There are also a lot of mini PCs that are comparable in price to a Raspberry Pi 5 once you factor in the cost of a case, SD card, and power supply for the Pi.
The power usage will be a bit higher, but it will also have higher performance. They can have 2.5G ethernet and a couple of NVMe SSDs. The Raspberry Pi 5 only has one lane of PCIe 2.0, so it will be very bandwidth limited if you use a PCIe switch to connect a 2.5G NIC and an SSD.
There are also a lot of mini PCs that are comparable in price to a Raspberry Pi 5 once you factor in the cost of a case, SD card, and power supply for the Pi.
Notable mention, amd64 chipsets are more widely supported than ARM.
That’s only start up cost. What about ongoing 24/7 costs after 2 years?
Probably not much of a difference. These mini PCs can run at single digit wattage too and you won’t be buying new SD cards every 6 months.
The power usage will be a bit higher, but it will also have higher performance. They can have 2.5G ethernet and a couple of NVMe SSDs. The Raspberry Pi 5 only has one lane of PCIe 2.0, so it will be very bandwidth limited if you use a PCIe switch to connect a 2.5G NIC and an SSD.