6 ms·

This is neat from a creative perspective. But I have to ask these days: why not just use a laptop? It’s got a flip out console, built in UPS that can last hours

by hughrr 5y ago

This is neat from a creative perspective. But I have to ask these days: why not just use a laptop? It’s got a flip out console, built in UPS that can last hours, proper storage and power supply. Unless you need some GPIO or something I wouldn’t bother. Edit: my home server is a Lenovo T440 junker which the main battery doesn’t charge any more as the polyfuse popped. Has 12Gb RAM and an i5. The internal battery is still good though. So I stuffed a 1Tb SSD in it, installed Debian and disabled the lid close event and job done.

bullen 5y ago
Mainly because the raspberry 4 is the most powerful and cheapest (2Gflops/W CPU for ~$45) device that has less than 10W total consumption and has a GPU that does not clutter that power draw too much (~1W). This means it's the ideal low power server device for home hosting with lead-acid backup if you can get 1Gb/s up+down fiber! Unless you need quality disk, then you should probably look elsewhere too, but a 1TB SanDisc SD card har pretty low power draw; atleast it has got that working for it. But you need better ergonomics than this, sealing it is a sure way to overheating. I'm working on the final design of my raspberry cluster: http://move.rupy.se/file/final_pi_2_4_hybrid.png http://move.rupy.se/file/final_pi_2_4_hybrid.png
- dijit 5y ago
  I don't buy it. I'm actually a large fan of the Pi but people seem to think it's lower power than it actually is: but the performance trade-off is real. the -peak- power consumption of a Pi is 15W (but it's difficult finding an adapter which will supply that). So if we're talking peak power consumption the Pi would win because most decent quality mobile x86 chips draw something like 15w by themselves at peak, but if you look at something with the m3-8100y[0] then you've got a CPU that draws 5w at peak, and has 10 PCIe lanes instead of just 1. they have boards with this kind of platform: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html If you're looking to get a super low energy homeserver these absolutely dominate on peak usage. But, a rpi and a laptop are roughly comparable in terms of idle power consumption. Unless it's like a gaming laptop or something. Mine draws 3w during "idle"* from the wall and I have a Xeon E3-1505M v6 (45W TDP). [0]: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/185282/intel-core-m3-8100y-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/185282/... - "idle" meaning with a few containers, a window manager, the screen turned on and wifi enabled/connected.
  - bullen 5y ago
    You need to compare apples to apples, CPU Gflops/W is the number for that. And humanity is probably stuck between 2-3 for eternity (usable cheap X86/ARM/RISC-V, not fringe prototypes). Pi 4 uses 7W CPU full 400% blast for about 14 Gflops, how much does the LattePanda give at peak? Next step up is Atom at 25W. Also you have to add size of the cluster and cost of the PSU and cables to the equation. More PCI lanes is only interesting if you plan on using them.
    - fulafel 5y ago
      File servers (or most server apps generally) don't do much FP. And gflops counts tend to incorporate SIMD lanes to get many times bigger numbers than scalar code, which again is not used by most server apps.
      - bullen 5y ago
        Ok, so what is the better metric? I'm pretty sure Gflops on f.ex. this site is without SIMD as it makes no sense to compare CPUs like that: http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/green_machines.html http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/green_machines.html
        fulafel 5y ago
        Not sure what's the best proxy benchmark, sorry. Maybe something like SPEC jbb or sfs benchmarks? Re the numbers at that site, that's using OpenBLAS linpack which is likely utilizing SIMD but can also be memory bandwidth bound.
