Inspired by a question on Facebook. This is how I, as a fairly new person in the field, feel about this subject.
As much as I love my hardware, I would never recommend new people to go down that road. It's a lot of extra effort for a lot of stuff no-one would ever notice when listening to your music.
Video is a bit quick and dirty, please keep that in mind.
Invest in:
A stable PC
A DAW
A good headphone (mixing on speakers without budget is not a smart move)
A good small interface for low latency
A good midi controller (unless you don't play)
A few cheap synths or 1 or 2 subscriptions
Please keep it civil in the comments.
If you want to hear more about what could be a good idea let me know and I'll make it into a video :)