5 ms·

Its cool and fun and teaches you a skill at a low price point. There is essentially no functional reason to do this over a single high power server unless for s

Its cool and fun and teaches you a skill at a low price point. There is essentially no functional reason to do this over a single high power server unless for some reason you need a bunch of ARM servers for something.

OJFord 6y ago
All fourteen Pis, even v4s (which are significantly hungrier), would be lower power (as in electrical draw) than even a feeble (as in compute power) traditional machine. If you can distribute your workload (or it's not intensive anyway), i.e. having no single machine with a faster processor, then I think it's a good choice, cheaper to run. Edit: I'm happy to be corrected if down-voters would like to reply... A Pi 4 draws 6-7W at full load. A former desktop PC turned server likely idles over 100W. They're different beasts, so I'm not saying 'a Pi is better than a PC', I'm saying 'if your load could also be handled by a (bunch of) Pi(s), then all else being equal that might be better than the PC'. Of course all else is never equal, ymmv, you may already have the old PC, you may need very many Pis, so even if pennies cheaper to run it might take years and years to break even on the Pi acquisition cost.
- scns 6y ago
  Did not downvote but desktops idle way below 100w.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Idle as in powered on, not sleeping, just 'no' workload? I stand corrected if so, I didn't realise that was the case. I also like the idea of having an easy homogeneous setup, each Pi having one disk, vs. my alternative (old PC parts) being something like '4 SATA ports on this one, and 6 on that one, but one's broken, less one on each for the boot disk' - I quite like the idea of having a bunch of Pis, and one image that I apply to all of them, which can include details like /dev/sda being its only data disk. That's not really a functional advantage, just appealing for keeping it simple to come back to and remember/understand how I set it up when I need to tweak something (and really easy to add another one increasing available cpu/ram/disk).
    - hopw_roewur_ne 6y ago
      This high end system draws ~35W idle: Intel Core i9-10900K @ 5,0 GHz, AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (16 GB), Asus ROG Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi, 2× 16 GB G Skill Trident Z Royal 3 600 MHz 16-16-16-36, Samsung 970 Evo M.2 1 TB, Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB, Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium, 1 000 W. Picture in Swedish, from graphics card review comparing average power draw for the entire system for various GPUs, idle and while benchmarking in Metro Exodus, numbers rounded to nearest multiple of 5: https://cdn.sweclockers.com/artikel/diagram/22452?key=2c6f21ab413bb65ebb16423ffaa68db6 https://cdn.sweclockers.com/artikel/diagram/22452?key=2c6f21... If the direct picture link doesn't work, it's under "Effektmätning" here: https://www.sweclockers.com/test/30908-amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt/9 https://www.sweclockers.com/test/30908-amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt...
  - fortran77 6y ago
    Exactly. Take a look at the "ENERGY STAR ® Power and Performance Data Sheet" for Dell "office" desktops. Many are around 10 watts for idle.
- detaro 6y ago
  It's not that difficult to have a reasonably modern desktop PC idling more in the 10-20W range. For 100W you need to do something seriously wrong, or add extras that would blow up the Pi usage too (e.g. a home server full of hard disks will of course use more power, but so would Pis with the same number of drives)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nebalee 6y ago
  Don't forget that Pis also draw quite some power while idle. The Pi 4 draws around 3.4 Watts [1], or around 2.7 Watts since they are running headless in a server setup you'd probably disable HDMI [2]. Times fourteen that's 37.8 Watts just sitting there. An idling headless Desktop PC will be below that for sure. [1] https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-specs-benchmarks https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-specs-be... [2] https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
A good functional reason is when you need to have high redundancy for low-intensity jobs while keeping power consumption ridiculously low. As long as you don't use SD cards, Pis can run for years without stability issues.
gtvwill 6y ago
lol? what if you don't need a heap of compute power but require a lot of redundancy? A single server is not good for that...Also not every site has internet so yes having small redundant easily replaceable nodes on-site does have plenty of use cases. Y'all negative folks against this seem to have very restricted use cases in mind. Not all redundant rack servers live in a 36U case in a air-conditioned internet connected server farm. There are plenty of use cases outside of this.

