[homebrewer]

You're lucky then. Hardware availability has increased by orders of magnitude for me — not an exaggeration. Even 10-15 years ago I'd be happy to have access to two motherboards, three CPUs, three video cards — all of them at least a generation old, and Intel + nvidia, nothing else — and cheap noname RAM/SSDs. Over the past 5-8 years I've mostly been able to get access to the same hardware y'all are buying, thanks only to increased pervasiveness of online shopping.

Brick and mortar stores are as useless as they've always been. Even now they're selling old hardware (couple of generations old or older) for more than it was ever worth. For example, one such store not far from me has been trying to offload a 12-year old LCD monitor for several years now, for two times of its original price. I wonder why.

[pjc50]

Online shopping is almost 30 years old itself. Before that there was mail order; I have a couple of mid 80s PC mags which are almost entirely adverts for parts.

[indigodaddy]

Computer Shopper baby