homelab

If I know that I have a very specific use case in mind, and it doesn't require a lot of CPU power, then I get a Raspberry Pi. I have learned the hard way though, that I should try to by original Raspberry and not one of the many alternatives that latch onto the same brand name. So, personally, I wouldn't go for something like an Orange. Raspberry Pi might not be the cheapest nor the fastest, but it has the most reliable infrastructure and software support.

And I find that all of my devices inevitably live longer and need to be supported for longer than what I originally anticipate. And that's a big pain, with hardware that has unpredictable and spotty software support.

If I need more power, then I absolutely prefer a full PC. As is, x86-64 still has the best support. I am getty too old to want to tinker for months on end to make my hardware work, when I could have spent a little more money to get something that works right away.

For containers/clustering, the nice thing is that you can split them across hardware devices pretty easily. A single powerful PC can run tons of containers that otherwise would need to be distributed across multiple smaller devices.

Having more than just one physical device can have advantages when upgrading gradually. But other than that, I would avoid gratuitously buying more devices than necessary. That just increase the burden to administer all these devices. More moving parts means more things that will break.