Lanx
<Prior Amod>
last i saw he was making some expanse theme rigWhich lost to a Celeron 300A running at 450 (full speed L2!) and cost less than $200. I also had a PII 400 or 450MHz and I don't recall paying anywhere near $600, but I can't find my buy price. Maybe AMD competion brought the prices down before I bought it. I think I also had a Cyrix CPU somewhere in that timeframe. I was the tech supplier for my friends back in the day and I had my system and had two other systems I had in the house for all of us to game on. There was even some decent GPU competition back then - I had Matrox w/Voodoo I and 2 and later TNT, but those other systems ran decent on a Verite Rendition and S3 Virge (IIRC). 1600x1200 CRTs. Even had bonded ISDN for internet.
There are plenty of reasonable motherboard options - just not usually at launch. They have also figured out that people will pay a premium for brand and image, just like cars, clothes, jewelry, phones, and a host of other things. Hell, Jayz2cents is always complaining about the cost of PC parts, and in his 14th gen video he is talking about switching out his 6 month old $700 7950X3D and $650 Crosshair Hero mobo. Regardless of his tech knowledge (or lack of) he's built a successful business in part pushing tech image. I am sure much of his build is supposed/"loaned" from suppliers, but I also sure many of his 4 million subs want to keep up with the Jones (or Jays as it were). I am guilty of this myself too (uneccessary upgrades).