this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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Hey all, I'm looking to build a couple dashboards out around my house. I've done this before with rokchip boards and they are... fine, but not great. Is rpi the best option right now? Are there alternatives you really like? I'd like to keep it a single board to easily mount behind things where it doesn't take up a lot of space, and I won't lie I like the DIY feeling of it over something like a thin client.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Many have said this. If you don't need the GPIO, get a small PC.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Or if you do not care about power consumption.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The n100 and n200 have quite low TDP values for much better performance than a Pi.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

They still consume way more power than the pi. My pi fully loaded uses less power than my N100 router idle.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

A refurbished tiny/mini/micro PC will use more power in terms of sheer numbers, but the cost is still so small on them that it's really not worth considering for most.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you search ebay for Intel based thin clients, many are more powerful than RPi while being passively cooled and having very similar power consumption.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Never have seen a thin client that goes below 7ish Watt on idle. Basically every RPi does. https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Thin clients based on J5005 or J4105 generally idle under 5W. (Futro S740, Wyse 5070,..) They consume a bit more when 100% loaded (11W vs 8W), but they also provide about 2x performance of Pi4.

(That article you shared is measuring power consumption on the USB port, which does not take into account overhead of USB adapter itself)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Pls, provide some proof for those numbers. The 'under 5W mark' gets often claimed but i still have not seen a valid proof (a simple measurement with a wattmeter) of it other than some spec sheet.

The overhead does not matter really. USB 5V power supplies are cheap and efficient these days, yes you need to look out for an efficient one but even one with only 50% efficiency (which is really really bad) would only add 1W to the (lower than) 2W power in idle. That would still result in lower power in idle.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Anecdotally my NUC runs 2 linux VMs and a couple of LXCs, so it's never truly idling, and pulls an average of 7.5W.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thank you. Would love to see the true idle. The difference between idle and light load is often not that high. I imagine the CPU supports virtualization?

And would also love to know some more specs of the NUC.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

It has an older i3 quadcore @ 3ghz max with 16gb ram and 1tb nvme, can't remember the model number.

I think idle without any VMs or containers running is around 6.5W, so no it's not much lower.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I have a bunch of these myself and that is my experience, but don't have any screenshots now.

However there's great comparison of these thin clients if you don't mind Polish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLRplLPdd3Q

Just the relevant screens to save you some time:

Power usage:

Cinebench multi core:

The power usage in idle is within 2W from Pi 4 and the performance is about double compared to overclocked Pi 4. It's really quite viable alternative unless you need really small device. The only alternative size-wise is slightly bigger WYSE 3040, but that one has x5-z8350 CPU, which sits somewhere between Pi3B+ and Pi4 performance-wise. It is also very low power though and if you don't need that much CPU it is also very viable replacement. (these can be easily bought for about €60 on eBay, or cheaper if you shop around)

Also each W of extra idle power is about 9kWh extra consumed. Even if you paid 50c/kWh (which would be more than I've ever seen) that's €5 per year extra. So I wouldn't lose my sleep over 2W more or less. Prices here are high, 9kWh/y is rounding error.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=DLRplLPdd3Q

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

"Could not fetch embedded watch page"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What if I want a computer I can power via PoE?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I have never thought about this. Thanks for pointing it out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

You’re welcome.

And I do. I have a PoE switch so the more things I can make PoE the easier it is.