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Hardware is more than numbers on a spec sheet. It's the community (proxy for support), developers, maintainers, etc. Hot take: If I need something more powerfu

Hardware is more than numbers on a spec sheet. It's the community (proxy for support), developers, maintainers, etc. Hot take: If I need something more powerful than an RPI then I'm shooting for x86.

kiwijamo 3y ago
I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and I've found it to struggle with basic stuff that is fast and easily done on low end x86 machines. But you're right about the community. When I had trouble with playing videos (massive tearing and frequent frame drops), I was able to find online that I needed to run a very specific video player (VLC) in a very specific desktop environment (the XFCE or whatever they use by default) running on top of a 32-bit kernel (which has the hardware acceleration features not present in the 64-bit kernel) to be able to take advantage of the hardware video acceleration. Nice to know but given that that sort of stuff just works out of the box on pretty much any x86 box, I've decided that my next tiny home server will be a low end x86 box. I had high hopes given the rave reviews I see online but the reality is somewhat not even close to the hype. Still a nice piece of kit for something very simple but don't expect too much from it.
- shrubble 3y ago
  The Intel N100 based home servers/thin clients like Beelink are more but will be far faster and barely use any more power.
  - m4r1k 3y ago
    Beelink, Minisforum and others in the same category have awful, nearly nonexistent post-sales support, no bios/firmware updates, and it's not built to last like the NUC.
- Toutouxc 3y ago
  My home server is an Intel NUC 11, the cheapest, least powerful version. It has a dual core Celeron, cost around $200 with 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD. I put Debian on it, tweaked the fan curve so that the fan only spins under load, put the whole thing in an IKEA cabinet and forgotten about it. It just sits on the network, responds to SSH, runs whatever Docker container I throw at it. Zero issues. It didn’t come from a shady Chinese marketplace, didn’t need an esoteric charger, didn’t need a special distro or weird drivers, came in a nice cardboard box, with warranty, from the largest electronics retailer in the country. If you can’t tell, I’m still really happy about my purchase.
  - ssl-3 3y ago
    Sure. It's an x86 PC. It does PC stuff, and it does it in a manner not unlike other PCs have done stuff for decades. There's nothing special about it. A Raspberry Pi (any versions, and their friends in the marketplace) is not a like a PC. It's a got a little ARM SoC. It's a lot smaller than your NUC -- it can fit into a normal pants pocket. It has easily-swapped storage, making brain transplants trivial. It includes weird interfaces, like for LCD screens and cameras, and also some GPIO that is included just for tinkering with and integrating into other projects. It can do PC stuff -- of course it can. It has USB and HDMI ports (and Ethernet and Wifi), much as a modern PC might. It can run Linux (and a whole desktop OS) just as a PC can. But it can also do other stuff that PCs don't generally do, and that PCs (examples like the awesome GeekPort on the BeBox[1] notwithstanding) have never generally done. Your NUC was sold as a complete system (including an absolutely-required "esoteric charger") that can be unboxed, powered on, and immediately put to work. A Raspberry Pi is sold as a bare board that -- by itself -- can't actually accomplish anything at all, just as a common PC motherboard also cannot accomplish anything by itself. They're very different things, with potential use-cases that only somewhat overlap. Why this is still an issue of contention after very nearly a dozen years of Raspberry Pi existence boggles the mind. I mean: