A few years ago it made sense that the RPI was the “go to” way to setup Home Assistant, with its small size, low cost, and minimal energy use.
Now, as mentioned, good luck finding one, and if you do, you’ll pay (the rpi4 linked to Amazon in the install instructions as I post this costs $173).
To me, it makes no sense to buy an rpi when you have perfectly good hardware to run home assistant lying around collecting dust.
But don’t put a VM on if the hardware specs aren’t there, Just install hassos like you would on an RPI.