The economics of computers is like some magical promised land of market forces. My first PC was an IBM PC 5150 packed to the gills. CGA card and monitor, monochrome monitor, dual 5.25 floppies, and the full whopping 640K RAM. It cost me around $5000 with my parent's employee discount.
Building or buying an absolute screamer of a computer today will cost $3000 to maybe $5000 if I'm okay with rapidly diminishing returns. According to the CPI Calculator, that $5000 in 1981 would be around $18000 today. And generally speaking, holding off as long as possible to get a new computer works only in your favor because of those pressures to keep prices in that $1000 to $4000 range.