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I think ARM is cool and have a few SBCs around for various projects, but... for ~$150, you can get an entire (used) PC, with a Skylake i5 and 8GB of RAM (in add
by ac29 6y ago
I think ARM is cool and have a few SBCs around for various projects, but... for ~$150, you can get an entire (used) PC, with a Skylake i5 and 8GB of RAM (in addition to the case, power supply, etc). There's just so much more you can do with that, so unless you need ARM, there isnt a lot of point. Even with expensive electricity, the Pi will save you maybe $1/month.
Example eBay listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-OPTIPLEX-7040-SFF-DESKTOP-INTEL-I5-6500-3-2GHZ-8GB-DDR-4-RAM-NO-HDD/203311402192 https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-OPTIPLEX-7040-SFF-DESKTOP-INTE... (no storage drive on this, but it has NVME, so for $50 you can add more storage than many use cases need, and it'll be much faster and more durable than SBC eMMC or SD solutions).
- gkfasdfasdf 6y agoThis is interesting also. Maybe I need to do the math and compare potential electric bills.
- notyourday 6y agoYou can get an i3 with 8G, passively cooled in a VESA format enclosure with wifi and ethernet for sub $200 on aliexpress.
- indigodaddy 6y agoYep I recently picked up a used slim HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF i5-4590 Quad Core 3.3GHz 16GB RAM / 240GB SSD With Win 10 Pro for $150.. And it literally was in lightly used (basically perfect) shape and no issues at all.. they even threw in a cheap WiFi dongle. It’s amazing what you can get on eBay for value as far a large used computers go.. obviously it’s YMMV as far as the seller you happen to buy from and the condition of the item you receive.. but for me, this machine was super awesome and fast (I hadn’t bought or built a desktop PC in at least 10 years prior to this)...