there is an entire hobby for adults putting together random dumpstered parts/whatever they could scrounge up cheap too, google 'homelab' and thank me later ;)

there is an entire hobby for adults putting together random dumpstered parts/whatever they could scrounge up cheap too, google 'homelab' and thank me later ;) (I get your point though, I agree, it's very important for kids, especially in a world of increasingly walled gardens. A ton of the poorer world also makes do with whatever - X79 and X99 poverty builds are a real thing even today, because they're still a viable platform and china has cranked out cheap off-brand boards with resoldered chipsets. good workstation/server boards are <$200, and you can get a decent cpu for $50 or so, and memory for $20 a 32GB stick, it still is a relatively high-value thing for the capabilities it offers, if you need more than a normal consumer system.)