Comment by nirav72

You can pick up something like an HP elitedesk g2 with 8th gen intel cpu for $100-120 on secondary markets. Most of them ship with at least 8gb ram and also a 500gb m.2 drive. A 8th gen cpu will be many many times more powerful than even the rpi 5. In addition to having quicksync for hardware media transcoding. Something the Pi still cannot do via hardware. Not to mention, its x86 - so lot more support over the ARM7

Of course, if you size and the ability to interface with other hardware via GPIO is the primary use - then yeah a SBC like a Rpi would be the better option. But for a small home server, one is better off just buying a mini-PC.