After taxes and shipping:

Intel NUC12WSKi3 $382

64Gb DDR4-3200 $108

980 EVO 2Tb nvme PCIe4 $132

2 performance cores and 8 effeciency cores

The ram is indeed overkill but my current workload is north of 16Gb and future proofing at this price is reasonable.

PCIe4 r/w speeds

At 0.5L volume, NUCs are perfect for a shelf. It's smaller than its own power adapter. I've been running these for over a decade. You can save a buck by sniping older gen used models on ebay. ymmv

I orchestrate so much infrastructure on these little things though so this time I'm getting it new.

$600 for an investment into self-sovereign sofware infrastructure and compute that'll I never stop needing.