As an aside, recently I wanted to refresh my gaming PC, but the price shock and general lack of availability of buying components individually made it seem hardly worth it, so I just kept deferring the project.
Then, mostly by chance, I saw that my local Microcenter had some pre-builts for sale, and I ended up picking one up for <$5k that had "best in slot" components across the board, including a 5090 and even a high-end power supply.
The last time I built a gaming PC was upwards of a decade ago, and at that time the prevailing wisdom was to never buy a pre-built unless you had a massive amount of disposable income and couldn't spare even just one weekend to dedicate to a hobby project that could benefit you for years. Now, it was absolutely a no-brainer.
I did the exact same thing during Covid, the prebuilt ended up being ~20% cheaper than buying the individual components (I needed a full upgrade). Maybe a little less since I could have reused my case.
> and at that time the prevailing wisdom was to never buy a pre-built
That's still the case, and always will be — with a pre-built you're at the very least paying for someone to assemble it for you, so it's always going to be more expensive as a baseline.
Beyond that, the chance they've chosen good components and haven't tried to screw you over on less flashy ones like the motherboard and power supply is low.
That's not to say it's literally impossible to ever find a good deal. You very well might have. Doesn't change anything though.
> with a pre-built you're at the very least paying for someone to assemble it for you, so it's always going to be more expensive as a baseline
Except isn't it possible that pre-built companies actually get better deals on hardware bought in bulk, and therefore could offset the labor costs with cheaper materials?