There are some things in life that I want, and have looked at before, and could possibly acquire, but know that they'd likely get used so rarely that it'd be almost a waste of time, space and most certainly money.

An arcade cab (with joysticks and buttons) with a whole selection of games
A proper sized pool table
A big surround sound system
A fancy gaming PC set up
An outdoors swimming pool
A nice mountain bike
Proper 5-a-side style football goal posts with nets
Full height basketball ring

(in no particular order)
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You have to consider something else too, setting the whole thing up.

What do you want to run on it, solely MAME? Or other retro systems too?

Do you wanna make a RetroArch installation only, running EmuELEC or Batocera?

RetroArch is fine, runs a lot of systems but is a complete pain in the ass to set up. Not only game wise, but mostly controller setups and configurations. That's where in my opinion it lacks the most. Setting everything up takes hours only to notice that 1 week later it's not working anymore already and you restart the whole procedure. Not talking even about setting hotkeys which you definitely need.

Do you plan to add games or to make a ready setup and never touch it again? That is the best option of course, as like I mentioned, fiddle around too much with RetroArch and it ****s you over.

Best would be to install a RPi4 inside, which is powerful enough to run retro games, I have mine completely set up with 1TB SD card with around 30.000 games and it runs almost everything fine, even Daphne, which is obviously nice on an arcade cabinet. You don't even need the computer stuff, just concentrate on consoles, skip also DS and 3DS due to the dual screens.

Getting arcade stick controls working properly is probably the biggest issue, also not easier on Linux.

Just get a ready MAME cabinet, pay the triple, but it works out of the box
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If you didn't want to setup an emulation front-end then there are preconfigured setups available. Some romburners now sell preconfigured HDs, and I know of at least 2 people in the emulation scene that create preconfigured RPi4 setups ready to go. So options exist for those without time, or can't be bothered to do it all themselves.

Obviously if then putting a preconfigured setup in an arcade cabinet you might end up having to redo the control configuration.

I would probably opt for a full PC build though with a full cabinet setup just to have the best emulators and options.
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Stay away from those preconfigured HDDs, they're a mess. Had one once, was very expensive and everything was just thrown in, several emulators existed multiple times, really annoying if you wanna change something, ROMs were a disaster, choice of games horrible, plus super unorganized, like the complete chaos, CPC464 f.ex. only had spanish versions of the games.

It's perhaps fine to buy and never touch if you don't have any clue, but it made my work double or triple. From that point on I stayed away from that crap.

Download one from Arcade Punks, they have many, and just unpack it on a disk and you're fine to go, not even spending money. They have builds fo 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and more. They're even a Launchbox one called [3tb]-Loaded.Launchbox.BigBox-Wolfanoz which includes already some good stuff, although no images, videos and stuff are included, if you don't need that than you're fine.

You can find that download here: https://www.arcadepunks.com/launchbo...-end-download/

Only thing you need to do is to sign up at Arcade Punks, but you don't need paid membership. The site is a bit a mess to navigate but other than that it has some very cool stuff.
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Most of the preconfigured HDDs are a mess, that's true, but one guy with a Facebook group creates really nice custom RPi4 setups that are very well configured and organised.

Personally like you I do all my own rom configuring and building sets. But for many they don't know where to start or don't have the time to learn.

I've never bothered with the Arcade Punks downloads though. I might download them anyway to have a play around. Always useful to have another source. Most of my collection has been built up over the past 25 years of downloads so is custom to me. But I also have full rom sets, but tend to only include games in actually ever going to load, but everything for the sake of it. My only exception is MAME, where I do like to have the whole set.
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The facebook group I commented about is called Retro Realm, where you can find good preconfigured setups.

One guy in the group called Kenny Shand sells 1GB USB drives that are plug and play PC setups that boot from the drive directly into the frontend, bypassing Windows. So ideal for those wit any knowledge.
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Obviously the issue with any preconfigured setup you buy from someone else is that they have set it up and not yourself. Even a 1TB drive cannot fit everything on it, especially if it includes newer systems, and you can't guarantee they have only included one version of each game and not every clone or regional variation.

The big advantage of spending time building a setup yourself is personal preference. You can cherry pick just the games and systems you want, and the versions of each.
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