        bullen 5y ago
        Ok, thanks for letting me know, I thought the world was sane and had a way to compare CPUs in an apples to apples fashion...
    - dijit 5y ago
      > More PCI lanes is only interesting if you plan on using them I’m hard pressed to think what else you would want in a file server. Storage uses PCI lanes (4 for NVMe), network uses PCI lanes (1 for each gigabit of network, typically).
- hughrr 5y ago
  The problem is this is a pretty bad trade-off for storage as your only storage option is an SD card for primary storage and then USB for secondary and both of those quite frankly suck terribly for reliability and stability. If someone sold a raspberry Pi with half decent power distribution on it, SATA or NVMe storage, I might raise one eyebrow but at this point, compared to even low ball commodity laptops it's a joke of a product which is squarely destined to end up in the e-waste bin.
  - afavour 5y ago
    > your only storage option is an SD card for primary storage Hasn't been true for a while now. The Pi 4 can boot from USB storage.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      Impressive. Now I can choose to trust my data to a shitty USB stick or a shitty no brand USB to SATA bridge... Just give me a native SATA or NVMe port.
      - afavour 5y ago
        Just a thought: maybe don't buy a shitty USB stick? You're talking as if reliable USB SSD drives from established brands simply don't exist. I'm sorry the $35 computer doesn't have all the storage connections you'd like it to. It's still very useful for the rest of us.
      - krageon 5y ago
        I had a feeling there'd be a hat for this and I was correct: https://geekworm.com/products/for-raspberry-pi-4-x873-v1-2-m-2-nvme-ssd-storage-expansion-board-support-key-m-2280-ssd https://geekworm.com/products/for-raspberry-pi-4-x873-v1-2-m... There you go, now you too can use a Pi :)
        hughrr 5y ago
        No - that's a shitty USB to NVMe bridge repackaged as a hat for it. It's just pretending. I want a couple of PCIe lines on the SoC on an M2 NVMe connector. That's all.
- Saris 5y ago
  I have these 2 passively cooled i3-7100u boxes with 32GB of RAM, that idle at 2W of power each most of the day, they also have SSDs instead of uSD cards. The Pi makes sense for projects where you need a low performance embedded solution with GPIO, but I don't really get the point of using them as replacements for normal x86_64 servers purely based on power consumption, because their performance is not very good when you include IO. They're great for building stuff for fun though, a bunch of Pis in a cluster is relatively pretty cheap compared to anything else for experimentation.
  - bullen 5y ago
    Can you link a picture? I also have Streacom NUC passive cases, but I use those as linux desktop for my kid, I mean why waste a good GPU on a server?
    - Saris 5y ago
      Here's a post I made on them: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/moderro-iec-4660-teardown-and-info/10457 https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/moderro-iec-4660-teardown-... I paid $75 each since they just popped up on ebay and I was curious, there was not much info on them that I could find at the time.
      - bullen 5y ago
        My NUC builds uses these: https://streacom.com/products/nc2-fanless-nuc-case/ https://streacom.com/products/nc2-fanless-nuc-case/ A bit more compact and alot cooler. But still you cannot compare 2nd hand prices to a new Raspberry 4, interestingly I suspect Raspberry 4 second hand prices will rise over time as nothing as robust will be made. Just like the old v7 Raspberry 2 which are very low power for what they deliver. Now they have the Pi 4 2GB model back in stock here in Sweden at $45 after 6 months of the price being $80 because it was sold out. Eventually they will have to move on but I don't see how a Raspberry 5 could be better for my uses... We'll see!
maeln 5y ago
