6 ms·

I decommissioned my raspberries/odroids today in about of an old HP prodesk G3 400 SFF I bough for 50 bucks from a company that got new computers. I switched th

by bjoli 6y ago

I decommissioned my raspberries/odroids today in about of an old HP prodesk G3 400 SFF I bough for 50 bucks from a company that got new computers. I switched the fans to some old 90mm noctuas I had laying around and now it is actually more silent than my SBCs for which I had made very ghetto NAS solution. The i5-6500 runs laps around these boards anyway. And I could sell my SBCs for a lot more than what the prodesk cost me (one pi4 with a PoE hat, one odroid xu4 in a cloudshell and a rock pi 4 with the big heatsink). Unless you actually need the GPIO there is no need to go SBC.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bArray 6y ago
> Unless you actually need the GPIO there is no need to go > SBC. Or form factor, or weight, or power consumption, or cooling - or a multitude of other reasons. I do agree though that an old desktop PC can be miles better in terms of performance per dollar, but you'll probably pay for it in electricity bills in the long run.
- spijdar 6y ago
  Most laptops released in the past decade will at least match the rpi4's performance, with better GPU drivers to boot. And they can come close to the power consumption of a pi, especially the somewhat newer ones. A quick google shows reports of those HP SFF systems idling at between 3-10 watts, depending on how old they are. The Pi4 uses about 3 watts at idle. This matches my experience with that vintage of CPU. They will use more power when active, but with better performance per watt, optimistically using less power for a give unit of work.
  - fulafel 6y ago
    Older laptops idle at about 12-17 watts according to powertop (so not including losses in the warm to touch power brick), would be surprising if sff from same era were much more efficient. edit: searching around, people are reporting 10 ish watts on x220 era thinkpads. But still 3-5 watts sounds low for a desktop. Also, Pi 4 idle power consumption at launch was significantly higher than with current firmware, those early Pi 4 figures were the only ones nearing 3 watts I think. And of course the less beefy Pi Zeros are sub 1W.
spijdar 6y ago
This absolutely. Whenever someone brings up using an SBC as some kind of cheap, low-end computer that will get stuffed behind a screen and keyboard/mouse combo and nothing else, I always bring up how even a 10 year old laptop could probably outperform even a rpi4. Always get called a stick in the mud, too. Maybe I am. But seriously, if you just want a cheap linux desktop, grab any laptop from ebay from the past decade. If you want, strip all the casing and peripherals off -- the mainboards are pretty small. Heck, you can repurpose the i2c bus on the video outputs for whatever you want. Could even use a breakout board and drive a microcontroller, get additional GPIO pins[0]. Probably other nifty hacks out there. The last gen "ExpressCard" expansion slots are basically external PCIe busses, you can great those out and add PCIe cards to a laptop board. [0] https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/i2c-from-your-vga-port/ https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/i2c-from-your-vga-port/ Edit: To be clear, I'm not pushing back on the idea of the raspberry pi. There are a ton of valid uses for them. I'm specifically pushing back against the idea that they're cheap, power efficient general purpose linux machines. They are definitely low power, but not necessarily power efficient. And I think re-purposing the mountain of e-waste instead of buying a bunch more new SBCs may be better ecologically, but all the power to those who want to have fun with a cool little ARM board. No sarcasm.
- wojciii 6y ago
  I see your point. The problem with old laptops is that they can have quirky or unsupported hardware or unstable power saving firmware. This can be like playing russian roulette. The RPI on the other hand has some software that mostly just works. I'm personally not a huge fan of the device, as the sd-cards always dies on me. But as a quick prototyping board they are great.
- somesortofsystm 6y ago
  In case its not clear, this is the killer app for Raspberry Pi: https://www.acmesystems.it/CM3-HOME https://www.acmesystems.it/CM3-HOME And this: https://revolution.kunbus.com/ https://revolution.kunbus.com/ Please note, this puts open source home automation in the forefront of this rapidly expanding market.
  - 6y ago
asah 6y ago
Also: - compact form factor, cases etc. - teaching esp kids (standardization) - pre-built libraries and software compatibility (easier) Example: I used an rpi4 and old LED TV to drive a digital wall art piece. SBC fit the space and pre-built software cut hours: I coded it up in HTML/JS and headless chrome.
- rozab 6y ago
  >pre-built libraries and software compatibility Surely this is the main con of ARM devices?
  - rcoder 6y ago
    If you're running one of the recent Debian-based distros for these boards software compatibility isn't a big issue. Each SoC has its own funky firmware + GPU blobs needed for bootstrapping, they almost all use the same ARM64 ABI and can run a huge number of OSS binary and source packages.
542458 6y ago
I think it’s also worth noting that 50USD is a fantastic price for what you got -I can’t see anything even close to that good of a deal locally or on eBay, whereas I can buy a Pi with minimal effort right now.
- bjoli 6y ago
  I know. Most online deals are at least twice that. That would, however, still be cheaper than my rock pi 4 with accessories. I think I spent at least 70 bucks on my raspberry pi 4 with accessories.

