Sure. Replace go to the computer store and buy a Raspberry Pi with visit eBay or Amazon or FB marketplace or whatever and search for a used laptop or Intel NUC. It's still a pain in the ass. If it wasn't, the whole world would be running them.

I went overkill for my node bwecause i run alot of things on Start9 Desktop Gaming PC 32GB RAM, 2TB NVME, Ryzen 5000

I have been explicitly avoiding anything with a battery as I see no reason just to kill it for the sake of doing so. Maybe I should learn more about power consumption, and maybe things are just a lot better now than they used to be, but running a laptop plugged in 24/7 turned the one I had in college into a pretty useless machine in only a few years.