[layoric]

Exactly, and the performance of consumer tech is wildly faster. Eg, a Ryzen 5825U mini pc with 16GB memory is ~$250USD with 512GB nvme. That thing will outperform of 14 core Xeon from ~2016 on multicore workloads and absolutely thrash it in single thread. Yes lack of ECC is not good for any serious workload, but great for lower environments/testing/prototyping, and it sips power at ~50W full tilt.

[eru]

Curiously, RAM sizes haven't gone up much for consumer tech.

As an example: my Macbook Pro from 2015 had 16 GiB RAM, and that's what my MacBook Air from 2025 also has.

[ericd]

Ehhh Macbook Pros can be configured with up to 128 now, iirc 16 was the max back then. But I guess the baseline hasn't moved as much.