I'm convinced that modular PCs are ... at least a flavor of the future.

MiniPC with higher spec laptop or mobile cpu, soldered on to a mobo that has sodimm slots.

Oculink port, external gpu dock with psu.

CPU gets too old? Keep your ssd and sys ram, get a new mini pc, put the ssd and ram into it.

GPU gets too old? Get a new one, new PSU if you need it.

Yeah, you get a slight ding to extreme performance scenarios, but at least at the moment, this seems to be the more cost effective route to get something like a 'ultra graphics at 1440p' capable system.

Also, once you get the GPU dock, you probably don't really need to get a new one... unless like an entirely new PCIe standard comes out, or something like that.

But, you can currently get a bare bones one thats around the cost of all the fans and cpu heatsinks and what not that you'd need for a traditional 'battlestation'.

Also also, when not gaming or doing something graphically or LLM or whatever kind of demanding, you can just boot up the MiniPC alone and have a lower power bill.

If you want more long term storage, set up a NAS, or maybe just some usb external spinny spinny HDDs.

This kind of thing is already a fairly rapidly growing niche in China, if you hop on AliExpress and just look at how many different kinds of things are offered and roughly fit into this kind of setup scenario.

AOOSTAR, Minisforum, others, etc.