I am not questioning repairs (which almost never happen, as PC hardware in general is very robust these days) or upgrades to factory-built PCs (which should account for probably 1% of the PC component retail volume). I am wondering why there is an entire industry selling colorful boxes (as opposed to brown cardboard with a part number) with things that are not usable in any way when taken out of the box and are only functional when combined with 10+ other things in somewhat nontrivial way. Forget about "why shouldn't it" and "it was like this forever" and look at this phenomenon with a fresh eye. This is ridiculous (in a factual way, not saying this judgmentally).