I’ve been pricing out components for my first new build in 20 years. (I’ve bought many ebay servers and a few mini PCs in between).
The parts are around $2k. But then I look at the amd ai max+ 395 PCs that are out or coming out shortly and I think I might be buying an already obsolete platform. For the same price I’d get 16 cores and over 2x the memory bandwidth.
The CPU referenced is BGA only, so it has to be bundled with MB. The platform only has soldered down memory.
So the minimal package is a motherboard with cpu, compelling gpu, and memory all down. Given the platform fits comfortably within USB-PD, then it’s pretty much a slam dunk to have that motherboard have USB-PD down and skip the PSU…
The only things that naturally make sense to be maybe reasonable to be customizable are the storage, cooling, case, and maybe a solution to upgrade the GPU with a beefier discrete one.
As we push the physics more and more, systems are going to have little choice but to be a chunk of ‘all in one’, with the traditional build flexibility just no longer being feasible if you want top performance.
In terms of piecewise, the system builders get insane volume discounts, so it’s not a given that pre-built naturally is more expensive despite it technically being a superset of the parts and efforts that go into building yourself.