by bjoli 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bArray 6y ago

> Unless you actually need the GPIO there is no need to go > SBC. Or form factor, or weight, or power consumption, or cooling - or a multitude of other reasons. I do agree though that an old desktop PC can be miles better in terms of performance per dollar, but you'll probably pay for it in electricity bills in the long run.

spijdar 6y ago
Most laptops released in the past decade will at least match the rpi4's performance, with better GPU drivers to boot. And they can come close to the power consumption of a pi, especially the somewhat newer ones. A quick google shows reports of those HP SFF systems idling at between 3-10 watts, depending on how old they are. The Pi4 uses about 3 watts at idle. This matches my experience with that vintage of CPU. They will use more power when active, but with better performance per watt, optimistically using less power for a give unit of work.
- fulafel 6y ago
  Older laptops idle at about 12-17 watts according to powertop (so not including losses in the warm to touch power brick), would be surprising if sff from same era were much more efficient. edit: searching around, people are reporting 10 ish watts on x220 era thinkpads. But still 3-5 watts sounds low for a desktop. Also, Pi 4 idle power consumption at launch was significantly higher than with current firmware, those early Pi 4 figures were the only ones nearing 3 watts I think. And of course the less beefy Pi Zeros are sub 1W.

spijdar 6y ago

This absolutely. Whenever someone brings up using an SBC as some kind of cheap, low-end computer that will get stuffed behind a screen and keyboard/mouse combo and nothing else, I always bring up how even a 10 year old laptop could probably outperform even a rpi4. Always get called a stick in the mud, too. Maybe I am. But seriously, if you just want a cheap linux desktop, grab any laptop from ebay from the past decade. If you want, strip all the casing and peripherals off -- the mainboards are pretty small. Heck, you can repurpose the i2c bus on the video outputs for whatever you want. Could even use a breakout board and drive a microcontroller, get additional GPIO pins[0]. Probably other nifty hacks out there. The last gen "ExpressCard" expansion slots are basically external PCIe busses, you can great those out and add PCIe cards to a laptop board. [0] https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/i2c-from-your-vga-port/ https://hackaday.com/2014/06/18/i2c-from-your-vga-port/ Edit: To be clear, I'm not pushing back on the idea of the raspberry pi. There are a ton of valid uses for them. I'm specifically pushing back against the idea that they're cheap, power efficient general purpose linux machines. They are definitely low power, but not necessarily power efficient. And I think re-purposing the mountain of e-waste instead of buying a bunch more new SBCs may be better ecologically, but all the power to those who want to have fun with a cool little ARM board. No sarcasm.

wojciii 6y ago
I see your point. The problem with old laptops is that they can have quirky or unsupported hardware or unstable power saving firmware. This can be like playing russian roulette. The RPI on the other hand has some software that mostly just works. I'm personally not a huge fan of the device, as the sd-cards always dies on me. But as a quick prototyping board they are great.
somesortofsystm 6y ago
In case its not clear, this is the killer app for Raspberry Pi: https://www.acmesystems.it/CM3-HOME https://www.acmesystems.it/CM3-HOME And this: https://revolution.kunbus.com/ https://revolution.kunbus.com/ Please note, this puts open source home automation in the forefront of this rapidly expanding market.
- 6y ago

asah 6y ago

Also: - compact form factor, cases etc. - teaching esp kids (standardization) - pre-built libraries and software compatibility (easier) Example: I used an rpi4 and old LED TV to drive a digital wall art piece. SBC fit the space and pre-built software cut hours: I coded it up in HTML/JS and headless chrome.

rozab 6y ago
>pre-built libraries and software compatibility Surely this is the main con of ARM devices?
- rcoder 6y ago
  If you're running one of the recent Debian-based distros for these boards software compatibility isn't a big issue. Each SoC has its own funky firmware + GPU blobs needed for bootstrapping, they almost all use the same ARM64 ABI and can run a huge number of OSS binary and source packages.

542458 6y ago

I think it’s also worth noting that 50USD is a fantastic price for what you got -I can’t see anything even close to that good of a deal locally or on eBay, whereas I can buy a Pi with minimal effort right now.

bjoli 6y ago
I know. Most online deals are at least twice that. That would, however, still be cheaper than my rock pi 4 with accessories. I think I spent at least 70 bucks on my raspberry pi 4 with accessories.