100g in the mountains? Where is this mythical place?

no

I am not sure some stamped tin and a few circuit boards are worth $1000.

IMHO this is just a $150 Rosewill RSV-R4200U with backplanes, so maybe $300 max.

I would MAYBE think about this if it came fully function certified system for $1000 that I could just drop drives into, but even then that is out of the typical homelab price point and entering the SHO market.

This is like asking why do you cook your own food at home.

I self host because I know what I am getting, I can control the price I want to pay, and I don’t really need to involve other people in my life.

next up… docker containers start reporting user data

Never buy into a platform, they tend to waste a lot of my time on changing things to upgrade versions that have no point except to change the whole platform, and the things you like to use get deprecated. Or they never get to where you want to be. Your vision is not the maintainers vision. Learn to roll your own…everything.