> Then Mini pcs, you can get a good deal here and there, for a more capable machine with a little bit more flexibility.

This has been my hack for a while: eBay "NUC", reduce the price slider, select 'But it now' and get one with all internals included. But even that has now dried up.

An old Workstation I purchased for £400 2 years ago now sells for ~£1.5k. The old GPU [+] I purchased on Amazon for £45 now sells for £3k.

There is 100% a need for cheap Linux SBC's with enough compute to cause some trouble.

[+] Top top tip: For old GPU cards with old CUDA, just get <insert favourite LLM> to rewrite the CUDA stack for older CUDA. Fun times.