6 ms·

Geez for the prices listed in the article (153 EUR and 301 EUR), get a TMM (tiny mini micro - https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-hom

• doubleg72 3y ago
  Exactly, we scrap them after like 5 years at the hospital system I work in.
  • auspiv 3y ago
    Yep, very standard to upgrade at end of the 5 year warranty period.
• coffeeri 3y ago
  I've also compared many 1L PCs from a performance/price/power consumption perspective. I decided on the HP prodesk/ elitedesk 400/800 G5 with the i5-9500T. It idles at ~2-3W and has considerably more computing and storage than these embedded solutions. I only see something like a raspberry pi be handy when relying on GPIO ports.
  • jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    I don't know what you did to get yours idling that low. My 800 i5-9500t idles at 9w. I took out the flex io module & wifi card, and make sure nvme has "spin down" but still nowhere near that low. I had some Acer chromeboxes that would do 4.5w easy without any tuning or setup, and they used pretty low end dyal-core i3's from just barely before the i5-9500t. Generally I don't think servethehome finds many tiny mini-pcs below 7w.
    • bashZorina_09 3y ago
      I can attest to coffeeri's consumption, albeit on pure server use-case only. I own a OptiPlex 3080 with an i5-10500T and under default BIOS settings (power states and whatnot), I was very surprised to see a 1.7-2.5w power draw on idle, but under typical desktop use, this becomes 6-8w. If this is your draw under a server deployment as well, unfortunately I don't know of any methods to rectify this personally. When it has to roar however, the draw is substantial compared to my ODroid, but since it idles the majority of the time, I'll take it.
    • coffeeri 3y ago
      Have you enabled the deep sleep state in the BIOS? It always depends what you are running on it. For me it's very light with only paperless-ngx and a smb share on a nixos. I also only have one RAM stick installed and set up powertop on startup.
  • bsder 3y ago
    If you need various forms of pin I/O (GPIO, SPI, I2C, CAN, etc.), the Beaglebone series kicks the tar out of the RPi series.
• arghwhat 3y ago
  To be fair, you also need to account for consumption when you make the machine do something. The TDPs for these machines are in the 25-35W range, and hitting 50W does not seem unreasonable. You of course won't be running that the entire time. The larger SFF machines with 65W TDPs will go way above that. An orange pi 5 uses 7.5W under full load, 3.3W idle in comparison.
  • ilyt 3y ago
    Is orange pi 5 as fast as 35W TDP intel CPU ? How many times slower it is than the 65W one ? Average consumption matters, not peak. And you can pin CPU to not go on higher frequencies if you don't want to go into inefficient max frequency/max voltage region. You will also be recycling already produced device.
    • arghwhat 3y ago
      According to Geekbench, an i5-8500T scores ~1100 single core, ~4000 multicore with it's 35W TDP, while the Orange Pi 5 gets ~840 single core and ~2900 multicore. About 75% of the performance at less than 20% of the power. Not too shabby, despite the orange pi being no efficiency star. Recycling is good, but only to a point. At some point the cost of operation (and resource pressure from its use) will exceed the cost of a more efficient device - at least until we get abundant green power...
  • 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    If the SFF is doing work, it might be done in a fraction of the time of the pi. Race to finish. Hard to say without real workloads, but if there are any plans of routinely pegging the CPU, most power efficient strategy is to buy a modern chip.
    • arghwhat 3y ago
      The orange pi 5 Geekbench score is ~75% of the i5-8500T used as example, so no - the sff won't be done in a fraction of the time. These CPUs are old and crusty after all... I do agree that modern CPUs are required for high-load situations.
• petsfed 3y ago
  This sort of underscores the weakness of RPi as a complete computer: A complete computer is at least somewhat hardened against ESD and what not, has onboard storage of some description, and isn't severely throttled from a power standpoint. I like RPis and similar for rapid prototyping if I know I need GPIO control, but if you don't, there are better machines out there, at similar price points.
  • galangalalgol 3y ago
    If you need GPIO you might be able to use a uc like an rp2040 or esp32 and connect that to your dell machine. The uc run as cheap as $5 for something that is 32bits with wifi.
    • petsfed 3y ago
      That's where I've landed for the most part. Last real gasp for dev-board-style SBCs, for me, is when I'm severely space constrained, but can afford to locate a USB hub somewhere else. Then its just simple serial comms with a microcontroller that does the timing-sensitive pin twiddling.