For me it is just about power consumption. My "server" only has ssh, a tiny tiny http server that has just to handle 1-2 user max and a cron that send an http request every 5 minutes or so. Having a full blown laptop would be overkill. A cheap ARM-based sbc consume less than 5W of power, which is good since it run 24/24.
- hughrr 5y ago
  I run that stuff in Linode for $5 a month. My home server does a lot more than that!
- Saris 5y ago
  Look at used passive cooled stuff with mobile CPUs! I have 2 boxes with i3-7100u CPUs, 32GB RAM, and a proper SATA SSD that use around 2W of power each most of the time. The peak power is of course higher than a Pi, but they generally are near-idle most of the time.
tjoff 5y ago
I would never trust the battery in a laptop for 24/7 server-use. And the power-supply isn't made with that in mind either.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Yes it is. Also the raspberry pi power situation is far far worse.
  - tjoff 5y ago
    It absolutely is not. Depends on what you use.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      Nope. If you look at the schematics for the Pi 4 the power distribution is flawed. The USB-C 5v in is directly connected to the internal 5V rail. There is no buck-boost or power conditioning or protection past a 5v-ish TVS diode. So any I2R losses on the PDU can cause a rail drop and the device to shat itself and trip BOD. And this is likely because to cut costs there's fuck all decoupling on the power supply rails. One high current drain or spike and bye bye kernel and SD card - corruptathon! It's a joke of a product built to a price point which barely works. Most people are running on pure luck, not engineering. This has been a problem with every generation of Pi so far. The tradeoff is a really bad one.
      - tjoff 5y ago
        I'm talking about fire risk, not system stability. And with proper care raspberries are very stable as well. SD-card is the biggest downfall but for most applications you can either more or less have a read-only system or boot from network.
giantg2 5y ago
Mostly power draw is my guess. I have an Atom based mini pc that I use for several PoE security cameras. The whole setup with a UPS and PoE switch uses under 80w (forget the exact number but think it's closer to 50w even with the IR illumination at night).
- giantg2 5y ago
  Why downvote?
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
That's what I do. Laptops are low power devices with a built-in UPS. I use a 2nd gen i5 laptop for a valheim server, dns adblocker, Plex server, and torrent seeder. It's been going strong for over 2 years now.
asoneth 5y ago
In case anyone else is curious: According to the bill of materials linked from the project website[1] the project cost is $175.67 not including the 3D printer and laser cutter or the raw materials they require. (Though it does include duplicate screens, wires, screws, etc which may hold some value if you are doing multiple projects.) A used ThinkPad T440 i5 is available for $250, possibly less elsewhere. [1]https://www.the-diy-life.com/mini-raspberry-pi-server-with-built-in-ups/ https://www.the-diy-life.com/mini-raspberry-pi-server-with-b... [2]https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JBZB5JU https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JBZB5JU
- hughrr 5y ago
  $90-150 here for a T440 in the UK
- folkhack 5y ago
  T440p checking in - picked mine up for $80 with a dead screen and got it up to snuff for < $50 due to a good find on ebay for a new panel. I also consider the cost of a SSD as part of the base cost for my Thinkpad fleet - so easily +$20-30 on the cheap-end. Even with the above SSD upgrade, $250 is a bit much for a bog-standard T440 - recycling centers have them here working for approx $150 USD, usually the i5 variants.
- autoexec 5y ago
  Pretty inexpensive, but ever since Lenovo started shipping machines with malware installed I just can't bring myself to touch one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Controversies

