Thanks @necrevistonnezr for sharing the Intel N100 suggestion here and pointing out the following:
Sounds nice - but you're in price regions (after adding casing, SSD, etc.) where it could make sense to look at Intel N100 mini PCs (or used thin clients), which offer a lot more possibilities...
... and in your AVX: List of CPUs incomplete post.
And for completeness, you also said in Woohoo, I finally cancelled my Dropbox subscription!:
Nextcloud runs! on my new homeserver (Intel N100 / 16 GB)
NextCloud is what I am planning on bringing into my home (from the cloud). I just got a 12 GB DDR5 RAM, 512 GB m.2 SATA SSD N100 mini PC for this purpose. Dual NIC, one being 2.5 Gbps. Powered by USB-C PowerDelivery is a bonus.
I came here to start a topic on the N100, and the Alder Lake N-series in general, being a better alternative than Raspberry PIs and other ARM options for many here.
No new is topic needed. This Raspberry Pi one seems just right.
This Intel Ark table does not include a column for TDP, but that can be seen by clicking.
The best table I have found overall is on Wikipedia.
Several of these processors are very highly ranked in Power Performance (CPU Mark / Max TDP) category on the PassMark site.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html
The N300 beats the N100 by having higher performance score, 8 cores and better 'cost performance per Watt', BUT... not worth considering now because:
Few PCs, boards out yet Being branded with the Core-i3, meaning they expect a premium Price I have seen for it is $309 (versus $128 for N100)If you live in a place where electricity prices are not a big deal or it is not for 24/7 usage, then the N97 or N95 cost less, but also seem to offer great value.
For even less money, as the OP said, used thin clients are worth looking at and are getting mentioned by Linux podcasts recently, for example:
https://linuxafterdark.net/linux-after-dark-episode-58/
When the Raspberry Pi 5 was announced, we all said that most people would probably be better off repurposing an x86 thin client so we bought some dirt cheap new in box Dell Wyse 5070 machines to see if we were right. Spoiler: we were.
And searching for N100 versus Raspberry Pi 4 (or 5) you find a lot more talk.