money with a pre-built gaming PC? That doesn’t happen every day.
I’m always on the lookout for pre-built gaming PCs that offer better value than building your own, and today’s Newegg Shell Shocker deals have delivered the ABS Cyclone Aqua.
More early Black Friday deals
Newegg’s in-house ABS brand is generally well-rated and reliable, using as many standard parts as possible so that you know what you’re getting. This also makes it easy to put together a theoretical build in PCPartPicker to compare prices.
The only parts I couldn’t get a price for are the custom ABS case and the ASUS B760M-A WiFi motherboard. Assuming that together they cost as little as $200 (you’d likely spend more on the case/mobo combo), you’re looking at about a $1,238 cost when the hardware is at the best price possible. That’s before adding RGB case fans as well.
Here’s a look at the included hardware, which without a case, motherboard, and fans costs about $1,038.
Your time is also money, as they say, and the convenience of having a system that works out of the box as soon as it arrives shouldn’t be ignored. Sure, you could wait for better deals on individual parts — especially with Black Friday approaching — but that doesn’t work for everyone due to time constraints and plain impatience. I know what it’s like waiting for one last piece of a PC before I can assemble it, and it’s not fun.
The ABS Cyclone Aqua’s hardware, including an Intel Core i7-14700F CPU, ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, and TeamGroup RAM and SSD, is more than enough to crush 1080p gaming with tons of 1440p potential. And thanks to the standardized design without proprietary leanings, you can easily swap out the GPU, memory, and storage if you want to boost performance.
The RTX 4060 GPU gets you all of NVIDIA’s latest tech, including DLSS 3.5, and the inclusion of USB-C and native Wi-Fi connectivity sets you up nicely for the future. Shell Shocker deals never last long, and indeed at the time of writing, there are only about 15 hours left to nab the $1,099.99 deal at Newegg.