by hughrr 5y ago

bullen 5y ago

Mainly because the raspberry 4 is the most powerful and cheapest (2Gflops/W CPU for ~$45) device that has less than 10W total consumption and has a GPU that does not clutter that power draw too much (~1W). This means it's the ideal low power server device for home hosting with lead-acid backup if you can get 1Gb/s up+down fiber! Unless you need quality disk, then you should probably look elsewhere too, but a 1TB SanDisc SD card har pretty low power draw; atleast it has got that working for it. But you need better ergonomics than this, sealing it is a sure way to overheating. I'm working on the final design of my raspberry cluster: http://move.rupy.se/file/final_pi_2_4_hybrid.png http://move.rupy.se/file/final_pi_2_4_hybrid.png

dijit 5y ago
I don't buy it. I'm actually a large fan of the Pi but people seem to think it's lower power than it actually is: but the performance trade-off is real. the -peak- power consumption of a Pi is 15W (but it's difficult finding an adapter which will supply that). So if we're talking peak power consumption the Pi would win because most decent quality mobile x86 chips draw something like 15w by themselves at peak, but if you look at something with the m3-8100y[0] then you've got a CPU that draws 5w at peak, and has 10 PCIe lanes instead of just 1. they have boards with this kind of platform: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html If you're looking to get a super low energy homeserver these absolutely dominate on peak usage. But, a rpi and a laptop are roughly comparable in terms of idle power consumption. Unless it's like a gaming laptop or something. Mine draws 3w during "idle"* from the wall and I have a Xeon E3-1505M v6 (45W TDP). [0]: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/185282/intel-core-m3-8100y-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/185282/... - "idle" meaning with a few containers, a window manager, the screen turned on and wifi enabled/connected.
- bullen 5y ago
  You need to compare apples to apples, CPU Gflops/W is the number for that. And humanity is probably stuck between 2-3 for eternity (usable cheap X86/ARM/RISC-V, not fringe prototypes). Pi 4 uses 7W CPU full 400% blast for about 14 Gflops, how much does the LattePanda give at peak? Next step up is Atom at 25W. Also you have to add size of the cluster and cost of the PSU and cables to the equation. More PCI lanes is only interesting if you plan on using them.
  - fulafel 5y ago
    File servers (or most server apps generally) don't do much FP. And gflops counts tend to incorporate SIMD lanes to get many times bigger numbers than scalar code, which again is not used by most server apps.
    - bullen 5y ago
      Ok, so what is the better metric? I'm pretty sure Gflops on f.ex. this site is without SIMD as it makes no sense to compare CPUs like that: http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/green_machines.html http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/green_machines.html
      - fulafel 5y ago
        Not sure what's the best proxy benchmark, sorry. Maybe something like SPEC jbb or sfs benchmarks? Re the numbers at that site, that's using OpenBLAS linpack which is likely utilizing SIMD but can also be memory bandwidth bound.
        bullen 5y ago
        Ok, thanks for letting me know, I thought the world was sane and had a way to compare CPUs in an apples to apples fashion...
  - dijit 5y ago
    > More PCI lanes is only interesting if you plan on using them I’m hard pressed to think what else you would want in a file server. Storage uses PCI lanes (4 for NVMe), network uses PCI lanes (1 for each gigabit of network, typically).
hughrr 5y ago
The problem is this is a pretty bad trade-off for storage as your only storage option is an SD card for primary storage and then USB for secondary and both of those quite frankly suck terribly for reliability and stability. If someone sold a raspberry Pi with half decent power distribution on it, SATA or NVMe storage, I might raise one eyebrow but at this point, compared to even low ball commodity laptops it's a joke of a product which is squarely destined to end up in the e-waste bin.
- afavour 5y ago
  > your only storage option is an SD card for primary storage Hasn't been true for a while now. The Pi 4 can boot from USB storage.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Impressive. Now I can choose to trust my data to a shitty USB stick or a shitty no brand USB to SATA bridge... Just give me a native SATA or NVMe port.
    - afavour 5y ago
      Just a thought: maybe don't buy a shitty USB stick? You're talking as if reliable USB SSD drives from established brands simply don't exist. I'm sorry the $35 computer doesn't have all the storage connections you'd like it to. It's still very useful for the rest of us.
    - krageon 5y ago
      I had a feeling there'd be a hat for this and I was correct: https://geekworm.com/products/for-raspberry-pi-4-x873-v1-2-m-2-nvme-ssd-storage-expansion-board-support-key-m-2280-ssd https://geekworm.com/products/for-raspberry-pi-4-x873-v1-2-m... There you go, now you too can use a Pi :)
      - hughrr 5y ago
        No - that's a shitty USB to NVMe bridge repackaged as a hat for it. It's just pretending. I want a couple of PCIe lines on the SoC on an M2 NVMe connector. That's all.
Saris 5y ago
I have these 2 passively cooled i3-7100u boxes with 32GB of RAM, that idle at 2W of power each most of the day, they also have SSDs instead of uSD cards. The Pi makes sense for projects where you need a low performance embedded solution with GPIO, but I don't really get the point of using them as replacements for normal x86_64 servers purely based on power consumption, because their performance is not very good when you include IO. They're great for building stuff for fun though, a bunch of Pis in a cluster is relatively pretty cheap compared to anything else for experimentation.
- bullen 5y ago
  Can you link a picture? I also have Streacom NUC passive cases, but I use those as linux desktop for my kid, I mean why waste a good GPU on a server?
  - Saris 5y ago
    Here's a post I made on them: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/moderro-iec-4660-teardown-and-info/10457 https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/moderro-iec-4660-teardown-... I paid $75 each since they just popped up on ebay and I was curious, there was not much info on them that I could find at the time.
    - bullen 5y ago
      My NUC builds uses these: https://streacom.com/products/nc2-fanless-nuc-case/ https://streacom.com/products/nc2-fanless-nuc-case/ A bit more compact and alot cooler. But still you cannot compare 2nd hand prices to a new Raspberry 4, interestingly I suspect Raspberry 4 second hand prices will rise over time as nothing as robust will be made. Just like the old v7 Raspberry 2 which are very low power for what they deliver. Now they have the Pi 4 2GB model back in stock here in Sweden at $45 after 6 months of the price being $80 because it was sold out. Eventually they will have to move on but I don't see how a Raspberry 5 could be better for my uses... We'll see!

