I have a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 8GB of RAM, and I’m looking for a bit more powerful solution that would have similar power consumption. I would like to host a Minecraft server, but chunks take too long to generate. Do you have any recommendations?
To give a different opinion than all the thin-clients, old laptops can be a good choice too. I am a bit preferrential to really nice old thinkpads.
If you buy them used you can get insane prices (~$40) and also you get all the laptop conveniences of a keyboard, screen, battery (for power failure). Also I think the power/performance ratio is pretty much the same to the thin clients.
Using the laptops battery isn’t a good long term solution though as having it plugged in all the time will wear it down fast, not to mention that the battery is build for maximum energy density and not durability/safety. It just simply not working when it is finally needed is almost a pretty light issue when it can just also inflate and pose a huge fire risk next to all of your data. Laptops are great power efficient platforms though for servers
First off, I think you’re completely right in that laptop batteries are definitely a non-ideal solution. And, I’m really not an expert in this, so take my words with a grain of salt.
You could mitigate a bit of the dangers by doing some of the following (I only did the first):
- Reducing the max charge level to 50% of the capacity.
- Monitor your batteries health to alert for any discrepancies.
- Switch out your batteries every couple of years (which is super easy without downtime on the aformentioned old thinkpads).
If you are an under $100 budget, there seems to be an argument that maybe you are willing to risk a little bit for that extra power reliability.
For that the laptop has to support a charge level on a hardware level though, just setting a limit will cause it to constantly switch between using the battery and charging the battery which would be much worse than keeping it at 100%. Most older and budget systems don’t support that
I see. On the surface, that seems to make sense. I might need to rethink how I configure my batteries.
Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny, or another brand similar.
The pricing since the pandemic has been cheaper than Raspberry Pi4’s in my region.
just got 2 lenovos to begin my self hosted journey B)
got me a Dell optiplex mini 9020 i7 for less than my Pi
check out the orange pi 5 and 5 plus. you’ll most likely have to purchase from aliexpress but could be what you’re after.
OrangePi makes a decent solution with a built-in 8GB eMMC module. Makes it much faster. Dunno if you are CPU or IO bound on the RPi4.
I use an Odroid N2+ running DietPi (Debian) for my home server. My kids and their cousins play a Minecraft world together and I haven’t heard any complaints. It’s my plex server and a web site, too. https://www.makeuseof.com/odroid-n2-raspberry-pi-4-compared/
I assume you’re not transcoding anything.
looks like they’re more than a Pi where I am anyway though.
Yeah, direct play only. Nothing over 1080p.
Question for the folks in here, are there any inexpensive SBCs with USB-C that can do data and power under ~80 USD? I’ve seen I think the Orange Pi 5 and a few others but I’m not sure what the track record on support is.
switching to a khadas vim4 myself.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SBC Single-Board Computer SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
[Thread #48 for this sub, first seen 15th Aug 2023, 19:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I recently got a beelink mini with an N95 and 8gb of ram and the thing rips, running Proxmox with a few linux and windows VMS all sharing resources, replaced 2 pi3s and a pi4 with it for my home automation services.
Only trouble I’m having is hardware iGPU passthrough is iffy, but that might just be me not having the linux-fu to get it working stably.
Have you checked out the ODROID? https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h3-plus
Assuming you’ve got a spare SSD and RAM lying around, this could be a great option and is x86 rather than arm.
You can’t have more calculation power for the same electrical power consumption. A thin clirnt with an i3 or i5 maybe.
luckily smaller process nodes and architecture refinements are a thing, my dude.
This guy took moores law and threw it out the window
And which piece of consumer hardware offers more computing power (relevant for minecraft server) for the same amount of electrical power than a rpi4?
A faster CPU with a power limit applied lol
Yeah an HP Elite Desk Mini or HP Pro Desk Mini would be great.