    • freeopinion 3y ago
      Or less that $1 for a SoC powered by 32-bit RV32IMAFC RISC-V “SiFive E24 Core”.[0] [0] https://pine64.com/product/pineseed-bl602-wifi-ble5-soc/ https://pine64.com/product/pineseed-bl602-wifi-ble5-soc/
      • galangalalgol 3y ago
        That $4 dev board looks like it might be an esp32 killer, or at least good competition. I was thinking of the esp32-c3 which is also risc-v with wifi and ble. It currently has really great rust support. You can even build the stdlib for it so you don't have to mess with no_std. The bl602 doesn't seem to have rust support yet, but I'm looking forward to more options.
        • snvzz 3y ago
• phamilton4 3y ago
  The more I mess with SBCs the more I lean towards this method. The M720q's or M710q's are two of my favorites. As an added bonus the chargers even work with my lenovo laptop(s). I wish someone made a rack to hold them vertically. I'd own 10 if I could mount them in a rack like this: https://images.prismic.io/macstadium/949d85ad-18be-4059-acf6-723defdc5f57_MacStadium_DataCenter_Row_2B.jpeg?auto=compress,format https://images.prismic.io/macstadium/949d85ad-18be-4059-acf6...
  • suprjami 3y ago
    With a 3D printer and a little while in basic CAD your dreams could easily come true.
• jancsika 3y ago
  > Here's an example of a USFF (ultra small form factor) for $110 - https://www.ebay.com/itm/325826958401 https://www.ebay.com/itm/325826958401 Hm... > No adapter is included. Needs 65W or above (most dell/hp laptops around the year it came out are compatible) The 65W power adapter on Dell retails for $46.99 on sale, bringing the grand total to $156.99. And that's just after skimming your link for 2 minutes.
  • ammar2 3y ago
    You don't need to buy the OEM power adapter for $46.99 The great thing about these Optiplexes is that they use a standard 20v 4.5x3mm DC jack for power. I run mine off a UPS with a usb-c to barrel jack cable.
    • dpedu 3y ago
      No they don't. It is a barrel jack you can obtain an adapter for elsewhere, but your adapter is going to be missing the third pin. This type of system uses the 3rd line to communicate with the power supply and during startup the computer asks it how much power it is capable of supplying. If the power supply doesn't answer, it drastically throttles your CPU. Sure, you can boot the system, though it would be throwing away the majority of your cpu performance. Furthermore, I have several of these systems and tried sourcing 3rd party power adapters online. For this aspect, not one of them worked correctly. I did a write up here: https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/11o0x5o/dell_3050_micro_power_supply_cpu_throttling/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/11o0x5o/dell_3050_...
      • gsich 3y ago
        Lenovo uses a resistor to check the PSU power, should be easy enough. Don't know what Dell is doing.
        • ammar2 3y ago
          Looks like a one-wire protocol talking to a DS2501 chip https://hclxing.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/hacking-a-dell-power-adapter-part-iii/ https://hclxing.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/hacking-a-dell-powe...
• pierat 3y ago
  I do similar but I look for older laptops. Gets me integrated: battery, screen, keyboard, mouse I can buy an old laptop for $100 and would cost me $150 for similar RPI hardware.
• Alex63 3y ago
  The Serve The Home articles inspired me to go this route. I want to improve my understanding of Kubernetes for work. I picked up an HP EliteDesk 705 G4 mini desktop and an HP EliteDesk 800 G4 mini desktop. Each was less than $200, and included 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, HDMI and DP outputs, and a power brick. One from Amazon ("renewed") and one from eBay. My 705 came with a Ryzen 2400G, and the 800 came with a i5-8500. I'm not planning to stack them so I was happy with the 65W chips although it means keeping the top of the case clear for cooling. Serve The Home recommends the 35W chips if you are going to stack them.
• deleted 3y ago
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• globular-toast 3y ago
  My router is an Optiplex fx160. Been running for years. I had to upgrade the storage and add another NIC. Has a built in power supply. I've never managed to run a Pi for this long, even with a decent power supply.
• gigel82 3y ago
  Or you can get a brand new N100 mini pc from Amazon for < $150 with 16Gb RAM and a 512Gb SSD (probably cheaper on AliExpress). It's much newer (10nm instead of 13nm+) and can idle as low as 6W. And for GPIO (if really needed) you can always add something like an USB Arduino micro (clone) for a couple of bucks.
