Upgrading a PC was more of a learning experience than I expected
Some people buy computing power for self-training or self-edification projects. Others rent computing power. I like owning the gear I work on. I purchased a desktop to be used as a gaming machine, a development system, a containerized workload machine, a Data Science machine, and a Machine Learning platform. I didn't understand that it would turn into a series of hardware upgrades bound by PC architecture constraints. This was a great learning experience but not the best raw dollars investment from a pure cost/capabilities point of view. The 3 years of upgrades cost $1200. I saved some money purchasing previous-generation hardware. Buying current-generation hardware upgrades would cost $1900. I could have stopped anywhere on the path. Apple wasn't a player in the gaming, M/L, or GPU market when I made my purchase. Apple has caught up for most of my use cases with its large shared memory architecture and performant CPUs. A Macbook might be the simplest approach for someone want