Some people enjoy dining out (and may not even know how to cook), and some others grow their own food (and thus participate in every stage of its production and consumption by necessity). Neither set of people are inherently wrong for choosing to do things their own way. Even if one set can't can't understand why the other set does things so differently, both are still perfectly OK. If a person wants a prebuilt PC to do PC stuff with, then they should absolutely get a prebuilt PC (new with warranty, old, janky closet laptop, whatever) and do PC stuff with it. If a person wants a computer that can be (must be) tinkered with in a very hands-on way, then perhaps a learning- and tinkering-oriented SBC like a Raspberry Pi (new, old, 3, 4, 5, zero, Craigslist score, whatever) might be a better option. For my own part: I own some PCs that I do PC things with. I also own some Raspberry Pis that I do more-hackish things with. My Home Assistant rig runs in a VM on a (very cheap, used) small Lenovo M600 box, because I felt that this was the best way for me to accomplish my goal at the time. My usage of HA doesn't need any special IO, and I enjoy using VMs. It sits there and just works. My DIY energy monitoring rig runs on a Raspberry Pi 3, because I felt that this was the best way to accomplish that goal at that time. The system I chose absolutely requires the Raspberry Pi's GPIO, and conglomerates as a very small contraption that is easy to co-locate near the circuit breaker panel. It sits there and just works. I'm very pleased with these purchases. 10/10, they suit my own proclivities just fine. (If they didn't, then I'd like to think that I would have chosen differently.) It's OK to have more than one kind of product in a marketplace. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox#GeekPort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox#GeekPort
plugger 3y ago
Given the somewhat flaky nature of RPi's in terms of heat/load issues, and combined with the fact that they're quite slow I completely bypass them these days for cheap AMD miniPCs (x64). The Wo-We AMD Excavator A9-9400 unit has 8GB DDR4, a 128GB M2 drive, wifi, USB3, etc for $98USD. Despite how ugly it is it's still very good performance wise. https://www.wo-we.com/collections/mini-pc/products/mini-pc-amd-excavator-a9-9400 https://www.wo-we.com/collections/mini-pc/products/mini-pc-a...
- serf 3y ago
  it's just a different product. a lot of people need the rpi to be something different than a media center that gets stuffed somewhere. 90% of the rpis I have at home are interfacing with something via pins, not just the usb hub. if I want to do something like that with the amd option then i'm back to some kind of usb device mated to that and another software layer that'll be undoubtedly more poorly supported than the rpi equivalent. for something like a nas or media center though I absolutely agree with you.
  - pests 3y ago
    Right, for me the RPi is the system to hook a breadboard up to or some other hardware if I don't want to drop down to a raw microprocessor or an audrino-like and don't need anything faster than what an OS provides. I think there is a divide in the RPI community between electonic enthusiasts and those who just need a small portable PC (media center, game cabinet, NAS/server/etc)
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  For the same price you can get boards with Intel N100 which are newer and more powerful.
  - cosarara 3y ago
    For x1.5 the price, from what I can see. Are there any under $100?
pseudosavant 3y ago
This sums up Raspberry Pi to me. If I want to do something with a RPi there are probably a bunch of posts and videos related to it because of the incredible RPi community. Buy something like an ODROID and good luck. That's been my experience with non-RPi SBCs. If you need more than RPi, then a proper open platform like x86/x64 is really your only other 'community' option usually.

