Black Friday is usually the time to get a new computer. Nowadays, it’s a minefield of fake MSRPs and deceptive percentage signs. For the last six months, the tech industry has been jacking up prices because of “RAMageddon” — a massive silicon shortage driven by hyperscalers hoarding memory for data centers.

And after half a year of this, we’re sick of this. So we’re going to do something about it.

For our Black Friday coverage this year, Tom’s Guide is activating a string, BS-free filter. And it all starts with one key rule: we are exclusively hunting for RAMageddon busters — deals that completely erase the memory crisis inflation and bring hardware back to pre-crisis reality.

If a computer or component wants to make it onto our RAMageddon Reset hitlist, it has to pass two brutal economic tests to prove it isn’t just a fake discount on an inflated price tag.

If the system launched before the memory shortage peaked (Q1 2026 or earlier), we ignore the current crossed-out “list price” on the retailer’s website.

We pull the original launch MSRP from our archives, and the current price must either match that cost or drop strictly below that original price.

For computers that launched during the memory crisis (like Googlebooks or Apple’s M6), their starting MSRPs are already massively inflated.

Instead, we’re looking at the pre-crisis equivalent — an equivalently-specced Windows laptop in place of the Googlebook for example. If it’s not below that historical predecessor, it doesn’t make the list.

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