  • donmcronald 3y ago
    These look really cool. The biggest downside is having 100 brands to choose from. It makes me feel like there's a good chance I could pick something that ends up being total e-waste. Can anyone recommend one?
  • mianos 3y ago
    I got one of these recently. It was ridiculously easy to just install stock debs on. Every time I look at the wall wart plug pack it comes with I laugh to myself. 8W. In terms of price, speed and compatibility the Raspberry Pi looks laughable. If I want GPIO I just use ESP32s with wifi. I am then unconstrained in terms of other stuff hanging off them. Using the new nano ESP32 boards I can just hot glue them to whatever I want to talk to.
    • RetroTechie 3y ago
      > In terms of price, speed and compatibility the Raspberry Pi looks laughable. Just for kicks, some reference: Assuming the Gflops numbers are roughly comparable, ~50 Gflops would have you competing for the #1 spot in the first TOP500 list, June 1993: https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/1993/06 https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/1993/06 Which came equipped with 1,024 SuperSPARCs @ 32 MHz: https://www.top500.org/system/166997 https://www.top500.org/system/166997 Even ~2000, that might still have squeezed you into the bottom of the list? Note that power consumption of above system will have been in the 10s if not 100s of kW. To say nothing of size or purchase price. That's only 1 human generation ago. What on Earth are you doing with these things? Running physics simulations of nuclear explosions, or what?
• freeopinion 3y ago
  Or... brand new $189 Ryzen 7 4800H at https://store.minisforum.com/collections/amd-%C2%AE-ryzen-%C2%AE/products/minisforum-um590 https://store.minisforum.com/collections/amd-%C2%AE-ryzen-%C....
  • RexM 3y ago
    That’s with no ram or storage, fyi.
• m463 3y ago
  I like zotac silent SFF pcs. I love the silence, and run proxmox with enough memory and storage.
• eblanshey 3y ago
  Any idea what to similarly search for for a cheap, low power server but has at least 4 bays for hard drives to use as a NAS?
• heresie-dabord 3y ago
  > You also get standard x86 support, normal expand-ability, M.2 slots, PCIe ports, etc. Let's acknowledge that there are good reasons for avoiding x86 for those who care. The security problems for one, and the long shadow of Microsoft over the ecosystem. Perhaps an additional concern about the supply chain. The closer we can get to an open-source system without blobs, the better. But the above concerns apart, it seems clear that R.Pi 4 and 400 were peak R.Pi. The performance and low-cost of Intel's recent x86 NUC mainboards is impressive. AMD is also offering strong value in the SFF market. As I long-time R.Pi/Odroid user, I continue to enjoy these devices. But their lunch has been eaten by competitors.
• snapplebobapple 3y ago
  Are there any that have h265 and avi decoders?
  • beAbU 3y ago
    I think you need to look for something 10th gen Intel or up. I have an HP SFF machine with a 10th gen i3 as my Emby/Plex box and it can transcode 4k streams without breaking a sweat. The more modern cpu models are a little rare still, but they show up from time to time.
• briHass 3y ago
  I think RPis have pretty much outgrown (outpriced?) their usefulness, except in very specialized applications: If you want to run a server-task, listen to the common chorus and buy an 3-7 year old SFF business PC. Slap Proxmox on it, and you can virtualize a bunch of small 'servers' as LXCs with plenty of CPU and memory. Easy to add storage, dependable, and well-supported. Power draw is highly overstated for typical ancillary-server tasks, and if you were planning on 2+ Pis, you're now in the same ballpark. If you want to hack together something with sensors/electronics, use a $5 ESP32, which likely has way more power than you need. If you need more processing power, move that from the edge device to something like the cheap SFF above. Plenty of sample ESP32/8266 Arduino libraries to expose/control the GPIO via a simple API, MQTT, or UDP/TCP payloads. Then, you can write your processing logic in whatever language you want, on a powerful server, and the edge device doesn't need Linux distro updates to blink some LED strips or whatever.
• MikusR 3y ago
  To get one in the EU the price triples at least and usually they simply don't ship here.
  • happymellon 3y ago
    Not quite the same machine, but the Wyse are plenty fast enough for everything I've needed a home server for. It's quad core and has Intel Quicksync for Plex, and can hold a lot more memory than they state in the official documents. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256245170577 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256245170577 This listing is UK £75, but I got one for a similar price from the EU.
    • justoreply 3y ago
      Good to know, but the UK is not the EU