4 ms·
> 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 reason
by 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 agoMost 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 agoOlder 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.