When I built my last desktop, in 2015, you would've blown way more than 2k just on the over-the-top monitor that you're mad can't be cheaply populated with high-speed, high-complexity output in 2023. Now you can get a decent quality 4k monitor plus a desktop that will drive it for years of normal tasks, all for less than 1k.
I got my 4k 60Hz monitor in 2017 for $400 or so. You can get them for $250 these days, so I agree that is pretty mid-range by now - or even the lower part of it. That leaves $750 for the computer.
According to the logicalincrements linked above, that gets you a RX 6600 - which they rate for 40 FPS @ 4k in The Witcher 3 - a game which came it out 2015.
So no, you cannot get a decent 4k monitor and a PC able to drive it for less than 1k. That's the entire problem: there is no midrange anymore.
In the '90s, eight years was forever, but less so now.
The way the market is structured just doesn't offer a whole lot of reward. Forknife, LoL, CSGO, CoD, etc... Are all built to accommodate toasters. The big titles are are built for consoles and poorly optimized, there isn't a whole lot to be had aside from higher framrates - and many times these are locked.
I upgraded for compute power.
As for resolution I'm not convinced it's worth the upgrade. Maybe in a few years.
But am generally in agreement, I did a big upgrade a while ago and while it's great for a few things, the extra hardware and resolution don't mean much while playing Stellaris.
For an example, I usually build a PC once the older one is horribly outdated. So that was 1999, 2002, 2006, 2011, and ... Well that one has turned into the PC of Theseus. I upgraded to an SSD and $300 video card in 2018, and in 2022 I bought a new cpu/mobo/ram. Still plays games at 1440p at acceptable frame rates.
If I wanted to game at 4k 240Hz, yeah I'd probably have to spend $3500 (and it still wouldn't run that great) which just tells me that 4k gaming isn't ready for prime time
That's basically a new computer in your previous case.
I think the point is that this isn't true anymore.
In the 80s or 90s eight years was huge in terms of computer hardware advances. In the last eight years though? Meh. Aside from one of my laptops, all of my computers are older than 2015 and they are all perfectly fine for current use. Hardware doesn't advance very quickly anymore, which is great, but bad for sales.
If you spent over 2k on an over the top monitor in 2015, then you were being silly because even top of the line GPUs weren't hitting 1440 at a stable rate.
We're not talking about normal tasks, if you want normal tasks even a chromebook would be fine. We're talking about intensive tasks, like gaming, which push boundaries and justify the high cost... except for components like GPUs which are dramatically overpriced still. These components make it misleading when people then claim that you can get a top of the line system for under $2k - which is not possible (a top of the line GPU costs more than $2k alone).
You can make tradeoffs, but when paying that much who wants to deal with tradeoffs?