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I've started looking more at thin clients to take roles of small servers that people go to Raspberry Pis for. Small cheap Intel Atom based thin clients usually
by DCKing 4y ago
I've started looking more at thin clients to take roles of small servers that people go to Raspberry Pis for. Small cheap Intel Atom based thin clients usually don't even outperform the Raspberry Pi 4 in either peak performance or power efficiency, but they're close enough in both areas that for "I just need a small server" it's not a meaningful difference. Plus they come in a case, should have reliable storage and decent IO included, and they just boot and run whatever bog standard Debian ISO I can download from debian.org with zero issues now and for years and years to come.
If you can find them for a good price on eBay or the likes, it's well worth the convenience over any ARM board if all you want is to run a server - I find it preferable to the Raspberry Pi, and especially other ARM SBC hardware.
- epx 4y agoExpectation: dirt-cheap, power-efficient and reasonably fast SBC computers so you can dedicate one per service (or form a cluster!). Reality: a RPI 4 costing as much as a whole Intel NUC, but slower, without upgradable RAM, without native ports to mass storage (SATA/M.2), and not as reliable. Didn't even have to think that far to see that SBC computers are a joke^W^W not there yet. Considered buying a NanoPi or a Raspberry CM + some board to build a router, with at least 2 physical Gigabit ports. Tallying up all components (sbc, case, power supply, heat sink, etc.) made the NUC with 4 gigabit ports look a bargain. I really wanted to go the !x86 route, but...