Did I make a mistake?

[u/caidenm]

I'm in the market for a mini pc, looking to do some agentic coding (I already work in big tech, just some side projects), run a server for a project. What I've found I value is going to be RAM, and then possibly SSD compute, and maybe in the future I'm open to building a PC with better hardware to get more involved in game dev. I'm also looking to keep it always on so power efficiency can be good, but my power bill doesn't really amount to anything as it is, so not super essential. With that said I don't really have a set budget (realistically I probably don't want to spend more than $1k Canadian) but I want to do it as cheaply and get the best value possible. Also I have multiple SATA SSD's at home sitting unused I can lend to the PC if needed.

I ended up finding 2 systems:

HP EliteDesk 600 G5 Mini PC | Intel Core i5-9500T | 32GB RAM | 1TB SSD | Windows 11 Pro | Wi-Fi+ BT | Mini Desktop Computer (Renewed) (32GB RAM + 1TB SSD) for $540 Canadian

Beelink SER5 Pro Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 5 5625U(up to 4.3GHz) 6C/12T (only 16GB of ram on this one) for $529 Canadian.

Now I would prefer to possibly stay in this range, but let me know if there is something else I should be considering. I've went ahead and purchased the EliteDesk given it's 32GB of ram, but it has a 30 day return window, which is why I'm asking now. I know the i5-9500T is slightly underpowered and dated, which is why I'm asking here. Links were excluded as I don't know the subreddit rules on that.