I don't blame the site for this, though. Anand got out at about the same time as marketing overtook technological improvement in product development (for the most part). I remember the very early days (I lived just a couple miles from Anand in the Raleigh area) where he was doing super in-depth assessments at the board & chip level, through the rapidly changing evolution of motherboards, CPUs & GPUs in the early 2000s ... but as everything basically became mostly commoditized and user experience differences have reduced even for home-built PCs (and the number of people still home-building PCs, period!), there just hasn't been a compelling reason to continue this depth of analysis or writing for the past decade or so.
> marketing overtook technological improvement in product development
I would say another key change is things just becoming less modular over time.
Like, the chipset used to be a major factor in choosing your motherboard, but it just doesn't matter anymore. Third-party chipsets are no longer a thing, and there's little difference between first-party chipsets anymore because every CPU has a full integrated northbridge now.
And honestly, today's PCs are powerful enough that there's no point in even bothering to make optimal choices. You could pick mediocre parts for all your stuff and still end up with a beast. It's not like the P4 or Athlon XP days where you'd feel it if you picked a bleh motherboard or something.
True, while in the 90s/00s I used carefully built computers eventually I turned to laptops. Running a (powerful) 400+ Watts box that isn't mobile is very nice to have but won't really work for me anymore.
I must admit I therefore was only vaguely aware of the site. (During "my time" Tom's Hardware was quite a thing but probably they cater mostly to overclockers and gamers)
Would be nice to see a renaissance of DIY computing though. MacBooks do become a little bit boring :) On the other hand I do run a small homelab by now
