That's not accounting for inflation - $5000 then was more like $10000 now. And a bare-bones minimum machine for running business software (i.e. no color graphics or floating point hardware) was still close to $2000 (more like $4000 in today's dollars). So, roughly speaking a maxed-out gaming rig today is about as affordable as a bare-minimum box in 1990, without even accounting for the massive difference in absolute power.

That's the point

The late Bill Machrone coined Machrone's Law which stated that "the computer you want always costs $5,000." This hasn't really been true for 5-10 years. You can build a $5K computer but you have to really push it. But saying that the figure is still at least $2,500-$3,000 is probably fair.

Sure, but you can also build a perfectly serviceable computer for < $1000. Even $500 would (obviously) get you something far, far superior to that 90s machine.