DON'T Use Raspberry Pis for Servers! (Use THIS)

[@nicolas.predella]

The main issue i ran into with non-Pi devices is poor support: devices which on the paper look interesting end up being unusable because they only run OK on an arm debian from 1999...

[@elmestguzman3038]

I sounded like a good alternative until you mention the 100mb networking and the GPIO that doesnt match raspberry pi layout. total deal breakers for me. I think a better performance comparison would be the Pi 3B. When available Thepihub has is for $42. Nice review really enjoy your videos.

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah I considered that comparison but couldn’t even find a pi3b available anywhere other than used

[@tobiwonkanogy2975]

i would say yes but the zero 2 (w) is the 3b in smaller form factor , just none available :(. was around 20 Canadian. sadness.

[@qwerty13380]

What exactly did you want to use this for where you would need 1Gb Ethernet?

[@troosimimimmi]

yeah its developed for music streaming purposes. it doesnt need fast lan. actually fast lan introduces noise and less compatibility.

[@gg-gn3re]

yea these are clearly pi2-3 power. Plenty of good boards from pine boards, friendly elec, and orange pi that are the same/better than pi4.

[@kekistanifreedomfighter4197]

For me what stands out is the hardware decoding for modern high efficiency video codecs like h256, vp9, and especially av1 since it's so new.

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah the AV1 caught me off guard. Wish I had a good way to actually test it

[@David_Quinn_Photography]

@@HardwareHaven could be a future video once you find some task using AV1?

[@nathanbrown492]

@@HardwareHaven yes please. If possible some good real-life benchmarks too. Perhaps try to decode a real-time stream as well as normal. I would recommend looking at the TomsHardware "AMD GPUs still lag behind Nvidia, Intel (Updated)" dated 9 March '23. You'll see that how good a codec is depends entirely on how good the encoder is done, not really the complexity of the codec.

[@shaitan9204]

A lot of KZbin videos are now using AV1 so that might be a good way to test.

[@goku445]

Great on a headless server, lol.

[@thewiirocks]

I think the real winner turns out to be the Orange Pi 5. Only slightly more expensive than the VIM1S, faster than the Pi 4, plenty of I/O, and support for M.2 drives. You can also swap built-in Wifi and Bluetooth for the M.2 by getting the 5b. But for server uses, I would generally recommend the original OPI5.

[@gpsoftsk1]

Is it able to decode H265 4k videos?

[@thewiirocks]

@@gpsoftsk1 Yes

[@gpsoftsk1]

@@thewiirocks That's good then. Is it also supported by libreelec / coreelec?

[@SbiriJJ]

it cost double, no sense to compare.

[@thewiirocks]

@@SbiriJJuntil recently, they've been pretty competitive as the only RPis available have been vastly overpriced. Now that they're becoming more available again, the two are still somewhat comparable. A 4gb RPi4 is $55 while an OPi5 4gb is $80. 8gb is $75 vs $100 respectively. And 16gb is... only available on the Orange Pi 5. 😉

[@AI-xi4jk]

I like your calm and unbiased presentation. You keep it interesting without having to resort to cheap KZbin tricks like talking very fast or shouting or other things. 👍

[@HardwareHaven]

That means a ton! Thanks 😊

[@June18887]

For me, it wasn't unbiased. Why didn't he compare it to a pi 3?

[@HardwareHaven]

@@June18887 because I don't have one and they're still pretty dang expensive

[@3waver]

Agreed, I can’t stand listening to that other channel with that red bearded, fast talking , try hard hipster. Too bad, because he covers raspberry pi stuff that interests me. Your presentation is much more informative.

[@xianglongchen3088]

The comment is to the point.

[@brian2590]

I bought some Khada's boards around 2017. The flashing tool at that time was highly confusing and in Chinese, if that was not frustrating enough it required Microsoft windows. Flashing was a process that took many attempts. you would literally waste hours of you life. While the hardware was impressive compared to the RPI3 at the time the Khada's VIM was tossed in a box where it's sat for 5 years. It is good to see they have integrated an onboard flashing OS. I may consider them again.

