So SBCs are shit now? Anything I can do with my collection of Pis and old routers?

I dunno when it happened but I swear SBCs were the new best thing in the universe for a while and everyone was building cool little servers with their RockPis and OrangePis.

Now it’s all gone x86 and Proxmox with everyone shitting on Arm. What happened? What gives?

Is my small army of xPis pointless? What about my 2 Edge routers?

I’ve got about 6 xPis scattered round my flat - is there anything worth doing with them or should I just bin them?

All thoughts, feelings and information welcome. Thank you.

constantokra,

People are shitting on them because the price point for arm sbcs has risen, while the price point for small x86 computers has come down. Also, x86 availability is high and arm sbc availability has become unreliable. They also aren’t generally supported nearly as well. If you don’t need more power and you already have them on hand there’s no reason not to use them.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

I’m curious, what’s an example of a mini x86 machine comparable to a raspberry pi? I just did research and ended up buying a RPI 5. I may have not known what to look for, but what I found in the x86 space was $200+ and seemed pretty underwhelming compared to a $80 SBC on arm.

FailBait,

In 2022, when Pi4s were going for $150-200, I managed to get a 7th gen NUC for about $150. I was looking to start Home Assistant, so both were viable options, but even the Pi5’s coming close to $100 retail, spending 50% more gets you a lot more performance for a 7th gen intel i5/i7 mobile chip, 16gb of RAM and a 256GB NVME.

tburkhol,

www.acepcs.com/products/mini-pc-intel-n100-ultra is only $140, and it looks to me like Pi5+ is $160 with PS/case/microSD.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

This looks cool, is it getting good reviews?

I don’t know what a pi5+ is, unless you mean orange pi 5+?

I just bought a RPI 5 8GB (base price $80), all accessories in, for like $115. It never occurred to me that this would’ve been considered “expensive”, but a lot of people in this thread are saying so because rpis used to be $30. I mean the price has increased, but hasn’t the price of literally everything increased noticeably at the same time?

tburkhol,

Pi5+ just because I’d originally written Pi5+PS/case/SD.

And you’re right that everything has gotten more expensive, but $35 in 2016 (Pi-3) is only $45 today (and you can still get a 3B for $35). The older Pis hit, for me, a sweet spot of functionality, ease, and price. Price-wise, they were more comparable to an Arduino board than a PC. They had GPIOs like a microcontroller. They could run a full operating system, so easy to access, configure, and program, without having to deal with the added overhead of cross-compiling or directly programing a microcontroller. That generation of Pi was vastly overpowered for replacing an Arduino, so naturally people started running other services on them.

Pi 3 was barely functional as a desktop, and the Pi Foundation pushed them as a cheap platform to provide desktop computing and programming experience for poor populations. Pi4, and especially Pi5, dramatically improved desktop functionality at the cost of marginal price increases, at the same time as Intel was expanding its inexpensive, low-power options. So now, a high-end Pi5 is almost as good as a low-end x86, but also almost as expensive. It’s no longer attractive to people who mostly want an easy path to embedded computing, and (I think) in developed countries, that was what drove Pi hype.

Pi Zero, at $15, is more attractive to those people who want a familiar interface to sensors and controllers, but they aren’t powerful enough to run NAS, libreelec, pihole, and the like. Where “Rasperry Pi” used to be a melting pot for people making cool gadgets and cheap computing, they’ve now segmented their customer base into Pi-Zero for gadgets and Pi-400/Pi-5 for cheap computing.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

Ok.

This looks cool, is it getting good reviews?

I really was asking. I did a little research and concluded any x86 machine I could buy would be too slow for reliable video playback unless I spent over $200. I am open to actually being wrong there though.

tburkhol,

No idea, honestly, what the popular perception of N100 platform is. It only came to my mind because I’d watched www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk a couple days ago. His perspective was basically the opposite of yours, i.e.: Is a Pi-5 good enough to replace an N100?

constantokra,

You’d be looking at used mini PCs. I’ve heard really good things about lenovo. It’s not necessarily exactly comparable in price, but the reason people are souring on arm SBCs, and especially PiS, is that it’s only a little more for a more powerful lenovo, and there are never any supply issues.

Grippler, (edited )

I bought an old Intel NUC with a 2.x GHz i3, 8gb ram and 120gb nvme used for $65, upgraded it to 16gb of ram and 1tb nvme for another $50. I run everyting from that in either VMs or LXCs (HA, jellyfin, NAS, CCTV, pihole) and it draws about 10W

socphoenix, (edited )

Man my home server IDLES at 76 watts per hour running x86. Now mind you I need the x86 to perform some of the functions I want. This thing works as an NAS, nextcloud, media server, kiwix, security camera (zoneminder), remote desktop (xrdp), runs home assistant, gpu AI upscaling for photos, and finally screeches along running a virtual pipe organ I built that takes 69 GB of RAM to run.

If I could do that with raspberry pi’s I would in a heartbeat! the power savings alone would eventually pay for them. If it’s doing what you want then don’t worry about them. My pi400 works as a remote desktop client and one day I hope more of this stuff will work well on it/a future generation so I can ditch the tower, energy usage, and noise.

notfromhere, (edited )

What is that virtual pipe organ and why is it using 69 GB RAM when running?

socphoenix, (edited )

It is software (grandorgue) that pretends to be a pipe organ (the instrument). In order to run fast enough it needs to load every sound sample into memory to play, as well as usually multiple kinds of sound endings. I play professionally on a “small to mid sized” pipe organ with 1,438 pipes. The one I load for use at home has more than that!

