Don't forget that games are significantly cheaper on PC, especially if you wait for the first sale (which'll come much quicker on PC). The upfront cost is indeed higher, but depending on how many games you buy you'll probably recoup that cost within one console generation.

No one is arguing that PCs cost less than consoles. The original point made was that consoles were cheaper than graphics cards alone, which isn't exactly accurate

This is entirely true, and you don't deserve the down votes from people who refuse to face it.

Building an equivalent system to a console, without a whole lot of luck being involved as far as finding deals goes, is likely to cost nearly double. This is speaking from experience, my current mid-tier PC, which almost performs as well as a current Gen console, cost about $400, and without, as said above, the ludicrous luck I had finding some deals, would've cost about $600, as the GPU alone, one that isn't actually very good at all, retails for over $300.