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah, I didn't mess with the windows flashing tool at all. I probably should've, but at the same time, I was able to do everything I needed with their oowow flashing tool, so I feel like that's good enough haha

[@davocc2405]

I ran a Pi 2 for quite some time with 100mbit Ethernet (the adaptor is on the USB bus on that system) and also USB-2 connected spinner hard drives. Functionally it worked within requirements - it was able to serve and exceed streaming speed requirements to watch video on a PC that was read directly from the device, the OS handled contention rather well so slowing down to a point of impeding serving (on SAMBA) was surprisingly rare. I found it stable and workable, the only reason I moved it onto another function was the appearance of the Rock64 which had a USB-3 and had gigabit ethernet on a proper bus of its own; software was remarkably weak on this platform as Pine were comparatively freeloading off the community at the time (according to some insiders). I find that manufacturers who focus too much on android do it to the detriment of everything else; that said some manufacturers are outsourcing their OS development to DietPi or Armbian which is a superb way to handle the problem, the OS development there is generally quite good and their update and maintenance processes are well run. But if your objective is an always-on server that can do slave-functions both these might work. Examples of "slave functions" include file serving on a basic/standard level, download-mule functions running an Aria2 service to perform large scale downloads in the background leaving your browser and workstations free to do their thing without even having to be turned on, an absolute Godsend for slower connections, large files or kicking things off before you leave for work or go to bed.... There's a wild number of other things that both of these can perform as their projects were developed for even earlier and less featured eras of SBCs.

[@manicmarauder]

After seeing how well this held up against the Pi4, now I kinda do want to see their more powerful version. I do think the different gpio was a bit of a misstep though.

[@Nik930714]

Maybe the Pi 3 Model B or B+ would be a better comparison. The Zero originally started as a super low cost PC (it was $5 when it came out) and the prices are currently high because of lower supply and scalpers. According to an interview with Raspberry's CEO, the supply problems with the Zero and the 4 should be resolved by the end of the year and I expect prices to drop like a rock. With all that being said, I'm not trying to hate on the video, just trying to be constructive. I do agree with all the the other cool stuff about the VIM1S and I think it looks like a cool SBC. As someone who designs purpose built SBC for a living, its always nice to be introduced to a new general purpose SBC manufacturer.

[@contonium365]

i think that as soon as they lower the base cost the demand will go crazy and make it rise back up for another few months

[@madson-web]

2024 is here and they are still expensive. As the other person said, it is more likely demand will even grow up. I'm pretty sure prices won't go down any time soon.

[@Nik930714]

​@@madson-webYeah my comment has not aged all that well. How the time flies i could have sworn this was like 4 mounts ago. Still they are not as scaled as before and there is some available supply, at least where i live. This goes doubly for the CM4 modules. So while the timeline is not what i envisioned, i think its heading in the right direction.

[@madson-web]

@@Nik930714 Yeah it does but, 7 months already wow.

[@Comm0ut]

Your other videos convince me that I don't need one of those for a file server when I can score various much ballsier thin clients and tiny desktops used and ready to go. Between Hardware Haven and STH used business class hardware looks mighty good.

[@LeoLijo]

The thing with these rpi alternatives is that there is always something that completley ruins it, if its a lack of ethernet or just software support but i dont know if there is any arm sbc thats actually a raspberry pi replacement, x86 sbcs are a good alternative tho because they are often more powerful, have sata or even pcie but they are more expensive than arm sbcs which also kinda ruins it for some people, tho spending more money on a x86 based sbc is a wayyy better deal than buying a raspberry pi right now I dont know, if you wanna use sbcs for a homelab probably the best thing is to use a rpi if you already have it from before or buy an x86 sbc, or just actually buy a used mini office pc or an old pc and use that

[@timecubed]

I feel like _if_ a SBC came out that acted as a drop in replacement for a rpi then the rpi foundation might try to chase after it. If a drop in replacement is made, and was cheaper than current rpi models, it would probably ruin the company and completely destroy it, so it's probably in their best interest to make sure that doesn't happen. Though that's entirely speculation on my part.

[@yjk_ch]

RPi 4 does have ability to boot from internet when OS is not present(It boots into OS installation program), which if I remember correctly, can be also entered by holding Shift during boot. But still, having recovery system on the board itself is really nice on VIM1S. And on Pi 4, you also have to wait for Pi to download boot image from the server.

