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I started retracking PC builds over the past 2 years.
$2k is a reasonable build price.

Market prices for older prefab machines supports $500/PC.

Main differences are chipsets and OS and secondary memory.

Motherboards centering around the Z170 chipset and 1151 slot allow for 5thGen intel chips.
Low end MB but all functions of the chipset, say an ASUS 170A, is about $150 for the Motherboard alone. That can range up to about $400-$500 for all the bells and whistles, but still not all the chip set functionality employed. That is developed over time.

Say $150-$250 for the MB. Add DDR4 memory at about $74-100/8GB stick. Motherboards max out at 32GB to 64 GB primary memory.

CPU, functionality of a 4-core i5 at about $250 or go i7 can range from low $300s to over $1600 for the i7 Extreme 10 core chip. Depends upon the applications being used. In most cases, I’d recommend an i5 Skylake.

Secondary memory now comes into play. Solid State Drives are now par for the course, but still have some defects in them. Recommend them for your OS and core applications where sections really don’t need much rewrite, only a fast boot time. Safety in numbers, recommend going with the best sellers and best ratings for best results. 128GB to 500GB SSD are probably decent general devices.

One word about memory,...dollar for dollar spent for performance, the user is probably better served to learn how his PC manages memory, then design the memory accordingly. One can easily drop $2k on different memory configurations, simply using default memory schemes, and still never use the power available. Likewise, if you fall back into older standard designs, the only functionality you will get will be a fast 386.

Typical memory designs are for 4-16GB RAM, 128GB SSD and a 1-3TB spinning hard drive. Most applications are still single core applications, but with gaming and internet apps, this is a whole different game.

OS. Note Win10 is not Win XP. Read the licensing agreement. (I think I am only 1 of 4 people in the US who has actually read the stinking thing. It doesn’t even appear the authors have read it. Like other systems, even the license appears to be plug and play, if a subsystem doesn’t work, they just cut it out and paste in a new one until it seems to work.)

Microsoft has geared the OEM OS to be used by the fabricator and NOT by the user. MS promotes toolkits to build the systems, then sell them to the user. After the user buys the preconfigured system it then authenticates the license to the user’s purchase. No more OS cloning.

If you buy the machine from an OEM, then you run the risk of Bing being installed and unable to fully remove it.

Win 10 runs $100-$200. $200 for say full Pro, non-OEM version.

Case and power supply, can run from $40 to $300. say $160

CD drives, and peripherals like USB packages, say $15 - $40 each.

SO
MB $200
RAM $200
CPU $250
Case $150 (incl CPU coolers/fans)
SSD $200
HDD $100
CD/DVD/Bluetooth $100
OS $200
SW $200 (min, this could easily go over $600)
Networking $50-$250, say $100
Keyboard Mouse fluff Say $100
Monitor $ say 4K UHDTV say $400 ($200-$400)
Video Card say $200-$400 (With the ASUS Z170A, on board video allows up to 4k UHD without a video card) If a gaming system, then you probably want more.

So off the shelf, these are $2k packages.

Reusing older portions can trim it down to about $1400, but it is hard to go lower without dropping into a lower class machine, that might be obsolete in 2 years.