TL;DR: I'm thinking about asking for a desktop computer for Christmas and I kinda need some advice
For the past 5-6 years, the practicality of a laptop has been worth the drawbacks. Now, as I start to do things which require more power from a computer, it seems to be becoming a bottleneck rather than freeing.
I know very little about things like motherboards, power supplies, anything AMD, and desktops in general 
so I figure it's not worth building one from scratch for me
What's a good desktop? I'm looking to get something better than my laptop (16 gb RAM, i7-12700…k?, laptop RTX 3060, 1 TB SSD) and I have a lot of money saved from never participating in capitalism (I don't want to spend a butt load of $$$ on this though).
Does anyone have any advice? Should I get a prebuilt? Assemble it myself? Try AMD parts (not sure about this though)?
Just trying here before I dive into… Reddit 
comments
Thanks for the tips!
I know you can save on labor but I don't know a lot about computers and I don't want to mess something up/order incorrect parts or something.
I've seen pcpartspicker! That site is a godsend, thanks for the recommendation.
I've been using laptops because they are massively convenient for portability. I've changed my mindset on it recently though.
just curious, what do you need the extra compute power for?
My first assumption would be rendering stuff because that is quite intensive
As I've started diving more into 3D animation (especially anything with simulations) and game design, I've found that my computer can't quite keep up. When I render my photo real animations, I get hit with constraints on quality quickly. Also, if I'm being honest, I think creating a computer/upgrading it myself also sounds like a very rewarding thing to do. The hard thing with a prebuilt is that I don't have all the information on the computer on hand, but a self-built seems like a massive undertaking