I've been really happy with how B&H handles their holiday sales lately. They are very professional and their shipping is consistently fast, which makes the whole process feel a lot less stressful. If you want to keep it under 500 bucks, I'm super satisfied with the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB GDDR6 for a mid-range kids build. It handles 1080p and 1440p stuff really well and I've had no complaints with the performance so far. Another methodical approach is using Rakuten cash back extensions when shopping at places like Dell or Lenovo. Sometimes you can stack a 10 percent rebate on top of a GPU sale. I did that for my last upgrade and it worked out great. Honestly, keep an eye on the Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT 16GB GDDR6 too because it often drops into that 500 dollar range during big sales events. It works well for high refresh gaming.

I totally get the pre-holiday stress, but honestly, you can find some solid stuff if you look in the right spots. I just finished a mid-range build last month and I was super satisfied with how the pricing turned out for my own rig. Heres how I see the big players for your 500 dollar budget:

• B&H Photo: This is usually my first stop these days. I bought a ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4070 OC Edition 12GB GDDR6X from them recently and the experience was totally painless. They dont play games with fake discounts like some other sites, so what you see is usually a real deal. Shipping is fast and I havent had a single complaint about their packaging.
• Newegg: They are still pretty much the king for bundle deals. If you need more than just the GPU, like a PSU or some RAM, their combo savings are actually legit. Just make sure its sold by Newegg directly and not a sketchy third-party seller to avoid the headache.
• Micro Center: If you happen to live near one, just go there. No contest. Their in-store only specials on stuff like the PowerColor Hellhound AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT 16GB GDDR6 are usually way better than anything you will find online during Cyber Monday. I would personally stick with B&H if you want a smooth experience without the stress of scammers. I have been really happy with their service lately and it works well for staying under that cap. You got this, the kids are gonna love the new setup... just gotta be quick when the page refreshes.

Regarding what #2 said about "I've been really happy with how B&H handles..."

• I gotta disagree slightly based on my own history with them. Stock alerts can be a nightmare when everyone is botting the site. It actually reminds me of this one time I was trying to build a budget rig for my cousin a few years back. I was so determined to stay under budget that I followed this random tip about a local warehouse sale three towns over. I woke up at 4am, drove through a literal snowstorm, and stood in line for three hours only to find out they were only selling pre-built office PCs from like 2012. I was so mad I just went to a diner nearby and spent a good chunk of my hardware budget on the most expensive breakfast platter they had out of spite. Honestly spent more time arguing with the GPS on the way back than actually looking at GPUs. Just a complete mess of a day... never did get that build finished on time.