a bit late to the convo..
But if you look at the cost of a high-end rpi, the SSD, a case, a power supply, a good SD card, and a fan... you are basically within a couple of dollars of a Dell Optiplex Micro which will have way more power, ~6 USB ports, a nicer case, ability to upgrade to 32 or even 64 gb of ram, support for two hard drives (SATA and NVME), and all kinds of good features. Considering the writiness of HA and all the fun features it has, it will absolutely destroy a microSD card in short time. but definitely encourage you to look at these micro PC formfactors. some can be just $210. and go up to $1500.
just plan what you want to do.. if you want to do VMs. spend more for threads (6 to 8 threads) and ram. does not seem to be a big reason to get an i7 when the i5's do just fine. (16-32). otherwise, just HA.. a 4 thread i5 and 8gb of ram will be super affordable and arguably about the same $$ as a pi.