A dual core Skylake i3? Yikes, I wouldn't get anyone to pay for that in 2024 to use into the future long term as their main PC, on account of how bloated the web is and how slow it can make such a old low end CPU. That's slower than many smartphones today. But if you could get it for free I wouldn't complain.
I gave my parents my old Skylake and it's reasonably usable but that's an i5 quad core and for me that's where I draw the line.
I'm sure others will disagree and say how they're still running core 2 duos and they're perfectly fine, but that's just my opinion, and you can have yours.
The original Pi was an extremely poor desktop replacement. Both the speed of the processor and the available memory were barriers to running desktop applications. In contrast, the Pi 5 can perform acceptably for many applications while using mainstream open source software. I agree that the flagship Pi is no longer in its own original category. I would simply argue the category is defined by capabilities rather than price.
If you are interested in a Pi that is in their original category, there are options available.
The Pi4 1GB is $35. The Pi4 4GB is $55, and Pi5 4GB is $60 It is only the Pi5 8GB that is $80. The Pi Zero is even cheaper, $15 for Pi Zero W.
The advantage of the Raspberry Pi is the software. Raspbian just works and will continue to work. Other SBC might not work with their software and who knows if it will ever be updated. My understanding is that there are stable OSes for other boards, but then have to find boards that work.
I recently got Pi5 to use as computer, and microPC is probably better for that. But the Pi can be repurposed for other uses. I'm pretty sure I can pull the microSD card from Pi4 and put in Pi5 and it will just work. The Pi4, which is an awful computer, will do some thing that microPC can't possibly do.
Where do you live that you can buy Raspberry Pis at that price? Sorry, but last time I checked, either everything was out of stock, limited to single piece orders, or way above MSRP. When I checked the local marketplace (not eBay), people sold them for above MSRP, used! Imagine that. Used product for more than MSRP. In the electronics space. Crazy.
Micro Center has them in stock but doesn't list inventory on the website. I was pretty surprised to see RPi0W 2s, 8GB RPi 5s, and a smattering of A, B, and B+ boards in the cabinet when I stopped by after the New Year.
How long ago did you look? The Pi stock issues have been fixed since around the release of Pi5. Looking at rpilocator.com, everything is in stock.
I was looking at Adafruit where I could have bought all of them for the official prices. But can't buy more than 2 though. The same seems to be true of the UK and EU shops I checked.
The whole idea of an SBC is to use it when you can’t use any other form of computation, like for example an IoT on a tree that will collect some logs in the middle of nowhere, or a robot, or maybe as replacement for a poor-specs embedded device, trying to use it for anything else like a server or a desktop replacement is just naive thinking, unless it’s only for fun and pushing-the-limits purposes.
They appear to have similar performance to my 12 year old i5-2600k that I replaced only ~6 months ago. It was a perfectly fine machine. I could have continued using it for development if I didn't have the $1000+ I dropped on a Zen4 replacement.
I recently switched from a Pi4 to a Wyse 5070 ($35 second hand off eBay if you're patient). Apart from HomeAssistant, it's running all of my local services. It's significantly faster. It's also running from an SSD instead of SD, this is a big deal because SDs are known to die pretty quickly.
The undisclosed hero feature is QuickSync. Jellyfin was practically unusable on the Pi4.
The only thing I'm missing is somewhere to slot in an Arc GPU. I'm pretty certain that some light local LLM inference would be possible.
I’m glad to see this because I have been debating getting a used computer or a cheap desktop to run as a torrent box but haven’t had any good recommendations come my way. Ideally, I want to run a Linux distro on it and have it sync everything over to my Mac which has plex on it.
I’m curious if others have done something similar?
Even tho reddit seems to have "gone out of fashion", check the homelab (and minilab) subreddits, plenty of suggestions there.
I built a smallish Proxmox cluster out of Lenovo M910q uSFF boxes - works pretty good and sips power (the i5-6500 series has a pretty good performance to power ratio imho).
I've been running a HP ProDesk 600 g1 for years now. It's my NAS (using external storage), general purpose server and home assistant server. I initially bought it for other purposes, but it made sense to use it. It's not as power-hungry as "real desktops" due to its laptop power supply, and much more capable of running a bunch of docker containers than something like a Pi. Second-hand this kind of computers can be had for super cheap, many companies use them.
I got mine for €100 many years ago, including a power supply and an Intel pro SSD of 512GB. For that price I can't get a recent raspberry pi with decent SD card and power supply. I guess I do pay some more in terms of electricity, but it's reasonably efficient and the extra performance makes up for it.
