I was the Nintendo dude in my friends group and my best friend was the Sega dude. So while we had fun back and forths we both got to experience both consoles pretty well. I remember being so happy when my friend got the wall adapter for his game gear lol
As the computer nerd in my friends/family circle, Im constantly being gifted old PCs from people. Some I keep and repurpose into servers/other things and others I just recycle for them. I also am an avid PC gamer so when my rig gets retired I usually upgrade the other servers internals from parts I had left over. Don’t know if something else is viable for you to keep costs down, even if you can get the PC without a HDD but everything else.