I'd argue that there's no better value right now for a basic computer than the Mac Mini M4 standard for $500 (been on sale for this price 2-3 times at various places since release, and it's the standard Education price at Apple store).
Doesn't that come with an anemic 256GB HD expected to hold both OS and user software?
In the meantime, you can buy cheap miniPCs with Celeron/i5/Ryzen5 with 16GB of RAM expandable to 32GB and 500GB HD with multiple SSD expansion slots for less than $300.