Comment on good alternatives to raspberry pi which are cheap and efficient?
hoodlem@hoodlem.me 1 year ago
I got a mini pc (e.g. a NUC). I did this after the price for rasps went sky high. Check out used NUCs, you can get a lot of power for the price.
I just picked up one of these since I had the change: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C1X191NR
Plus a 4TB samsung external drive. Should be awesome, and fits anywhere in my house.
Seconded that used minis ought to be quite reasonable and fast if this seems like too much. (Although you can also get a similar new one for half this, if you cut down on disk and ram.)
The one advantage of using megacorp “1-liter” business PCs from Dell/HP/Lenovo over brands like Minisforum is that parts commonality / availability is likely to be a lot better for the big brand boxes.
This will make little or no difference to a lot of people of course :) in my case it’s a big factor because I’m trying to do everything on a shoestring budget and I want the hardware to be physically small but still as repairable/upgradable as possible, and to last as long as possible. So I ended up going with used 1L PCs as right now they are the smallest platform that I know of that tends to be upgradable (no soldered RAM etc) and have lots of parts available.
That’s actually great for the price, i7 12, 32Gb ram, 1Tb M2, etc? Not bad at all! Would even be a great little gaming setup
I have a nuc from 2015-2018 and its very bad at heat management. Like during summertime if the AC is not on its going to reboot itself after a while when using it (it can reach 35C° where it is stored) I now have a optiplex micro which is much better but I still want to use the NUC for something else
evidences@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is the way I went, I got the tiny form factor versions of a Lenovo and Dell business desktops for about 100 bucks each. If you get lucky you can find real good deals on these things most will take a 2.5" drive as well as a m.2 drive, and they’ll fit upwards of 32 or 64gb of ram depending on the device.