Nowadays, I just get old laptops with broken screens and take the mainboard out. They are dirt cheap, often even have 16GB of RAM, you can just dump pretty much any linux on them and they are usually way faster than Pis.

The boards are of course bigger, which I guess will be a non-starter for many. They'll also require active cooling unless you downclock them considerably. They often also require more power, although many mainboards can be configured down two a few watts of power consumption, depending on what peripherals and speed you need.

Yeah, it's more work than just getting a Pi, but given the current prices, it makes sense for me.