I’ve been pricing out components for my first new build in 20 years. (I’ve bought many ebay servers and a few mini PCs in between).
The parts are around $2k. But then I look at the amd ai max+ 395 PCs that are out or coming out shortly and I think I might be buying an already obsolete platform. For the same price I’d get 16 cores and over 2x the memory bandwidth.
Most of these are SFF and don’t have much (if any) capability to fit HDDs inside. They’re not the right choice if you want a lot of bulk storage in a single box.
Imo a separate nas build is better for bulk storage. It’s part of why I think I’m buying a dinosaur to get a full ATX case when a SFF AI max would run circles around it.
Just saying I agree, I use a USB-attached HDD enclosure because it’s trivial to have a lot of hot swap HDD in that sort of product, and even the moderately slower USB-3 that some use is generally up to the task to keeping up with a handful of spinning platters.