16 GB SODIMM RAM is plenty cheap right now. Just be certain it’s the right speed (DDR3 or DDR4). Check whatever is in it now to be certain, before ordering.
I’ve been running Proxmox on an XCY mini PC for over 3 years. Home Assistant Operating System runs in a virtual machine along with a couple of containers running a LAMP server and some utilities. The XCY has an N3530 with a 240gb SSD and 4gb of RAM.
CPU averages around 7% and Home Assistant has never crashed. The N3350 has a slightly lower benchmark than the N3530 I’m using and your other two potential CPU’s have over 3 times the processing power.
I don’t run any CPU intensive tasks on my setup, but have 11 add-ons, 167 Sensors, 7 Lights, 64 Switches, 65 Binary sensors and 110 Automations. Hopefully this will give you some idea of whether the processors you are considering would be suitable for your setup.
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Thanks for the insight, verry helpfull!
I’m actually considering a N5105 now with 8GB of RAM.
Quite overkill for HASS. But I actually was thinking choosing this one for the relatively lower power consumption. It’s just around 10W, and with that just slightly higher then the RPi4 if I’m correct. There’re slower CPU’s out with a higher consumption.
There should be also cheaper and less consuming CPU’s out there. But maybe it’s not that bad to spend the extra money to get a bit more headspace now.
I was also looking at the N100, which is waaaaay overkill. But the power consumption of around just 6W looks verry interesting. So it should be cheaper on the (verry) long run. But they’re hard to find for decent prices within the EU.
Maybe it can be interesting to wait for massive price drops on the N5105 now…
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Yes but restarts only take a few seconds. Node Red deploys in 4 or 5 seconds. Even a processor reboot only takes 20-30 seconds. Makes the Pi feel slow.
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Which feels like an eternity on my RPi 3B+ now 
So a bit of overkill isn’t that bad.
That will be good- if you can get one.
Here is my latest box: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09VXG2FGP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
As I’ve said before, anything that will run Linux will run HAOS.
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Oh cool! I looked for that one too. They’re cheap in the US (with coupon)!
Only can find them here in Europe for around €130, feels a bit expensive for this hardware. So paying the extra €20 for the N5105 feels like a more interesting option at this point.
But surely would consider the Bmax at a lower pricepoint. Should be way sufficient for HASS 
Edit:
I’ve decided to upgrade my PI3 a bit and going to wait for a Intel N100 offer. I know the N100 is way overkill. Especially compared to the PI3 I’m using now. But the N100 almost uses half the power of the N5150 (which seems the best and and more future proof option until now so far). Even with a good offer the N100 will be slightly more expensive. But HASS is running 24/7 365 days a year. So a difference of 4W wil cost me around €8/ €9 a year. That the N100 is also more powerfull is a plus then. So it will be worthwile to have a bit of patience now. Maybe with Black Friday 
Update:
My Home Assistant is now running fast and smooth as a VM on my Proxmox Cluster consisting of 3x Fujitsu Esprimo Q958 (1 TB NVME + 64 GB RAM each).
Thanks to @tteck for all the convenient setup scripts!
https://tteck.github.io/Proxmox/
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A few days ago I went through my first Proxmox reinstall because I ran out of space. I have backups of both VMs currently running on it, one of which is HASS. And it was a breeze. The probably most difficult part was to remove the references to the old Proxmox install from other instances in the cluster (because the cluster did not allow using the same VMIDs until the references were removed, and I wanted them to have the same IDs).
Altogether, changing the SSD, connecting the device to a keyboard, mouse, and display, installing a new Proxmox instance, adding to the existing cluster, consulting Proxmox docs, removing the references, doing basic settings of the new Proxmox instance, restoring the VMs and setting up passthrough for ZigBee transmitter, took less than an hour and went through like a breeze.
I definitely like this setup. Now with a 500GB SSD it is future-proof. The one that had run out of space was 120GB.
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Everyone is buying refurbished anyway. Besides that, there are many more small pc out there.
I know, there will be plenty of second hand and indeed nuc is just a brand for a product thay many manufacturers build.
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Intel NUCs will still be available
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This is an interesting topic!
Following the advice many gave to ditch the Pi 4 Nd go with a Mini x86.PC (N100 based in my case) I got a little Trigkey unit. Sadly the fan on it started getting noisy after a while and it also too forever (about 10 Minutes) to do a full HA reboot (not just HA restart).
Then it failed completely for some reason (Hardware is still fine, but HA was messed up) so I went back to the Pi for reliability and peace of mind. I ordered a Pi5 just now and will use that to replace the Pi4…
I think your experience is against the tide. Sounds like faulty hardware. Not saying your experience isn’t genuine, just contrary to most people’s.
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Sorry to hear that.
As @nickrout stated, it is likely a hardware error.
I just transferred my Home assistant from a Pi3 to a NUC this weekend and it is so much faster than the Pi.
I should have switched sooner. I got this HP Elitebook refurbished from amazon.
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B086RF1SLK?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1
That’s not a NUC, It’s a mini-PC. But it’s an extremely capable piece of hardware for running Home Assistant.
Nuc isn’t the only option. It has almost reached the level of recognition that Hoover reached with vacuum cleaners. Brand name becomes description of generic category of device.
HP would never say their mini-computers are NUCs because Intel would be all over them for trademark violation.
Facial tissue makers never call their product “Kleenex” even though it has become a generic term.
Coca-cola will aggressively pursue restaurants who serve Pepsi to patrons who ask for a Coke.
So, why add to the confusion? NUC is an Intel product. Now manufactured by Asus under contract for Intel, but it still will have the Intel label.
I would concur with other comments. The reliability goes to NUC with either NVMe or SATA SSD vs. Pi with a card in favor of the NUC. I never had a problem with a card in the Pi, but I used at least an A1 if not A2-rated card with the Pi.
But, the productivity had made me not want to go back to Pi ever again. There are double backups. There is the Google backup on the HA level and there is the local VM backup on the Proxmox level. There is a full VM restart after the core components update that lasts less than 30 seconds.
The only drawback that might be a hassle sometimes is to identify and pass through the right USB port for ESPhome to do the first installation on a new piece of hardware. But, since there is the option to download the prepared ROM and install it on the PC that is used to access the HA I am more often using that instead of plugging the new device into the machine running the HA VM.