[@XSmile2008]

In my oppinion main point to choose Raspberry Pi over chinese boards, is RPi made in Great Britain and not in China. Support is great and comunity is huge.

[@evilcoleslaw]

LibreComputer also has the ROC-RK3328-CC (Renegade) 2GB RAM variant for only $5 more than Le Potato. USB 3 and gigabit. Replaced a dead Pi3 B+ with one and am very happy. No onboard BT/Wifi though.

[@LibreComputer]

Le Potato is leagues ahead in software running all the latest Linux OSes since it has upstream support. VIM1S uses the S905X4 SoC which will never have good upstream support so in a year, the software will be obsolete. It's already insecure due to lack of Linux updates.

[@jpzv_old]

Tip from someone who works everyday with RPi and alternstives: Don't ever buy a chinese clone/alternative of RPi, even if it's "just" for a server. If you need a small factor computer, either for a server or for a IOT device, you should wait until you can afford an RPi, otherwise you'll be stuck with a slow, unreliable, and unsupported hardware lying around for many types of projects. If yo just need a server, you can get a cheap x86 or x64 old computer for you HomeAssistsnt, Apache/Ngix, or whatever other type of project of your need, and with no or almost none type of problem. And if you have a Power Draw relsted issue, then just use an Android phone for thst lol (jk, in reality, if that's your case, then you should ask yourself if you actually need a server in a first place)

[@the_bogeyman.]

I was lucky to purchase the last R.Pi 4B 8GB and R.Pi 400 on the shelf of a local store, at normal price and I am glad I went for it. I wanted to get some more R.Pi 4B 4GB and 8GB, but they never came back in stock and online prices was insane all over the place. The Raspberry Pi 5 was presented and it's coming very soon, I am half tempted to preorder a few of them (at human msrp) thrhu their selected resellers. I have the feeling that we gonna see the same scenario of crazy prices and scalping. Time will tell.

[@dave597]

Sadly the price rises are all because of 3rd party sellers reselling, and this is primarily due to lack of availability to the consumer market, and it seems like it will continue this way for the foreseeable future, easily into next year at least. Which is a shame because their original mission was to make rpi available for lots of people for educational purposes, but no longer a realistic option anymore.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

As a German i have just ONE requirement: the LESS power consumption the better. Because energy prices in German are just absolutely insane and getting insaner with each day....

[@n.w.aicecube5713]

less than 2w? have you found any?

[@bluejack5715]

Ich zahle genauso viel wie vor 2 Jahren für Strom. Bitte nicht so fakenews verbreiten in die Welt über unser geliebtes Deutschland!!

[@draculakickyourass]

Half Watt plus or minus won't make you rich or poor,as you pay in KILOWATT/hour ,so if you divide the kilowatt/hour price by 2000, it would resut in a 0,00000......1 cents economy, or about half euro cent per year, LOL. It gives advantage to users like me, as my Pi4 died (from sun heat,car was parked all day in the sun at beach here in Spain) as it was installed on my old car,controlling locking,engine start-stop,air conditoner,remotely from the phone and entertainment for the back seats screens. So,as this one consumes less, is an advantage for me ,being able to not worry of depleting the battery if the car is not used 2-3 days. Thats the best solution i found,because i'm not some brilliant german egineer,but just a humble romanian construction worker.

[@AndreasDelleske]

Not true, we are having less than medium prices in the EU even for residential buildings.

[@carloscervantes836]

My HP Stream laptop running Debian and Pihole seems to avg about 4w, happy I could use it for something interesting as Windows was no longer usable on it.

[@jonspoonamore3721]

Old Net/Admin here... Great video!!! I loved the PI when it came out years ago. It fit the bill for a lot of projects. But IMO.... These days it better and mostly-cheaper to re-purpose old PCs for Server Builds. That's unless you really need the physical specs of a PI-type system. I can't stand to not have the ability to install a card(s) to have a needed feature(s) in a server build.

[@mchlbk]

Old PCs are too power hungry.

[@callmebigpapa]

I just got my Le Potato running and Ubuntu was too slow so I pivoted to Armbian and it is looking good. Great purchase for my use case.

