Best PC build for around $1,600?

Honestly, if we're just talking about the States, it'd be plenty, though I can't really speak for the rest of the world
My setup is pretty standard: a 256GB NVMe drive for Windows, my essential software, and whatever active projects I'm grinding on right now
Everything else—archives, random junk, backups, or stuff I just need sitting around—lives on a 3.5-inch HDD with about 2TB of space
I haven't actually gone through the hassle of testing how much of a nightmare it would be to run everything off a spinning hard drive, or even how much of a massive slowdown I'd be dealing with

makes me wonder how long we're actually supposed to wait for these "better days" when everything finally becomes accessible again...

I've got a nagging feeling it’ll last way longer than they’re letting on, but man, I really hope I'm wrong...

It’s not about the M.2 slot itself, it’s about the NVMe protocol. An M.2 drive using SATA is basically just a 2.5" drive in a different shape.

GPU shortages are going to drag on until summer, but at least CPUs aren't quite as bad.

If you're setting this up, you really should go with an NVMe for your cache drive...