To be fair, the budget isn’t so much a question of “how much I have”, but rather a question of “how long am I willing to save up”

The 3K figure I used in my post was based on the relative price of similar systems I’d found online that “mostly” for the bill of what I was looking for.

Systems that actually had the kind of CPU I was looking for often ran in the range of 7K, which would take me about two to three years to save up for.

And while yes, I was looking in the wrong catagory, as far as I can tell they don’t sell non-NAS systems. I wasn’t able the find a single example of a server designed for CPU tasks until I posted here and was recommended the Minisforum MS-01. Which is, admittedly, overkill in the extreme, but at least I won’t have to upgrade for a long while, and I only have to save up for 3 or 4 months to afford it!