At the same time, just expanding a device with new parts is a far cheaper way to get more performance than buying a new device - after all, whatever price problem there is with some kinds of parts, it will be the same whether they're sold as lose parts or as part of a device.

Poor working class young me in a poorer European country after getting his first PC quickly found out that to get a more powerful machine he had to start upgrading that machine because there wasn't money to buy a whole new one every couple of years.

My point is that this might very well yield the very opposite effect of what you describ: buying whole devices to replace older models becomes too expensive so people favor more expandable devices - because those can have their performance improved with just some new parts, which are cheaper than getting a whole new device - and the market just responds to that.

I think most people in countries which until recently were wealthier, such as the US, are far too used to the mindset of "throw the old one out and but a new one" which is not at all the mindset of people in places were resources are constrained or require a lot bigger fraction of people's income to buy (certainly my experience living in the UK after having grown up in a country which was much poorer left me with that impression: the Brits just felt incredibly wasteful to somebody who like me grew up in a situation were "gettting a new iPhone every 2 years" was the kind of think only a rich person or a stupid person would do).

what's baffling is that modular desktops are probably a better long-term money making strategy for hardware makers. When you can cycle gear with ease - the temptation to try something new will be bigger.

The AI builders must be buying all the fab time and components to go to the build outs.

Desktops will go first and fade as the entire production chain stops.

Notebooks will be next, at least PC parts have a premium price, notebooks are too cheap to avoid it for long. Game consoles will face the same pressure.

The supply shock is going to be as bad as COVID.

What makes you think that? Even as prices rise, people are still buying and building PCs.

You could just run Linux on a 2009 thinkpad. Oh no, I will have to buy even cheaper machines to run Linux.