> A five year old OptiPlex SFF PC This is more what I'm talking about; I needed a faster option with much more RAM and a proper SATA SSD for one project. I bou

> A five year old OptiPlex SFF PC This is more what I'm talking about; I needed a faster option with much more RAM and a proper SATA SSD for one project. I bought a used Lenovo ThinkCentre for about $80, put in a small SSD I had on hand, upgraded the RAM to 8 GB for $20 (one 4GB stick on eBay), and had an i5 with about 100x better overall performance than a Pi 3 B+ (and maybe 10x more power consumption, so not a bad tradeoff). All-in $100 for me, though if you didn't have an SSD you can pick one up for $35-45 if you just need 32 or 64 GB. Basically, once you hit the $100 threshold, you have to really ask if an SBC is the right solution—unless you really, really need the small footprint. And if you need I/O for project stuff, an Arduino or similar project board is only a few bucks more and connects via USB.