maeln 5y ago

For me it is just about power consumption. My "server" only has ssh, a tiny tiny http server that has just to handle 1-2 user max and a cron that send an http request every 5 minutes or so. Having a full blown laptop would be overkill. A cheap ARM-based sbc consume less than 5W of power, which is good since it run 24/24.

hughrr 5y ago
I run that stuff in Linode for $5 a month. My home server does a lot more than that!
Saris 5y ago
Look at used passive cooled stuff with mobile CPUs! I have 2 boxes with i3-7100u CPUs, 32GB RAM, and a proper SATA SSD that use around 2W of power each most of the time. The peak power is of course higher than a Pi, but they generally are near-idle most of the time.

tjoff 5y ago

I would never trust the battery in a laptop for 24/7 server-use. And the power-supply isn't made with that in mind either.

hughrr 5y ago
Yes it is. Also the raspberry pi power situation is far far worse.
- tjoff 5y ago
  It absolutely is not. Depends on what you use.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Nope. If you look at the schematics for the Pi 4 the power distribution is flawed. The USB-C 5v in is directly connected to the internal 5V rail. There is no buck-boost or power conditioning or protection past a 5v-ish TVS diode. So any I2R losses on the PDU can cause a rail drop and the device to shat itself and trip BOD. And this is likely because to cut costs there's fuck all decoupling on the power supply rails. One high current drain or spike and bye bye kernel and SD card - corruptathon! It's a joke of a product built to a price point which barely works. Most people are running on pure luck, not engineering. This has been a problem with every generation of Pi so far. The tradeoff is a really bad one.
    - tjoff 5y ago
      I'm talking about fire risk, not system stability. And with proper care raspberries are very stable as well. SD-card is the biggest downfall but for most applications you can either more or less have a read-only system or boot from network.

giantg2 5y ago

Mostly power draw is my guess. I have an Atom based mini pc that I use for several PoE security cameras. The whole setup with a UPS and PoE switch uses under 80w (forget the exact number but think it's closer to 50w even with the IR illumination at night).

giantg2 5y ago
Why downvote?

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

That's what I do. Laptops are low power devices with a built-in UPS. I use a 2nd gen i5 laptop for a valheim server, dns adblocker, Plex server, and torrent seeder. It's been going strong for over 2 years now.

asoneth 5y ago

In case anyone else is curious: According to the bill of materials linked from the project website[1] the project cost is $175.67 not including the 3D printer and laser cutter or the raw materials they require. (Though it does include duplicate screens, wires, screws, etc which may hold some value if you are doing multiple projects.) A used ThinkPad T440 i5 is available for $250, possibly less elsewhere. [1]https://www.the-diy-life.com/mini-raspberry-pi-server-with-built-in-ups/ https://www.the-diy-life.com/mini-raspberry-pi-server-with-b... [2]https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JBZB5JU https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JBZB5JU

hughrr 5y ago
$90-150 here for a T440 in the UK
folkhack 5y ago
T440p checking in - picked mine up for $80 with a dead screen and got it up to snuff for < $50 due to a good find on ebay for a new panel. I also consider the cost of a SSD as part of the base cost for my Thinkpad fleet - so easily +$20-30 on the cheap-end. Even with the above SSD upgrade, $250 is a bit much for a bog-standard T440 - recycling centers have them here working for approx $150 USD, usually the i5 variants.
autoexec 5y ago
Pretty inexpensive, but ever since Lenovo started shipping machines with malware installed I just can't bring myself to touch one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Controversies