The instrument was from the 1960s and I rebuilt it with a pi pico that you can see here, and you can hear the before (analog sound cards) versus one of the organs I’ve loaded into it here.

nilloc,

That’s amazing sounding! Worth the watts, even if I did get church ptsd listening to it.

socphoenix,

Hahaha yeah…it’s in many ways unfortunate that if you want to play/enjoy this instrument churches are the only option most of the time :/

Definitely worth the watts though!

nilloc,

I’ve been recently bingeing Look Mum No Computer’s rescue/re-build/midi-fication of an organ that had been shoehorned into an organist’s home, after the church had been converted. I’m more of an engineer than musician, but it’s amazing how much goes into the layering of sounds from so many different pipes.

My 6 yo loves learning with such a cool soundtrack too.

CaptainBasculin,

If you’re not doing stuff with them; not much point.

Since these devices have ARM processors, they can be embedded to places that doesn’t need high power and contain smaller volume; unlike PCs. You can host your a Jellyfin server on one, host a pi-hole so that you filter out every internet traffic from ads on another. Maybe a small FTP server that you can use as cloud storage?

eager_eagle, (edited )
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

huh? What happened? Who’s shitting on ARM?

loki, (edited )

man reads few comments on the internet.

man takes it literally.

Anxiety sets in

ㄟ(ツ)ㄏ

Marsupial,
@Marsupial@quokk.au avatar

Man who sits upside on toilet.

phanto,

I have an x86 proxmox setup. I stuck a kill-o-watt on it. Keep your pi setup if it does what you want, and realize that there’s someone out there who is jealous of your power bill.

chunkystyles,

My x86 Proxmox consumes about 0.3 kwh a day at around 15% average load. I’ve only had the Kill A Watt on it for a day, so I don’t know how accurate that is, but it shouldn’t be too far off.

BearOfaTime,

How bad is it?

My current file server, an old gaming rig, consumes 100w at idle.

I’m considering a TrueNAS box running either 2.5" ssd’s or NVME sticks (My storage target is under 8TB, and that’s including 3 years projected growth).

krash,

Holy crap! I have a n100 SFF that consumes 5-6 w idle (with WiFi on) and I have an old i5 (gen 6 I think) that consumes 30 at idle. Your rig is defiantly not meant to act as a server (unless you want to mine bitcoons or run boinc…)

BearOfaTime,

Lol, yea, it’s old, was built for performance, and hasn’t run right in a while.

I’m looking to setup a NAS and turn that thing off

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

How bad is it? My current file server, an old gaming rig, consumes 100w at idle.

That’s very bad haha. Most home servers for personal use are using 7-10w.

Although you’ll have to do the math with your local energy prices to determine how important that is. It’s probably not.

BearOfaTime,

It’s $1/day. I’ve done the math a few times

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Yeah so you’d make your money back pretty quickly picking up a dedicated PC for that.

saiarcot895, (edited )

$1/day? At 100W average power usage, that’s 2.4kWh per day, suggesting that where you live, the price is 41.67 cents per kWh, roughly double that of California.

Is electricity that expensive where you live?

Edit: it’s been a while since I lived in the Bay area, I hadn’t realized that the electricity price now ranges from 38-62 cents per kWh, depending on rate plan and time.

stevehobbes, (edited )

Go tweak your power and fan settings. 100w at idle is way too much unless it’s 15 years old.

Fans, especially small ones are very sneaky energy hogs. Turn them waaay down.

BearOfaTime,

Nothing to be done. It’s old. Only fan to adjust is cpu, and I can tell when the cooler is getting dirty because the fan stays at higher speeds.

Otherwise there’s one large, slow rpm fan in the case, always on low speed.

nezbyte,

Depends on what your server is running. Multiple GPUs, HDDs, and other fun items start to add up to well over 100W. I justify it by using it to keep my 3d printer filament dry.

stevehobbes,

If you have multiple GPUs in your home server you’re probably doing it wrong. But even then, at idle, with no displays connected, the draw will be surprisingly low.

Most systems with some ssd/NVMe, 2-4 DIMMs and maybe a drive or two should idle closer to 50w-60w.

DarkDarkHouse,
@DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

If you’re getting two gaming PCs out of one hypervisor, you might be doing it right.

nezbyte,

Agreed, don’t do what I do if you value your power bill. To be fair, my network switch pulls more power than my cobbled together server anyhow.

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble,

Newer CPU’s tend to use a good chunk more power under low loads than some older ones. Going from 1st Gen. Ryzen to 2nd Gen. got me about 20 watts higher total system power draw with my use case. And 3rd Gen. is even worse.

Intel is MUCH worse at it than AMD, but every Gen. AMD keeps cranking up those boost clocks and power draw and it really can make a difference at low to mid range loads.

My Ryzen 3000 based system uses about 90 watts at “idle” with all my stuff running and the hard drives on.

stevehobbes,

It’s probably more about aggressive default bios speeds. Tweak your c states / bios overclocking / pcie power management / windows power management features. Idle power has gone down on most chips.

The Ryzen 3000 should truly idle closer to 20-30w.

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble,

That is after tweaking bios settings. Originally I was at around 100 watts, now I’m closer to 80.

Keep in mind that’s with a bunch of hard drives, and it’s not a 100% idle, more of a 90% idle which is where modern “race to idle” CPUs struggle the most.

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