Hardware is more than numbers on a spec sheet. It's the community (proxy for support), developers, maintainers, etc. Hot take: If I need something more powerful than an RPI then I'm shooting for x86.

kiwijamo 3y ago

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and I've found it to struggle with basic stuff that is fast and easily done on low end x86 machines. But you're right about the community. When I had trouble with playing videos (massive tearing and frequent frame drops), I was able to find online that I needed to run a very specific video player (VLC) in a very specific desktop environment (the XFCE or whatever they use by default) running on top of a 32-bit kernel (which has the hardware acceleration features not present in the 64-bit kernel) to be able to take advantage of the hardware video acceleration. Nice to know but given that that sort of stuff just works out of the box on pretty much any x86 box, I've decided that my next tiny home server will be a low end x86 box. I had high hopes given the rave reviews I see online but the reality is somewhat not even close to the hype. Still a nice piece of kit for something very simple but don't expect too much from it.

shrubble 3y ago
The Intel N100 based home servers/thin clients like Beelink are more but will be far faster and barely use any more power.
- m4r1k 3y ago
  Beelink, Minisforum and others in the same category have awful, nearly nonexistent post-sales support, no bios/firmware updates, and it's not built to last like the NUC.
Toutouxc 3y ago
My home server is an Intel NUC 11, the cheapest, least powerful version. It has a dual core Celeron, cost around $200 with 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD. I put Debian on it, tweaked the fan curve so that the fan only spins under load, put the whole thing in an IKEA cabinet and forgotten about it. It just sits on the network, responds to SSH, runs whatever Docker container I throw at it. Zero issues. It didn’t come from a shady Chinese marketplace, didn’t need an esoteric charger, didn’t need a special distro or weird drivers, came in a nice cardboard box, with warranty, from the largest electronics retailer in the country. If you can’t tell, I’m still really happy about my purchase.
- ssl-3 3y ago
  Sure. It's an x86 PC. It does PC stuff, and it does it in a manner not unlike other PCs have done stuff for decades. There's nothing special about it. A Raspberry Pi (any versions, and their friends in the marketplace) is not a like a PC. It's a got a little ARM SoC. It's a lot smaller than your NUC -- it can fit into a normal pants pocket. It has easily-swapped storage, making brain transplants trivial. It includes weird interfaces, like for LCD screens and cameras, and also some GPIO that is included just for tinkering with and integrating into other projects. It can do PC stuff -- of course it can. It has USB and HDMI ports (and Ethernet and Wifi), much as a modern PC might. It can run Linux (and a whole desktop OS) just as a PC can. But it can also do other stuff that PCs don't generally do, and that PCs (examples like the awesome GeekPort on the BeBox[1] notwithstanding) have never generally done. Your NUC was sold as a complete system (including an absolutely-required "esoteric charger") that can be unboxed, powered on, and immediately put to work. A Raspberry Pi is sold as a bare board that -- by itself -- can't actually accomplish anything at all, just as a common PC motherboard also cannot accomplish anything by itself. They're very different things, with potential use-cases that only somewhat overlap. Why this is still an issue of contention after very nearly a dozen years of Raspberry Pi existence boggles the mind. I mean: Some people enjoy dining out (and may not even know how to cook), and some others grow their own food (and thus participate in every stage of its production and consumption by necessity). Neither set of people are inherently wrong for choosing to do things their own way. Even if one set can't can't understand why the other set does things so differently, both are still perfectly OK. If a person wants a prebuilt PC to do PC stuff with, then they should absolutely get a prebuilt PC (new with warranty, old, janky closet laptop, whatever) and do PC stuff with it. If a person wants a computer that can be (must be) tinkered with in a very hands-on way, then perhaps a learning- and tinkering-oriented SBC like a Raspberry Pi (new, old, 3, 4, 5, zero, Craigslist score, whatever) might be a better option. For my own part: I own some PCs that I do PC things with. I also own some Raspberry Pis that I do more-hackish things with. My Home Assistant rig runs in a VM on a (very cheap, used) small Lenovo M600 box, because I felt that this was the best way for me to accomplish my goal at the time. My usage of HA doesn't need any special IO, and I enjoy using VMs. It sits there and just works. My DIY energy monitoring rig runs on a Raspberry Pi 3, because I felt that this was the best way to accomplish that goal at that time. The system I chose absolutely requires the Raspberry Pi's GPIO, and conglomerates as a very small contraption that is easy to co-locate near the circuit breaker panel. It sits there and just works. I'm very pleased with these purchases. 10/10, they suit my own proclivities just fine. (If they didn't, then I'd like to think that I would have chosen differently.) It's OK to have more than one kind of product in a marketplace. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox#GeekPort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeBox#GeekPort

plugger 3y ago

Given the somewhat flaky nature of RPi's in terms of heat/load issues, and combined with the fact that they're quite slow I completely bypass them these days for cheap AMD miniPCs (x64). The Wo-We AMD Excavator A9-9400 unit has 8GB DDR4, a 128GB M2 drive, wifi, USB3, etc for $98USD. Despite how ugly it is it's still very good performance wise. https://www.wo-we.com/collections/mini-pc/products/mini-pc-amd-excavator-a9-9400 https://www.wo-we.com/collections/mini-pc/products/mini-pc-a...

serf 3y ago
it's just a different product. a lot of people need the rpi to be something different than a media center that gets stuffed somewhere. 90% of the rpis I have at home are interfacing with something via pins, not just the usb hub. if I want to do something like that with the amd option then i'm back to some kind of usb device mated to that and another software layer that'll be undoubtedly more poorly supported than the rpi equivalent. for something like a nas or media center though I absolutely agree with you.
- pests 3y ago
  Right, for me the RPi is the system to hook a breadboard up to or some other hardware if I don't want to drop down to a raw microprocessor or an audrino-like and don't need anything faster than what an OS provides. I think there is a divide in the RPI community between electonic enthusiasts and those who just need a small portable PC (media center, game cabinet, NAS/server/etc)
DeathArrow 3y ago
For the same price you can get boards with Intel N100 which are newer and more powerful.
- cosarara 3y ago
  For x1.5 the price, from what I can see. Are there any under $100?

pseudosavant 3y ago

This sums up Raspberry Pi to me. If I want to do something with a RPi there are probably a bunch of posts and videos related to it because of the incredible RPi community. Buy something like an ODROID and good luck. That's been my experience with non-RPi SBCs. If you need more than RPi, then a proper open platform like x86/x64 is really your only other 'community' option usually.