I've been trying to find one to replace my 10 year old i5 NUC, but there's so many mini-PCs! My wish list is a bit exotic, but I'm using it as a general purpose home automation, photo backup, video hosting device, and I also want to run some startup idea websites on docker images. I'd like: 32GB RAM (upgradeable to 64). Low power usage (<10W idle). Good video transcoding support for Plex. Needs to support 2 internal and 2 USB hard drives for BTRFS, so I can lose 1 drive without any problems and 2 for the critical data.
Same here. In fact I've been using a fellow Ars Technica-recommended HP Stream Mini [0] as my Kodi box for many years, with an upgraded Wifi chip, extra RAM, and an SSD, but it's getting long in the tooth and Windows 10's frequent unkillable, non-deferrable background upgrade/virus scan processes make the damn thing unusable half the time. I keep meaning to blow the Win 10 install away and try installing Linux Mint or something, but it keeps falling into my backlog.
I do wish NVIDIA would release a new Shield already, as that would probably solve my problems, but the last one they released is like five years old at this point.
I bought an N100 mini that looks just like the Ars picture, but it's branded from Beelink as an S12Pro -- it does all of this and more. Mine is in the living room with the HDMI attached to my TV, but I RDP into it for most things. I installed WSL and and initially ran Plex from Docker, but switched to Windows native as it is simpler to setup and maintain.
I used Kodi for quite awhile, but now running Jellyfin on my main (NAS) server and just using Infuse on an Apple TV provides quite the similar interface, and simpler.
64GB is not common on these small machines, but clustering them is very easy. I run a cluster of 4 RPi Zero W's with Docker Swarm. Certainly good enough for playing with mini and mainframe emulation. I also have a stack of HP thin clients that will be turned into a beefier cluster.
I bought a Beelink PC for $125 off Amazon when I was considering an RPi. It's hooked up to my 65" TV. It runs plex, Youtube and Spotify and they is about all I want it for. I usually view 1080p movies but have done 4k without any issue unless they were bigger than 6 gigs.
It has been great and I have no complaints, except the wifi seems I bit slower on some torrent downloads than my laptop which is just 7 feet away from it. (I haven't delved into that to see if it is actually happening and if I can fix it.)
At the same time, I bought another for my elderly parents and they have used it for web and email with obviously no problem. They should be good with using it for that for another 5 years or more, assuming no hardware malfunction.
I was going to install Mint on it but I am also using it with the Android subsystem installed so I can watch what my dog is going on my Wyze cam. It runs the Wyze app. A common theme to this PC is is I just haven't gotten around to looking into running the same thing on Linux.
Got two Beelinks here. One Celeron one for home assistant (struggles to run hi res youtube), other Ryzen one for dads Windows desktop replacement - beats my M1 Pro for 1/3rd the price.
When my home server recently died I was in a rush, and Amazon had Beelink EQ12's for next day delivery.
The N100 made me think "Intel is back!". The article's description is spot on - sips power (6W) yet snappy enough for day to day tasks. GPU isn't anything to write home about, but it supports hardware video codecs so it's fast enough for general web browsing. I'd guesstimate 10x improvement in MIPS/Watt over the GX-420CA based box it replaced.
The Beelink EQ12 case made me wish I had more time to find what I was really after: the same hardware in a fanless box. Fans have to be cleaned, and if you every have to take the thing apart to blow the dust out be prepared for to spend an inordinately long time getting the all screws back in. It's entirely possible you will give up.
But overall, it's a pretty awesome machine for the price. The N100 is undoubtedly the current sweet spot.
Ive been using a i5 7260u NUC as my proxmox box for sometime but my parents need to move from their 2010 pentium dual core to something more current.
I thought of giving them the nuc (I don’t want them to have to deal with driver issues or unknown reliability) and I got myself a beelink s12 pro (since I can put up with those things)
I haven’t even booted it yet but I’m starting to think that a I should get them a Lenovo tiny and just keep my nuc as is. I hadn’t thought about the bios malware and now I’m concerned.
The main reason I went with the n100 was the power usage for me (my power is 50c/kWh, theirs is like 1/10 that). The nuc is around 20-30w average, I guess I can put up with that.
Every time I look into using underpowered ARM SBCs as a desktop replacement, I come to the conclusion that I really like the thought of using them more than actually using them.
It would make the coolest paper weight that I own, though.
