I think for me the attraction of the Pi was the large ecosystem surrounding it, meaning it has a lot of third party cases, etc, allowing you to customize your setup. For example, my node has a customizable compact display that was also built as a casing for the Pi.

Not to mention, a lot of people myself included got into node running thanks to raspibolt.org

Probably it is suboptimal to use the Pi in terms of cost and technical specs, but it was my first node built and I still love it