[@darkceptor44]

Great video, this shows me that my Orange Pi Zero 2 wasn't the worst purchase compared to the actual Pi Zero, though it sucks compared to even Le Potato, I ran sysbench on it and the results were 502 t1 and 1975 t4 but I can't be mad when it's at least running 8 containers on only 1GB of RAM.

[@fahrimertdincer8421]

Which containers are you runing

[@darkceptor44]

@@fahrimertdincer8421 it changed a bit, now its running: forgejo, homeassistant, caddy, monitor (personal project), adguardhome, linkding, vault (personal project), homepage, flatnotes and nelix (personal project), used to have nginx-proxy-manager and pihole but swapped to adguardhome + caddy recently because they're both made in go and run better

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

For the zero I found that its usually just precompiled binaries that dont take such an older cpu into account. If you build it yourself with a crosscompiler you can usually get it to run just fine anyway.

[@David_Quinn_Photography]

this seems like a great little SBC I almost bought the potato a while back for making a super cheap NAS till I looked up some reviews on making it a NAS.

[@markconger8049]

I’m really disappointed at new boards that do not have either a SATA port or an M.2 slot. It has become excruciatingly obvious that users of SBCs often use them for a server and USB3, eMMC, and SD card storage options are not going to suffice.

[@kattz753]

This is the same processor as the Chromecast for Google TV. It's probably the GPU and I'm sure that Google optimized the hell out of it. The Le Potato really should ship with a bottle of Aspirin. You're gonna need it.

[@ed2595]

I used to get the Pi Zero for 9 Euro...darn, inflation goes fast. I stopped the video at 6:20 simply because I still had not heard the price, which is a pretty important factor in choosing to drop the Raspi for it. Had you mentioned it earlier, one would know if it is even worth watching the video

[@FlammableElectronics]

Man 94K!! When I last saw it was like 10K lol. This channel exploded when I left. Good job HH! You finally got what you deserved

[@mrutyunjayapradhan6156]

Popularity of RPI is for it's community support, not for performance.

[@1over137]

These SoCs seem great and are "ok" when you want to run "one" of these 24/7 services. Like a single home assistant. Trouble today is, that expands into Home assistant, node red, influxdb, graphana, mqtt servers and suprisingly the little SoC bandwidth limitations will start to impact. Especially things like Influx and file shares. At some point it becomes far more efficient in time and power to just run a 4th Gen 2010 eWaste desktop as server, idling on 8W but running two dozen different services in docker.

[@Ben-vk6qp]

I would skip SBCs completely and get a highly efficient small business computer instead. My Fujitsu Q556 that was $100 on ebay draws around 2 watts idle with powertop --auto-tune (headless, nothing connected but ethernet and power, measured at the wall outlet), has much more computing power when you need it with its i5 6500t and comes with much greater connectivity (m2 ssd, two sata ports, gigabit ethernet).

[@4.0.4]

I honestly expected 2.5gb Ethernet from the catchy video title. At 100mb you might as well use smoke signals to transfer data.

[@MatthewHill]

I still remember when Ethernet was 10mbps. Gigabit Ethernet still seems like magic to me.

[@quantum5661]

100mbps is fine in software, but goddamn am i not buying anything that slow

[@4.0.4]

@@quantum5661 yeah, it's 12 megabytes a second in practice. So if you need to transfer a multi-GB file... Might as well go out, walk the dog, enjoy nature, it's the file transfer speed for those who are Zen with life. Call that old relative, have a chat. Those files can wait. Hopefully.

[@RobertDesjardins-q8s]

REALLY appreciate your channel and how fun was the retro computer episodes.What I don't understand is how the Walmart Onn which have almost similar specs costs 20$ (add 6$ for subsidized sponsoring on remote control and UI), we are far cheaper than the board you showcased. This applies to RPi and other boards too This only shows that SBC tend to be overpriced and would really like to see projects to convert our existing devices to SBCs ranging from breaking the bootloaders on them to soldering some GPIO outputs to those with appropriate tools.

[@HardwareHaven]

I imagine those Onn devices make up margins off of ads/software integrations and such. Similar to how Xbox makes a lot of its money back through software sales

[@udirt]

Factor in that Walmart has logistics readily available and more efficient than any normal electronics company could. So the whole ramp up etc. is less costly for them.

[@CannedNoodles]

15:56 the like button lights up when he says, "like." How long has this been a thing?

