Its not
Go price out a used 1l form factor PC.
After you buy a case, and a real disk, the pi, cost savings is gone.
Meanwhile you can pick up a used 8th gen intel 1L form factor for about 100 bucks. You can pick up one that will take a PICE card for 150ish bucks, with remote management.
The 8th gen or better intel has all sorts of extra features that may make it worth while (transcoding/video support).
Do you have actual links for that? I looked at small form-factor PCs and I have not found anything cheaper than RPis.