1034
You'll have no end of problems and won't know whether it's a hardware or software problem.
Damn straight. Another reason not to buy a pi.
Yeah... no. Old laptops idle at around 50 °C.
That just means they become 100% efficient in winter!
Idk, heat pumps have become a lot more popular in recent years.
my 20 year old pc runs at ~5°C above room temp under load
You really shouldn't be spending your days in a room at 45 °C.
you are joking, but my room actually feels like that.
So do Raspberry Pi?
Get a slightly bigger heatsink.
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.
Its all fun and games until the power bill arrives. Performance per watt is important, please look at that first. Don't be me.
A RPi is going to be smaller, quieter, and 10x more energy efficient though...
load more comments
(5 replies)
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.
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.
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.
10£ more, or 50% more expensive?
Don't like the expensive version? Get a Zero 2 W which outspecs the original by a wide margin.
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
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
All computers are single board computers if you take out their guts and tape them to a board
Technically a Pi is a single chip computer but they're called an SBC because they replaced stuff like a Motorola 68HC11.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
load more comments
(10 replies)
Power consumption is a massive reason to really not do that. Its cheap for a reason, its takes a shitload of power to be shit and you will pay more in energy than you save in hardware unless its only powered on for short periods of time - a server typically isn't.
This is actually something that applies to cheap products too. Was in Asda a little while ago and saw 2 LED bulbs with the same lumen rating. Cheaper one used 3w more and you only saved £1. Running it for 8 hours a day for a year would cost double that saving in electricity. For a server you are looking at almost £2 per watt each year. Does that ewaste look so good to you now?
Some things are absolutely worth getting second hand, but you really should be careful considering the power cost as well.
Quick edit: If you don't need it running 24/7, consider something like AWS too. I love selfhosting but if its not running much it might be cheaper to not bother buying hardware.
This is generally not true. If you are using your laptop as a home server chances are it's going to be idling 99% of the time and laptops are generally pretty good in terms of idle power draw if you manage to disable the screen (or just disconnect it, take it off and find a way to repurpose it)
And in terms of environmental impact saving a laptop from landfill is definitely better since the majority of a computers impact is from the co2 emmissions from the manufacturing process. And this isn't taking into account the likely ethical considerations such as supporting terrible mining practices for resources like cobalt.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(31 replies)
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
1034 points (97.5% liked)
Linux
55347 readers
883 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS