For under $1,000 there's a whole lot of gaming silicon in this RTX 3060 Black Friday gaming laptop
That's not only a modern Nvidia GPU, but also 16GB of RAM, a solid six-core CPU, and it's plenty upgradeable, too.
The Gigabyte G5 KC is a great entryway into PC gaming, and especially so when combined with a $250 price cut over at Newegg for Black Friday. That's not an excuse for any of that last-gen graphics stuff, either. This laptop is fitted with an Nvidia RTX 3060 6GB GPU, which puts it on par with the very latest green team graphics cards on desktop.
At the heart of this laptop is the capable Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, which I've reviewed the desktop version of if you want to get an idea of performance. In actual fact, the mobile version is slightly beefier than that desktop model I checked out in terms of CUDA Cores, though it has slimmer memory and will be limited by thermal and power constraints in a laptop chassis. Nonetheless, a decent, modern chip for 1080p gaming, and one with all the benefits of Nvidia's frame rate boosting DLSS at its fingertips.
That's all you'll need to ask of that RTX 3060, anyways, as the G5 KC comes with a 1080p, 15.6-inch panel. It's rated to run at a speedy 144Hz though, which puts this laptop safely in our PC gaming good books.
Gigabyte G5 KC | 15.6-inch | Intel Core i5 10500H| Nvidia RTX 3060 | 1080p | 144Hz | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD | $1,199 $999 after at Newegg (save $250)
We love an RTX 3060 gaming laptop with a discount, and for under $1,000, this is almost as good as it gets. That GPU and CPU combo will make for great 1080p, high-refresh gaming, and while there's not a huge amount of storage, those can be easily upgraded. As can the battery, and you can even add in a HDD if you so fancy.
Now here's the surprising bit. Usually we'd see some RAM shenanigans at this sort of price, in the form of either 8GB of total memory or, even worse, just a single stick for poorly optimised operation. Though here, with the Gigabyte G5 KC, there's 16GB of the stuff. Though that's not confirmed to be dual-channel, a reliable review from NotebookCheck suggests it will be.
There's also a ton of room for customisation here, thanks to this laptop's fairly hefty chassis design and upgradeability. There's a spare slot for another M.2 NVMe SSD, alongside the included 512GB one, and there's even an HDD spot open if you really want some high-capacity storage for cheap.
Everything from the RAM to the battery can be replaced, should you need to, which makes this a great way to get into PC gaming without spending a heap of cash all at once.
I also haven't spoken too much about the CPU, but that's not because it's anything to be ashamed of. The Intel Core i5 10500H is one generation old by now, but that's nothing too bad to worry about, and is a mighty capable six-core/12-thread processor capable of reaching 4.5GHz.
I've been looking for the best Black Friday gaming laptop deals for a couple of weeks now, and while I've seen at least one cheaper RTX 3060 gaming laptop deal, with a well-rounded specs list, I have to say this Gigabyte deal is one of the best so far. Plus it's covered by Newegg's Black Friday Price Protection scheme, which works for all customers, not just members of some elusive club, and means you get money back if the price drops by the end of the month.