Depends what you get I have never had a black Friday where cpu, motherboard and ram don't cost me around 300 and I been buying computers for years. The i5 I currently got is better price to performance than what I got way back in 2014 by a lot that's pretty good price consistency. My intel core i5 4460 cost more at the time, than what I paid today for a 12400f. I have bought computers at different times 2014 was just my best year till now. Now GPU prices are absurd currently but that's the consumer fault and not all inflation. Consumers showed during the gpu shortage they are willing to pay a lot more giving scalpers triple and more for cards. So companies started charging more at base price.