If you want to run a server-task, listen to the common chorus and buy an 3-7 year old SFF business PC. Slap Proxmox on it, and you can virtualize a bunch of small 'servers' as LXCs with plenty of CPU and memory. Easy to add storage, dependable, and well-supported. Power draw is highly overstated for typical ancillary-server tasks, and if you were planning on 2+ Pis, you're now in the same ballpark.
If you want to hack together something with sensors/electronics, use a $5 ESP32, which likely has way more power than you need. If you need more processing power, move that from the edge device to something like the cheap SFF above. Plenty of sample ESP32/8266 Arduino libraries to expose/control the GPIO via a simple API, MQTT, or UDP/TCP payloads. Then, you can write your processing logic in whatever language you want, on a powerful server, and the edge device doesn't need Linux distro updates to blink some LED strips or whatever.
I wish someone made a rack to hold them vertically. I'd own 10 if I could mount them in a rack like this: https://images.prismic.io/macstadium/949d85ad-18be-4059-acf6...
A complete computer is at least somewhat hardened against ESD and what not, has onboard storage of some description, and isn't severely throttled from a power standpoint.
I like RPis and similar for rapid prototyping if I know I need GPIO control, but if you don't, there are better machines out there, at similar price points.
[0] https://pine64.com/product/pineseed-bl602-wifi-ble5-soc/
I have a couple of the Pine64 boards that run Linux. Unless something changed, it doesn't have WiFi or BLE support, and likely never will.
> The bl602 doesn't seem to have rust support yet, but I'm looking forward to more options.
I think it does: https://github.com/bouffalolab/bl-pac/tree/main/bl808
It tends to be like this with Chinese chips, and often times western ones too, unfortunately.
Let's acknowledge that there are good reasons for avoiding x86 for those who care. The security problems for one, and the long shadow of Microsoft over the ecosystem. Perhaps an additional concern about the supply chain. The closer we can get to an open-source system without blobs, the better.
But the above concerns apart, it seems clear that R.Pi 4 and 400 were peak R.Pi. The performance and low-cost of Intel's recent x86 NUC mainboards is impressive. AMD is also offering strong value in the SFF market.
As I long-time R.Pi/Odroid user, I continue to enjoy these devices. But their lunch has been eaten by competitors.
An orange pi 5 uses 7.5W under full load, 3.3W idle in comparison.
Hard to say without real workloads, but if there are any plans of routinely pegging the CPU, most power efficient strategy is to buy a modern chip.
I do agree that modern CPUs are required for high-load situations.
What you probably want to compare for most home uses is power at some low idle vs performance at that CPU throttle level. The difference is probably a Watt or two max, which never would justify a brand new SBC over repurposing something headed to ewaste for environmental reasons.
Average consumption matters, not peak. And you can pin CPU to not go on higher frequencies if you don't want to go into inefficient max frequency/max voltage region.
You will also be recycling already produced device.
Recycling is good, but only to a point. At some point the cost of operation (and resource pressure from its use) will exceed the cost of a more efficient device - at least until we get abundant green power...
And for GPIO (if really needed) you can always add something like an USB Arduino micro (clone) for a couple of bucks.
Every time I look at the wall wart plug pack it comes with I laugh to myself. 8W. In terms of price, speed and compatibility the Raspberry Pi looks laughable.
If I want GPIO I just use ESP32s with wifi. I am then unconstrained in terms of other stuff hanging off them. Using the new nano ESP32 boards I can just hot glue them to whatever I want to talk to.
Just for kicks, some reference:
Assuming the Gflops numbers are roughly comparable, ~50 Gflops would have you competing for the #1 spot in the first TOP500 list, June 1993:
https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/1993/06
Which came equipped with 1,024 SuperSPARCs @ 32 MHz:
https://www.top500.org/system/166997
Even ~2000, that might still have squeezed you into the bottom of the list? Note that power consumption of above system will have been in the 10s if not 100s of kW. To say nothing of size or purchase price.
That's only 1 human generation ago. What on Earth are you doing with these things? Running physics simulations of nuclear explosions, or what?
Can anyone recommend one?
Gets me integrated: battery, screen, keyboard, mouse
I can buy an old laptop for $100 and would cost me $150 for similar RPI hardware.
I had some Acer chromeboxes that would do 4.5w easy without any tuning or setup, and they used pretty low end dyal-core i3's from just barely before the i5-9500t. Generally I don't think servethehome finds many tiny mini-pcs below 7w.
When it has to roar however, the draw is substantial compared to my ODroid, but since it idles the majority of the time, I'll take it.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256245170577
This listing is UK £75, but I got one for a similar price from the EU.
Hm...
> No adapter is included. Needs 65W or above (most dell/hp laptops around the year it came out are compatible)
The 65W power adapter on Dell retails for $46.99 on sale, bringing the grand total to $156.99.
And that's just after skimming your link for 2 minutes.
The great thing about these Optiplexes is that they use a standard 20v 4.5x3mm DC jack for power. I run mine off a UPS with a usb-c to barrel jack cable.
Furthermore, I have several of these systems and tried sourcing 3rd party power adapters online. For this aspect, not one of them worked correctly.
I did a write up here: https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/11o0x5o/dell_3050_...
Edit:
I ran the `cpufreq-info` command in your write-up and it gave me the correct:
> hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.00 GHz
Maybe it's because the usb-c to barrel jack cable I picked up was marketed for dell laptops?
https://hclxing.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/hacking-a-dell-powe...
046 is the output current 4.6A instead of his partitioned as 46(there are power supplies output more than 10 amps).
The 22 bytes is the Dell PPID, which should be also present on the charger's label or the box: CN: Manufactured in China, some of them are TH which means made in Thailand. 09T215: Dell Part Number. 71615: Manufacturing factory code. 438: 2004 or 2014, March, 8th (Dell use YMD 3 bytes thus it is a lossy conversion always). 35EAL: This should be the serial number.
The last part 03 is a CRC16 (x16 + x15 + x2 + 1) checksum.
Last I checked, a Pi also does not come with a charger, case, or storage.
Ebay Australia has a Lenovo M700 i5 with 8GB RAM, 256 GB SSD for AU$135.00 (US$86) including power supply and cords.
I love the silence, and run proxmox with enough memory and storage.
I have an HP SFF machine with a 10th gen i3 as my Emby/Plex box and it can transcode 4k streams without breaking a sweat.
The more modern cpu models are a little rare still, but they show up from time to time.
These ~1L sized computers idle in the 7-13W range. Even with EU electricity prices, it would take you a very, very long time to make up the difference from a 5W SBC.
You also get standard x86 support, normal expand-ability, M.2 slots, PCIe ports, etc. You lose GPIO support.
For $100-$120 on eBay, a search for 'dell optiplex 3070' typically results in getting either a i3-9100 or i5-9500, 8-16GB memory, and 120-256GB NVMe. I bought one a couple months ago for Blue Iris and it uses 8W at idle. Here's an example of a USFF (ultra small form factor) for $110 - https://www.ebay.com/itm/325826958401
Lenovo variant (M720q tiny) for $121 w/ i5-8400T, 16GB, and 256GB SSD (probably NVMe) - https://www.ebay.com/itm/266450621632