It's a fair point but I guess I can't wrap my head around it. Within a square foot you get at least 10x the capability and expansion of a Pi.I'm probably limited by my own perspective and bias but I can't understand someone not being able to find a square foot for a device that can replace any number of things, in my case even my router. Inch for inch they can't be matched but I suppose if you really only have a few inches a Pi is your best bet. I'm just glad I'm not in that situation.

I did reference the "mini/micro" variants which are significantly smaller - with the sacrifice being loss of PCIe which when it comes to x16 + x4 slots there really isn't any way to get around. Mine can also take two 2.5" SATA drives depending on how you feel about that.

Dell calls them micro. Like 5090 micro. HP and Lenovo also have them, calling them mini and tiny respectively.

They are about a litre in volume. However they give up the pcie slots for the size.