You'll have no end of problems and won't know whether it's a hardware or software problem.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Damn straight. Another reason not to buy a pi.
Alternative. Cheap android box and coreelec.
You can have them for about 20 bucks. Have minimal power consumption. And small power factor. They also have ARM architecture.
They are good for low power applications.
Its all fun and games until the power bill arrives. Performance per watt is important, please look at that first. Don't be me.
Yeah... no. Old laptops idle at around 50 °C.
my 20 year old pc runs at ~5°C above room temp under load
That just means they become 100% efficient in winter!
Idk, heat pumps have become a lot more popular in recent years.
So do Raspberry Pi?
It's a good idea until you consider the fact that a Raspberry Pi will be astronomically more power efficient.
If you think in flops per watt, maybe a little bit, but not a lot. Do you have one or two good procs for almost free, or half a dozen new sbcs at $100 each? Takes a while to save back that amount in power.
My question is usually not how many flops, but how quickly and reliably those watts can give me just a few flops on demand.
A RPi is going to be smaller, quieter, and 10x more energy efficient though...
There are probably a dozen things you can do to save energy on orders of magnitude higher than using a pi.
Like: using the pi to manage your HVAC more efficiently.
Then do them. It's still not going to decrease the energy use of your server.
Look for refurbished elitedesk g5, it runs debian magnificantly! I splurged a bit on the memory and ssd and have a quite nice desktop (developer).
this is the way
Also, Raspberry Pi first got popular because of the size and cost. Now it's popular because it's popular. Not hating on them, I think they're cool, but they're not cheap any more. Especially with the scalping.
Getting x86_64 based systems is going to mean much less headache. Unless you truly truly need the size I wouldn't consider getting a Pi or other SBC. Just go to literally any used marketplace (Facebook, Craigslist, etc) and get anything.
Pi is popular with me because it's time efficient. Meaning: when I am trying to get it to do something, it takes less of my time to make the thing actually happen on Pi hardware as compared with most of the other small / embedded alternatives. Notable recent exception: ESPHome on ESP32 hardware, but even there the more limited variation of Raspberry hardware makes it similar to those fruity phones, MP3 players and computers - since there are a limited number of variations, you can usually find information specific to EXACTLY your setup, instead of having to infer from something almost the same, but figure out little wrinkles here and there due to differences between what you are working with and what you are reading about on the internet.
but they're not cheap any more
People say this, but they really are still cheap.
The original Raspberry Pi Model B launched for £22 in 2012. The entry level Raspberry Pi 5 is £46, but adjusted for inflation that's only £32 in 2012 money. So only £10 more expensive in real terms.
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is only £14.40, which is only £10 in 2012 money. Compare this to the original Raspberry Pi Model A, which launched for £16.
People look at the headline cost of the high end RPi 5s (£115 for the 16GB model, £76 for the 8GB), but fail to recognise that there was nothing comparable to these in the Raspberry Pi lineup before, and these are not the only models in the Raspberry Pi lineup now.
There was the supply shortage price spike, they really were stupid expensive then if you supported the hoarder/scalpers.
Since that has cleared... most of the Pi price increases (in inflation adjusted dollars) can be attributed to improved features like more RAM, or people acknowledging that having a good dedicated $20 power supply is preferable to dealing with the flakiness of that old phone charger you found under the bed.
Inflation adjustment doesn't really tell the whole story though, it's not like salaries have gone up by the same amount. Regardless, I don't like dealing with the Zero unless I specifically need something that tiny. It's just too annoying. Don't get me wrong! They're cool! I'm just saying unless I really need a Pi Zero I wouldn't wanna work with one. I'd rather work with x86_64 than Arm. Like even just getting Java working was really tricky on Zero. Much like a microcontroller has limitations for what you can run on them but they have other benefits, Zeros aren't really general purpose.
So yeah, dirt cheap used laptop for general purpose server beats out dirt cheap Pi in my book.
10£ more, or 50% more expensive?
Sure, but the specs aren't directly comparable.
They also still manufacture the RPi 4, which starts at £33- which is £23 in 2012 money.
Don't like the expensive version? Get a Zero 2 W which outspecs the original by a wide margin.
That's only true for the high-end Pi 5. Lower-powered models like the zero 2 are still cheap, and they're a lot easier to find than a few years ago.
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Only if you're running it at full load all the time and comparing that to a comparable number of raspberry pis it would take to do the same amount of work. Also, only if you live in a cold climate and the heat generated is not a concern and power is supplied by a renewable source so power isn't a concern.
Yeah... I'm not going to stick a clunky old laptop on top of my bookshelf and have it run 24/7 as my PiHole. My Pi Zero 2 W is far more appropriate.
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I'm sure silicon valley are stepping on each other, vying to get their hands on these super cheap laptops for their 24/7 AI training.
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