It's just a motherboard with the CPU soldered on, it's not really /that/ much different from my Intel desktop in the sense that it's a general purpose computer

It's just a motherboard with the CPU soldered on, it's not really /that/ much different from my Intel desktop in the sense that it's a general purpose computer that you can plug other things into. Focussing on the S bit of SBC isn't really helpful. Ultimately a Pi or other SBC is a pretty nice size for using as a dedicated and specialised device for lots of things. I've got one plugged into my boat to monitor boat related stats, I've got one that does logging and graphing of environmental stats around my house (and runs Octoprint). Both running SSDs, and though I could for sure run these services on a larger "proper" computer there's really no need to take the space and power. Running one as a NAS would be pretty sweet because it would be pretty small compared to my smallest NAS which is a Dell Optiplex USFF machine (https://willj.net/posts/fitting-two-hard-drives-and-an-ssd-in-a-dell-optiplex-7010-usff/ https://willj.net/posts/fitting-two-hard-drives-and-an-ssd-i...)