Well, in that scenario, Swappa has an M2 Mini Pro 10 core 16/512 for under $1000!!! Which isn’t bad at all. Get some external storage and good to go.
But I would probably go with the M1 Max Studio from Best Buy Open Box (24 Core CPU) with 32/512 for $1,412.
Yeah, like I said, I splurged on some things =P
I used to always cheap out on a mouse and keyboard (if I upgraded them at all along with a build it would be like ~$20), but I definitely think it is worth spending some money on the human interface components, because you spend a lot of time interacting with them. Still, I definitely went well into diminishing returns territory.
Wise words, and applies doubly to the monitor. It always gets me that people will cheap out on the screen.
You literally spend every waking moment on the PC looking it, but only about 98% touching the mouse. 
This is very true. I have found that I am very attached to the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboards. (I like laptop style keys, but also need the ergonomics. But they are only like $50 on Ebay. 
I also like the G604 from Logitech for mice, but again not more than $60 or so.
Thanks to y’all I now know I am a frugal guy LOL.
By the way, I am so jealous of this setup! That 4070i is beastly! Congratulations!
Yeah, ask me 6 months ago and that’s about the most I ever spent on those components too. I’ve felt getting a good mouse and keyboard wasn’t something I should just completely neglect for several years, so I moved on from my $0-20 budget some time ago.
This time, though, I went for “best” with little consideration for price on mouse/keyboard. Even “best” is affordable enough that I doubt I’ll regret it when I’m still using them every day a couple years from now. It’ll average out to less than a dollar a day =P (rationalize much?)
We see this all the time with our corporate customers, and often poor quality of the tech they use is a frequent complaint within those same companies.
Intriguingly one company that was actually sued by a couple of it’s employees for failing to make accommodations under the ADA, made changes including better keyboard/mice/displays.
They then found that their actual IT support costs dropped within a year, so much so that it more than offset the higher costs of those items in the longer term.
And yes I’m a display guy, but I also know it to be true, you will never regret going with a higher quality display, regardless of desktop, laptop, or tablet.
PS: I have heard from a couple of people that research topics like these, and consensus is that one of the big reasons that Apple leads in customer satisfaction polls (and HP lags) is the quality of their displays across the board.
The problem is that really good displays cost money…and automatically catapult the price of said technology into a higher realm. I completely agree with you though. It’s really important and a consideration when buying.
That’s definitely true, but it’s also literally the one component you interact with most and thus why I advocate spending more for better quality there.
Plus on the desktop side, buying a higher quality display will often let it continue through multiple generations of the host PC.
Very much this.
My portrait monitor on the left side of my display set up has already done that, and I expect my central OLED TV/Monitor to last me much longer than my CPU/GPU.
Something I am learning the hard way. Though I don’t think it’s my display that’s to blame, but my dock. My monitor will just randomly flicker from time to time.
I did splurge on a good keyboard a few years ago, and don’t regret that decision.
I think I’m going to wait on a better dock until I decide on a second monitor. Since I have a MBP I’ll need to get a dock that supports a 2nd monitor on Macs if I go that route.
This is another reason I like desktops. Docking stations are a great idea in principle, but I haven’t come across one that pushes lots of pixels without being at least a little bit finicky. Maybe I’ve just had bad luck (and have had zero experience on the Mac side), but I find the direct HDMI/DP ports to be much more reliable.
I 100% agree. Unfortunately, I need my work machine to be a laptop. I just wish laptops would have the ports they used to. This is my first Macbook, so I don’t know what they used to have, but I would love 2 HDMI ports on a MBP. That would be fantastic.
Fortunately Apple is one of the few who does displayport/HDMI over USBC 100% to spec, so any USBC to HDMI adapter will give you that second port.
Am I able to do that with my current 2020 MBP that only has 2 usb c ports total? I had no clue if that is possible.
Yes, but only for ONE external monitor. The M1 13" MBP, like the M1MBA and M2 versions, only support one external monitor. The MBP 14/16 support multiple monitors.
That’s what I was afraid of. Though I have the Intel MBP, I’m guessing it’s the same. Maybe I can hold off a couple more years and get a 16" M3 or M4 MBP and then get a pen display as a second monitor. Or maybe the mythical MacPad will surface by then.
The Intel MB pro can support two external displays, it’s only the M series 13 and air that limit you to one external display and the 16 if it has a discrete graphics card, not the embedded intel, can support 3 displays
Great news then. Might be able to up my budget on a pen display when it comes to that. Granted, I might also need a larger desk to accommodate all of this.
That’s the rub. It’s mostly a barren wasteland unless you are doing CPU-based models which is platform independent and can be quite slow. Whether hobbyist or professional, machine learning and AI users are best served by NVIDIA hardware. There are no two ways about it. You can most certainly toy with it in Apple-land, but you will be segregating yourself from the >99% of the community and corpus of decades of development. If you want to beat the NVIDIA tax, I would personally recommend getting a used RTX 3080 (~$400) to show NVIDIA they got the value right with the 30 series. Then I would couple it with a Ryzen 9 7950X3D ($659), 64GB 6000 MHz CL30 DDR5 (~$200), and a 1TB PCIe 4 NVMe (~$100-$200) and use your remaining budget for case, PSU, spinning rust, and whatever other odds and ends suit your fancy.