Oh yes, PCI is just so good. The only thing I have against those boards is that if you go for the mid or high-end configurations + case + power adapter and other extras it becomes just cheaper to buy an HP Mini second hand with a much more powerful i3 or i5 CPU from 3 generations ago. Those computer are way more powerful, some have dual M.2/NVME, also come with wifi and everything out of the box and a much more powerful and stable CPUs. The power consumption of those systems isn’t a concern, a 8th gen i3 under low load will not consume much more than those boards.
It seems the business around SBCs is simply to make a board and then make it useless without a ton of extras that will run you close to the a second hand mini pc for a LOT less performance.