The very boring pair of two 16GB ddr5 6000 I had in my newegg shopping cart went from $399 to $475, so increasingly the answer will be "no".

Maybe not afford new, but they probably already had it from before the current crisis?

Ideally this engineer's approach will yield better performance on lesser equipment in the future, if they keep up the good work after they get more-capable gear to experiment with as time goes by :)