> "I personally dropped $20k on a high end desktop"

This absolutely boggles my mind. Do you mind if I ask what type of computing you do in order to justify this purchase to yourself?

I'm thinking the same. My total computing purchases in the last 25 years, including desktops, laptops, monitors, phones, and tablets is way under 20k.

I would bet it continues to be more affordable to buy reasonable specs with current consumer hardware, rather than buying a top system once.