this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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Been able to use rPis as a desktop for a while now. The 2s and 3s weren’t particularly pleasant but it was doable. The Pi 4 8GB with an USB3 jump drive as root partition was a lot more pleasant, at least until you hit thermal throttle.
Right now though, there are more powerful options in the same price point, once you account for power, storage and optionally, a case. At least for desktop and home server use.
The Raspberry Pi’s just aren’t the go to hardware for the home lab anymore. Probably won’t be again unless the price comes back down on the Pi’s or the price on new and used amd64’s goes back up.
The software ecosystem for RPi is just so much better than every other board in its category, even if the hardware isn’t technically the best bang for buck
If you mean for ARM based systems (not just SBCs), I would agree, but the software and support ecosystems for amd64 systems far surpasses even the rPi ecosystem because you have backwards compatibility with a lot of the legacy x86-64 and x86 code. And because they support UEFI, distributions don’t need to explicitly support your particular version of your ARM processor so you can run pretty much whatever OS you want.
Not long ago I saw a one of those old small Dell Optiplex workstations with a 4th gen i3, 8GB ram and a 256GB SSD on Amazon for $100 USD. There’s a new BeeLink with an N100, 16 GB RAM, and 500 GB SSD for $200. They’d both be great for any home lab project that doesn’t need the GPIO of the rPi. And they are both in the same price range.
Don’t get me wrong, if I needed to kitbash a desktop or small server together in a hurry, I would probably be using a Pi3 or Pi4 because I’ve 6 of them collecting dust from when my self hosted services outgrew their available compute. I replaced them with a keyboard damaged laptop with a 6th gen i5 and my old desktop with a 4th gen i5. But if I needed to buy something today, I’d be doing some price comparisons first.
If you like Pi’s, use them. They are great kit. But if price or (more recently) power consumption are your primary consideration, it’s no longer as simple a choice as it was pre-pandemic. It’s worth looking around now.
Of course, none of this applies if you need the GPIO. But then you’re looking for project boards, not desktop or home server systems. Different set of criteria. And a different set of head aches.
Yeah but compared to x86 setups they often are not the best choice these days.
Could you share what you consider better options at the same price point?
Thin clients! I "upgraded" from a RPi3 to an HP T630 that I got new off of eBay for $65, including power supply (and case). I was able to upgrade the M.2 storage easily. I use mine as a home server running over a dozen Docker containers. It's x86 instead of ARM too.
The only bad part was installing Linux. It took a while for me to figure out where the UEFI expected the boot files and documentation isn't great.
I see. I went a bit pricier and am running a refurbed EliteDesk 705 G4-Mini for one of my linux desktops but I'm also running linux desktops with a Pi4 and 5 elsewhere. All three have been working great but as you mentioned, running linux on ARM takes away a lot of software options, unfortunately.
Sure, but “better” is massively subjective. For me, when I set up a pi, I’m not usually making use of the GPIO or the camera inputs. I’m generally throwing together a headless server. To do that, in addition to the board itself, I need storage, power, heat sinks, an fan and usually some sort of case.
Using the prices at CanaKit as a rough guide, you can come up with this search on Ebay.
The first entry I saw drew my attention. It’s a 7th gen i5 with 16GB RAM and a 120 GB SSD. Not sure the 500 GB HDD would survive shipping, but it’s $100 shipped. Biggest concern is that the seller only has 65 sales. Possible scam?
On the higher end of that bracket there is this. 6th gen and only 8GB RAM, but the seller does have a history.
With the prices on the Pi5 your potentially getting into the price range where it might make sense to look at the Beelinks mini PCs, based around a 12th gen Intel.
Like I said, prices right now are at a spot where I can’t just say throw a Raspberry Pi at the problem. They are great boards but for someone self-hosting their own services they don’t necessarily always make sense anymore.
Wow, wish I had known about that before. That looks amazing! I ordered one and will give it a shot. Do you happen to know of a community based around mini-pcs? If not Lemmy, forum, etc. I use places like Tomshardware but would love to see things like the Beelink when they pop up.
Not that I’m aware of.
The only time I heard anyone talking about it was on the podcast Self-Hosted . Supposedly it’s a NUC clone with performance similar to a then current (2023) mid range laptop and draws about the same amount of power. I think they said the N100 processor had Intel QuickSync for hardware transcoding.