this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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RPi Alternatives for Self-hosting (lemmy.mohammadodeh.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/selfhosted
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Here is the thing, I have 4 RPi’s of different generations (all the way from Zero W to 4B 4GB) that I use to host services at home for personal use.

Lately, I have realized I am running out of RAM to host more services, not to mention not enough switch ports to connect to.

Now I know the obvious solution is to get a more powerful setup (maybe a thin client) but electricity isn’t cheap and I am not particularly in the best shape financially speaking to shell out $300+ on a decent client to host my services.

Any suggestions?

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Where I live, electricity is also very expensive. I monitor every watt.

I asked the same question half a year ago, here's what I've learnt: RPis tend to be less reliable and aren't that energy efficient. They're great for small appliances, but for servers (e.g. NAS) not as much.

Get an used Thinclient/ mini PC. They cost something between 50-150€ and give you a huge performance boost, more ports, a x86 architecture, are better repairable (still often bad) and more.

Mine uses about 10-15 W on normal use, and 20 rarely when my cloud is under heavy use.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Just curious, why is an x86 architecture a sought after feature in your opinion? My understanding is that ARM is more “bang for your buck” in terms of computation effort to power draw.

I say this because my M2 (ARM based) MacBook does all sorts of heavy lifting and still lasts me more than a day on a single charge compared to my old Intel MacBook running the same services doing the exact same stuff.

Please correct me if I am wrong. I would really appreciate to learn more from people who have more knowledge than I am.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

There's a big shift happening right now, you're right on that.
Traditionally, ARM is not as capable in solving complex issues, but more efficient.

That's why it has always been used on smartphones for example. You want a lot of battery and don't need to do highly complex stuff on that, that's what you have your PC for.

The big focus in the last years has always been to top the competitor in terms of performance, and only right now, people begin to question if the computing power they have right now isn't enough and if they rather wouldn't like to have a device that's more efficient.
The tradeoff is, you're more limited to this specific architecture. Apple solved this by making a compatibility layer for x86 apps, but that of course comes with a performance hit.

I'm no expert in that topic tho, so take all I said with a lil grain of salt.

Right now, I think you're better off with x86, because your server will definitely run on some sort of Linux, and we don't have any compatibility layer or something like that yet.