No and kinda yes. Duckduckgo has its own webcrawler, but also adds in results from other sources including Bing, Yahoo and others.

Yes this! They sell HomeAssistant Green for 100$ and HomeAssistant Yellow does ship from various European sellers at various prices.

Otherwise agreed a used 1liter PC from a local IT refurbisher the best option if buying a general PC for HA.

Oh cool, 4x 2.5G ethernet for €200! These could make an awesome pfSense / openSense router.

I’ve seen similar boxes on AliExpress etc , but there you never know what you’re getting, with model numbers and “manufacturers” all over the place. And forget about any form of support.

Edit: somehow forgot that HA sell their own devices, HomeAssistant Green for 100$ and HomeAssistant Yellow which also supports the project.

Original comment: Highly recommend a used “enterprise mini PC” from Dell , HP or Lenovo. Get it from your local IT refurbisher, eBay or your local ebay-equivelent.
These are sometimes called 1L PCs for their 1 Litre size. Model names are Dell Optiplex, HP Elite desk or Prodesk, Lenovo Think centre. Prices are €100 to €1500 depending on age and specs. €150 should be more than enough for HomeAssistant.

Alternatively https://slimbook.com/en/ sells Linux PCs out of Spain, and https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/ out of Germany.

Another option is the british RaspberryPi, but that might be more hassle. You need to separately get a good power supply and cable, good SD-Card, case, maybe with fan. And its ARM not x86, but that doesn’t matter for HomeAssistant unless you’re doing something very exotic.

Not a problem when self-hosting on own hardware. Especially in winter. Overly complicated spaceheater goes brrrr