I am the same and I am not a Intel fan but the reuse of ex corporate USFF machines is really cost effective, with TDP not too distant from the Pi5 rather inefficient A76 cores.
Rockchip and MediaTek managed far more efficient designs with A76 cores with the RK3588 coming very close to 2x Gflops/watt.
You also get more oomf at a similar or less price point, ram you can ugrade and a nvme/ssd that you should replace.
Pi5 and that it also lacks hardware video encode means its a Raspberry on release with existing and arguably better alternatives.
As also the N100 nuc style devices are very competitive offering standard distro iso’s for all operating systems.
The Raspberry/Broadcom partnership worked out less well with the Pi5 than previous products that had less competitive alternatives available.