I came here to say more or less the same thing... but for people who aren't native english speakers: a "few hundred" means $300, perhaps $350. Apple doesnt sell anything this cheap, and if you're comparing used Apple hardware to new PC hardware, thats a bit unfair.
well, maybe $400, $500, and maybe you could stretch it to $600 but I agree $800 is well beyond the reach of "a few hundred"
For me $500 and up becomes 'several hundred'.
The Mac mini amazingly has user expandable RAM. Crucial sells kits for up to 64GB. It is still too expensive a machine got what you get.
Only the old Mac Minis from 2012 and before have user expandable RAM, the newer ones have the RAM and storage soldered on.
uhm.. no... the 2018 went back to expandable RAM https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+mini+Late+2018+Teardown/...
It is a bit of a pain and took me about 45 minutes, but I was going slow.
Looking at System76's equivalent mini, it's $555 for the low end, which has the same RAM and a faster, newer processor. Going to 32 GB takes it all the way to $700, or half what Apple's charging. So yes, "extremely expensive" is what it seems like to me.
Especially given that it should be entirely unnecessary. Just let me do a cross-platform build!