Not really in the loop either, but when Deepseek R1 was released, I sumbled upon this YouTube channel [1] that made local AI PC builds in the 1000-2000$ range. But he doesn't always use GPUs, maybe the cheaper builds were CPU plus a lot of RAM, I don't remember.

[1] https://youtube.com/@digitalspaceport?si=NrZL7MNu80vvAshx