At bare minimum never trust the operating system that comes on cheap PCs. re-install the operating system yourself.
On a harder level: there is no way to know if the drive firmware has un-destroyable malware, or the boot firmware is compromised. (update the firmware yourself for sure at minimum, not sure thats even possible with most hard drives)
45 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadI gave my parents my old Skylake and it's reasonably usable but that's an i5 quad core and for me that's where I draw the line.
I'm sure others will disagree and say how they're still running core 2 duos and they're perfectly fine, but that's just my opinion, and you can have yours.
RPi used to be $25 or $35 , and then use equipment lying around.
Now it's $80, plus high performance power, case, active cooling, storage, etc.
RPi is no longer in it's own original category. And when you compare via cost, it's a loser these days.
The only way the RPI isn't a complete loser is inertia, pure and simple.
If you are interested in a Pi that is in their original category, there are options available.
The advantage of the Raspberry Pi is the software. Raspbian just works and will continue to work. Other SBC might not work with their software and who knows if it will ever be updated. My understanding is that there are stable OSes for other boards, but then have to find boards that work.
I recently got Pi5 to use as computer, and microPC is probably better for that. But the Pi can be repurposed for other uses. I'm pretty sure I can pull the microSD card from Pi4 and put in Pi5 and it will just work. The Pi4, which is an awful computer, will do some thing that microPC can't possibly do.
I was looking at Adafruit where I could have bought all of them for the official prices. But can't buy more than 2 though. The same seems to be true of the UK and EU shops I checked.
I mean the title is withholding information and wants us to click on it.
Maybe the "Pi 5 is still an odd fit for day-to-day desktop use; cheap mini PCs come closer" subtitle would have been better.
The undisclosed hero feature is QuickSync. Jellyfin was practically unusable on the Pi4.
The only thing I'm missing is somewhere to slot in an Arc GPU. I'm pretty certain that some light local LLM inference would be possible.
I’m curious if others have done something similar?
I built a smallish Proxmox cluster out of Lenovo M910q uSFF boxes - works pretty good and sips power (the i5-6500 series has a pretty good performance to power ratio imho).
I got mine for €100 many years ago, including a power supply and an Intel pro SSD of 512GB. For that price I can't get a recent raspberry pi with decent SD card and power supply. I guess I do pay some more in terms of electricity, but it's reasonably efficient and the extra performance makes up for it.
Intel if you want to be sure to be able to run Linux, otherwise, they just run MacOS.
I do wish NVIDIA would release a new Shield already, as that would probably solve my problems, but the last one they released is like five years old at this point.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/cheap-functional-upg...
If you're not loading it heavily that might not be a problem.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/18794/asrock-industrial-4x4-b...
AMD's APUs are great for this form factor, but I think the Plex transcoding support is a YMMV situation.
https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph18794/PowerConsumpt...
It has been great and I have no complaints, except the wifi seems I bit slower on some torrent downloads than my laptop which is just 7 feet away from it. (I haven't delved into that to see if it is actually happening and if I can fix it.)
At the same time, I bought another for my elderly parents and they have used it for web and email with obviously no problem. They should be good with using it for that for another 5 years or more, assuming no hardware malfunction.
Overall, I would buy another BeeLink.
The N100 made me think "Intel is back!". The article's description is spot on - sips power (6W) yet snappy enough for day to day tasks. GPU isn't anything to write home about, but it supports hardware video codecs so it's fast enough for general web browsing. I'd guesstimate 10x improvement in MIPS/Watt over the GX-420CA based box it replaced.
The Beelink EQ12 case made me wish I had more time to find what I was really after: the same hardware in a fanless box. Fans have to be cleaned, and if you every have to take the thing apart to blow the dust out be prepared for to spend an inordinately long time getting the all screws back in. It's entirely possible you will give up.
But overall, it's a pretty awesome machine for the price. The N100 is undoubtedly the current sweet spot.
I haven’t even booted it yet but I’m starting to think that a I should get them a Lenovo tiny and just keep my nuc as is. I hadn’t thought about the bios malware and now I’m concerned.
The main reason I went with the n100 was the power usage for me (my power is 50c/kWh, theirs is like 1/10 that). The nuc is around 20-30w average, I guess I can put up with that.
It would make the coolest paper weight that I own, though.
On a harder level: there is no way to know if the drive firmware has un-destroyable malware, or the boot firmware is compromised. (update the firmware yourself for sure at minimum, not sure thats even possible with most hard drives)