I wouldnt say that its a brag. Part of the reason I did it was because of recent developments and fear of loosing personal computing. Ive always wanted to build my gaming setup. And have postponed it so many times it felt out of reach but this time i just did it.

This is my first and hoping it will be with me for 8-10years.

On the bright side, hardware takes longer to become obsolete now, so at least it will likely last a long time and retain resale value.

Boutique PC building has been getting expensive since crypto hoarders bought up GPUs and scalpers drove the prices through the roof pushing it further out of reach. We had a couple early hits with the HDD and memory shortages due to factory damage, those were relatively short lived, crypto otoh was long-term. Now we’ve got LLM datacenters hoarding all the hardware along with manufacturers perfectly happy to allow scarcity to drive up prices.

On top of all that we’re seeing less-subtle suggestions to kill the personal PC and force everyone into a subscription model for everything.

Personally I’d wait for any dip in the market and build another good quality PC. I figure there’s not too many years left before they get their wish.

you can still build a nice rig with ddr3 and ddr4.

I'm actually getting a GTX 960 to crossfire with another 960 because I don't want to spend $800 on a new card.

if I can squeeze out another 5-8 years out of them I'll be happy.