Buildapc

My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique!
-- Weird Al Yankovic, It's all about the Pentiums (1999)

Chasing the latest and greatest is an old problem and it's never going to be solved. At some point, you buy the PC or parts which do what you want to do at that time for a reasonable price (however you define "reasonable"). One advantage offered by buying parts is the ability to upgrade piecemeal and keep up with growing system requirements over time, without the need to replace everything at once. My own PC of Theseus has been upgraded piecemeal over the last 15 years and runs modern games just fine. My wife's PC has been on an upgrade treadmill for close on 25 years. Sure, the only thing which is actually that old is the case (she loves her case), but we've been able to keep up with modern hardware requirements while spreading the upgrade costs out over time.

Depends on what you're building. If you're looking for an overpowered SFF type of platform then yeah those AI Max+ builds may be what you want. Just keep in mind a lot of those are integrated motherboards (non-upgradable parts) and usually have minimal storage options and slots for add-in cards.

The other reason those AI Max+ PCs get a lot of press is that there's still not a whole ton of CPUs with capable NPU built-in aka Windows Copilot+ compatible. AI Max+ happens to be one of those. (whether NPU is actually useful right now beyond Copilot+ is a whole other discussion)

So if you actually want a more extensible build out and don't care about this Copilot+ stuff then traditional builds / non SFF builds are probably still more in line with what you want.

No, parts make the whole. If you find a pre built that's better then the parts, there's a reason. Maybe an economic one, which will probably be a short window if true

I have nothing against AI Max 395+ systems. I'm picking up a Framework Desktop to play around with larger models than are practical on consumer GPUs myself.

But they're targeting a specific niche. They're currently compelling for that niche. But running large AI models isn't the only thing people do with a computer.

EDIT: Say you want a machine that can render frames quickly for a video game. The CPU is probably also wanting to hit the memory and is competing for bandwidth. The game won't be written to gain much from the GPU having fast access to a load of memory.

And you have a maximum of 128GB, which is large for a GPU, but it's shared, and nothing that amazing in terms of memory for the CPU. You can get motherboards that will take more RAM if your concern is giving the CPU a lot of memory rather than the GPU.

the amd ai max+ 395 PCs that are out

Most of these are SFF and don't have much (if any) capability to fit HDDs inside. They're not the right choice if you want a lot of bulk storage in a single box.

I only built my current system because of a special deal at my employer where you could buy a 4090 for 400 dollars, and this was only a couple of months after they came out.

Before that deal happened I was realizing that pre built was going to be cheaper for the same stuff. However finding a pre built without an expensive high end GPU that could be credibly upgraded to have a 4090 want in the cards.