OJFord 6y ago

All fourteen Pis, even v4s (which are significantly hungrier), would be lower power (as in electrical draw) than even a feeble (as in compute power) traditional machine. If you can distribute your workload (or it's not intensive anyway), i.e. having no single machine with a faster processor, then I think it's a good choice, cheaper to run. Edit: I'm happy to be corrected if down-voters would like to reply... A Pi 4 draws 6-7W at full load. A former desktop PC turned server likely idles over 100W. They're different beasts, so I'm not saying 'a Pi is better than a PC', I'm saying 'if your load could also be handled by a (bunch of) Pi(s), then all else being equal that might be better than the PC'. Of course all else is never equal, ymmv, you may already have the old PC, you may need very many Pis, so even if pennies cheaper to run it might take years and years to break even on the Pi acquisition cost.

scns 6y ago
Did not downvote but desktops idle way below 100w.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Idle as in powered on, not sleeping, just 'no' workload? I stand corrected if so, I didn't realise that was the case. I also like the idea of having an easy homogeneous setup, each Pi having one disk, vs. my alternative (old PC parts) being something like '4 SATA ports on this one, and 6 on that one, but one's broken, less one on each for the boot disk' - I quite like the idea of having a bunch of Pis, and one image that I apply to all of them, which can include details like /dev/sda being its only data disk. That's not really a functional advantage, just appealing for keeping it simple to come back to and remember/understand how I set it up when I need to tweak something (and really easy to add another one increasing available cpu/ram/disk).
  - hopw_roewur_ne 6y ago
    This high end system draws ~35W idle: Intel Core i9-10900K @ 5,0 GHz, AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (16 GB), Asus ROG Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi, 2× 16 GB G Skill Trident Z Royal 3 600 MHz 16-16-16-36, Samsung 970 Evo M.2 1 TB, Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB, Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium, 1 000 W. Picture in Swedish, from graphics card review comparing average power draw for the entire system for various GPUs, idle and while benchmarking in Metro Exodus, numbers rounded to nearest multiple of 5: https://cdn.sweclockers.com/artikel/diagram/22452?key=2c6f21ab413bb65ebb16423ffaa68db6 https://cdn.sweclockers.com/artikel/diagram/22452?key=2c6f21... If the direct picture link doesn't work, it's under "Effektmätning" here: https://www.sweclockers.com/test/30908-amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt/9 https://www.sweclockers.com/test/30908-amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt...
- fortran77 6y ago
  Exactly. Take a look at the "ENERGY STAR ® Power and Performance Data Sheet" for Dell "office" desktops. Many are around 10 watts for idle.
detaro 6y ago
It's not that difficult to have a reasonably modern desktop PC idling more in the 10-20W range. For 100W you need to do something seriously wrong, or add extras that would blow up the Pi usage too (e.g. a home server full of hard disks will of course use more power, but so would Pis with the same number of drives)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nebalee 6y ago
Don't forget that Pis also draw quite some power while idle. The Pi 4 draws around 3.4 Watts [1], or around 2.7 Watts since they are running headless in a server setup you'd probably disable HDMI [2]. Times fourteen that's 37.8 Watts just sitting there. An idling headless Desktop PC will be below that for sure. [1] https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-specs-benchmarks https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-specs-be... [2] https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

A good functional reason is when you need to have high redundancy for low-intensity jobs while keeping power consumption ridiculously low. As long as you don't use SD cards, Pis can run for years without stability issues.

gtvwill 6y ago

lol? what if you don't need a heap of compute power but require a lot of redundancy? A single server is not good for that...Also not every site has internet so yes having small redundant easily replaceable nodes on-site does have plenty of use cases. Y'all negative folks against this seem to have very restricted use cases in mind. Not all redundant rack servers live in a 36U case in a air-conditioned internet connected server farm. There are plenty of use cases outside of this.