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I feel like 2010-2020 was a stagnant time for hardware, which was most visible in the lack of huge leaps in gaming console quality. AI is changing that. Having tons of RAM and VRAM really does open up options that would simply be impossible before.

Running large AI models locally is a bit niche right now but I'm doubtful it will stay that way, so I say it's a good time to value bleeding edge machines

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2010-2020 includes the launches of Intels Sandy Bridge (and to lesser degree Haswell) and AMD Zen (and with it Threadripper), many great products from nvidia (980, 1080, RTX, Titan). 2010s were also the decade of Apple Silicon, mostly on mobile though but culminating on M1 launch in 2020. In 2010 SSDs were just becoming a thing, but were still pretty anemic small sata ones with notoriously buggy firmwares, no comparison to modern-day nvme drives. And finally, after decades of stagnation, in 2010s we saw great improvements in displays, both getting hidpi, hdr, and larger gamuts.

Sure, it might pale in comparison to the absolute wild ride that were the 90s, but I would not call 2010s stagnant as a whole.

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