TechRadar Urges GPU Buyers Not to Wait for Black Friday as Prices Climb

The advice runs against the usual pre-Black Friday counsel to hold off on tech purchases. TechRadar acknowledged that Black Friday 2025 produced some decent graphics card deals, but only a scattering of them. It said Reddit users are debating whether to buy now or wait, with one U.S. Redditor asking whether to buy an open-box Nvidia RTX 5070 now or wait until Black Friday. That user said they saw open-box deals at $745 and asked whether to buy at an inflated price or wait for under $700.

TechRadar said Black Friday has never been the strongest sale for PC components or graphics cards. Although past events have included genuine bargains, cynical Redditors often argue that GPU prices are quietly raised in October so they can be artificially discounted for Black Friday. This year, TechRadar argues, conditions are different.

In the second half of 2026, the RAM crisis reached another peak of frenzied price increases, according to the article. More rumors of imminent GPU price hikes emerged a couple of weeks ago, following negative chatter the previous month. At U.S. retailers, graphics card prices have already risen considerably over the past month. Predictions about the broader memory shortage remain negative, and that shortage inevitably affects video RAM as well as system memory. DDR5 prices are also spiking, the article said, creating a recipe for a tumultuous rest of the year.

TechRadar concluded that it cannot see 2026 playing out any other way than with more GPU price increases. From that perspective, waiting for Black Friday to bring bargains does not make sense. The advice focuses on mainstream GPUs, meaning mid-range or lower tiers, not high-end cards.

The article said the beefiest GPUs, such as Nvidia's RTX 5080 and especially the RTX 5090, are already exceptionally pricey. It does not expect them to get cheaper and believes they will probably still creep up. Paying over $1,500 for an RTX 5080 in the U.S. is described as a pricing nightmare. Buyers who do not want to pay that much may have to wait a long time for better prices, perhaps not until 2028. A compromise might be to buy a card like an RTX 5070, or perhaps an AMD RX 9070 XT, to tide them over, then sell that card second-hand later when the RTX 5080 comes down. The article added that there are no good options for the pricier GPUs.

TechRadar suggested renaming Black Friday Red Friday for its red herring-like nature when it comes to graphics cards. It urged buyers not to be swayed by the temptation to wait for a deal, and to grab a reasonable price when they see one. It called a $750 open-box deal on an RTX 5070 a sound enough proposition, even though the same GPU was going for around $650 just two months earlier. By Newegg U.S. pricing cited in the article, the card now costs around $850. The article also said an RTX 5060 Ti 8GB can be picked up for only 10% more than its June price, again based on Newegg U.S. pricing, making a stronger case to buy at the more affordable end of the market. It advised readers to do their own research based on regional pricing but repeated that they should not be fooled into waiting for Black Friday.