It didn't spook me, but the reality is a Router should only need a LAN and WAN port, hence placing it on shelf in your rack should be fine. It is a different matter for Switches where rack mounting and cable management are highly recommended.
That rack mount server enclosure appears to allow for ports on the rear. Ideally you want ports in the front and power at the rear.
Another option: CWWK 1U Rackmount
OK, this was the expensive variant: A board with 2 onboard 2.5G NICs from SuperĀµ. This alone will cost more than 300ā¬.
A board with 1 onboard 2.5G and an additional 2.5G PCIe card + the necessary riser card might cost only half as much.
Yeah, they're expensive.
Yep, an A520 ITX + 5650G and 16 GB RAM are around 230ā¬.
Yes but toyota camry don't need openwrt for anything and works great.
How quickly do you think I will hit those limits with Wireguard VPN (3-4 clients) running on the device and 1000 Mbps fiber? The E cores do seem compelling with the low power consumption and resulting lower requirements for cooling, even passive cooling.
Does not look bad at all with front mounted ports and all, but I can't find any specifications for the hardware on that page.
According to A Wireguard comparison DB N100 can (locally) run wireguard well above 4 Gbps... so for your use case these might actually do. But note those benchmarks are pretty artificial as they run in local network namespaces and do not do everything that needs to be done for real network access... Mind you, I never used an N100 myself nor wireguard so I do not speak from first hand experience.
The dilemma of OpenWrt.
On the one hand Applications such as Tailscale are not updated because newer version consume more memory and impact the memory constrained install base, but on the other hand given decent hardware OpenWrt is quick.
OpenWrt seems to have constraints that the like of OPNsense don't.
Yo, don't forget to count nat processing too, add firewalling rules etc. Maybe yes, maybe no. But for fast speeds why not to buy something with better cpu power for single core performance?
Sure, but then it runs on hardware where OPNsense does not, and being Linux based OpenWrt offers different capabilities than BSD (mind you, I am not saying one is generally better than the other).
Yes I tried to convey a similar idea with "for your use case these might actually do"...
Well, if wireguard is the main use-case that is well threaded and will take advantage of multiple CPUs so one could get by with more efficient but less-beefy cores.
My personal use case also includes traffic shaping, so I levitate towards "something with better cpu power" but that is not what @Valeriana asked so I tried to answer her question as well as I could 
I think the OS discussion is for another time, I can still change that later if need be.
I still might go with the CWWK 1U Rackmount, since I found it on Amazon including the missing specs. It's a bit expensive but I like that it features front-mounted ports, which seems rare/impossible for the DIY solution. So, I will do a little more digging in the DIY departement and if the cost difference is not too large, I might opt for the CWWK device.
Any objections? Does the price seem fair for the hardware? I am looking at the 8 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD option, which should be more than enough for what I am doing, right?
Any tips for the AP(s) that I will be adding to the setup?
Check if you can find https://reverb.com/item/80426556-swissonic-professional-router-2-mkii-2023 somewhere, not sure it'll route 1gbit though.
Hm...the description states 4 LAN ports (100 Mbps).
So, it doesn't really fit the requirements, even if could route 1Gb/s.
It's incorrect, it's a Totolink X5000R.
Oh wait, the AP will not bei mounted in the rack. It will be wall- or ceiling-mounted and powered using PoE from the switch.
I found the ZyXEL NWA50AX Pro, which has great reviews and runs OpenWRT.
So, the device in the link you posted earlier (https://cuesale.com/product/swissonic-professional-router-2/) is then an older version (MK I) or are just the technical data incorrect?
probably, I had a hard time finding the right device, even the official page doesn't link to it any more.
I'll update my post.
Ports at the front and power at the rear is a good point for this unit.
Given this is a home environment, then fanless/passive cooling should be a priority. If all the equipment in the rack will be fan cooled then it's going to get noisy.
Some info about the internals can be found in this review https://kazlauskas.me/entries/10w-n100-server
Yes - even 64 GB SSD is already plenty enough for plain OpenWRT