I'm just saying...between my sandy bridge to the current box, when I looked either having to search for older components vs. just building something new, it was always just easier to build something new. Of course this was when prices were "normal" vs. today....
You seem to forget the "you can't at all" part with new Apple hardware. Of course, everything has a limit on upgrades, but not being able to upgrade your RAM or at very least SSD is insane that we put up with. This is pure anti-consumer cartel outcome.
A maxed out Mac Studio does very little for audio processing, and the custom audio cards that get used in the field.
Second to do the same as many users do with graphics cards configurations, one gets into gimmicks like external eGPU adaptors.
Third, Metal has not much adoption among visualisation software.
Finally, a Mac Studio can only be maxed out once during its lifetime.