[@christelting1359]

I really appreciate this. Currently using a raspberry pi 4 for a firewall but plan on upgrading to a Odroid H3+. But I also want a backup computer for DHCP, local DNS, time server, home assistant, other minor functions on the network. Kind of a set it and forget it.

[@teropiispala2576]

I just bought zeroW's for 12$ and zeroW2's for 18$. There's huge differences on prices because some stores have still their old ripping prices on. I like to use zero's in humidity/temperature sensors since all zigbee sensors stransmit too slowly and Ruuvi tags are expensive and their humidity sensor tends to saturate. I have one controlling my hottub and other on my greenhouse. ZeroW2 controls my heating and measures electricity consumption. I have 3b+ as an stereo to 5.1 expander and subwoofer crossover, another 3b+ controlling my cnc mill and pi5 on my home automation and cloud server.

[@mr.dingleberry4882]

The non-RPI GPIO layout makes no sense to me. It seems like they are cutting off a broader audience for no money saved. Very weird decision but who knows. Great video though, very educational and Im glad there is a channel like yours on youtube :)

[@HardwareHaven]

Right??? And thanks!

[@bradkuntzelman5343]

Just a guess, but if the pinouts of the chip(s) vs. the pinouts to the header were significantly different, it might've required more layers in the PCB to be able to route the traces from chip(s) to pin(s) and adding layer(s) to the PCB may have kept them from hitting a given price point.

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah true, and I guess the soc differences in general could definitely play a role.

[@jaredphillips6655]

Rock Pi is what I would buy. Better specs accross their line up with better prices than R Pi.

[@Tore_Lund]

My old trusty Raspberry Pi 1A, which I upgraded with a switch mode 3.3V power supply feeding the board directly, uses around 1/2 W. Ideal for low power battery powered stuff. Obviously not the ideal hub for a media center being slow and lacking a network connector, but otherwise. Idle 100mW, Can't remember the sleep consumption, but I think it is in the 4mW range.

[@dvdragon]

This is a great review. Thanks for the benchmarks and including the power draw. Great job!

[@misterhat5823]

Nothing like a paid review...

[@dvdragon]

@@misterhat5823 Hate more.

[@madson-web]

You are on point. Pi becoming powerful means nothing for lots of industrial applications or simpler tasks

[@SprocketN]

I use a Pi Zero 2W to run a mosquito server and a NodeRed instance as a simple controller for outside lights and a few temperature sensors. In my use case it’s perfect. I’m in the process of extending my NodeRed instance to monitor my heating system too. My programming skills in C++ for the connected ESP32 boards is ‘low’ so I wouldn’t trust my heating control to my current system. I’d have to expand into HA and ESP Now or similar. Initially I bought a a Pi 4, but I realised it was over powered for the job. I’m still deciding what to do with it as the zero is fine at the moment.

[@ralph4370]

I had 3d printed a 2u rack for 12 pi. For the time, effort and price it came out easier and about same price to buy 2u PC server. For the Rpi (Pre-covid), sd cards, poe hats, poe switch and 3d printer and time. The 2u Ryzen 5 5600x with 64gb ECC and dual nic and 6tb of raid storage came about same and parts were readily avail.

[@vinylSummer]

Which motherboard did you buy for 5600x to use ECC? I tried to find some info on AM4 ECC support but didn't find much

[@WesPeters]

To be clear, the Raspberry Pi hasn't had any "price hikes." What it has had is "price gouging" due to limited supply and high demand, but as of early 2024 that is clearing. A bit.

[@eggnorman]

I love the 'Le Potato' but I wished they'd gone all in on that name and just called it 'Le Pomme de Terre' with a baguette emoji or something

[@whitebeartigtig]

I got a Pi 4 4GB at launch for just £50. given what they're going for, I'm considering just selling it because I don't really have much of a use for a single board machine when I've got an 8 core xeon and 32GB RAM server running proxmox. Still interesting seeing a real competitor though.

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah same. I actually got a full kit for $40… it’s wild lol

[@KameraShy]

I managed to snatch the same for $55 and thought that price was high.

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

I really like the cool and relaxing talk that you have in your videos. I was tired of hearing the red bearded grasshopper on ecstasy on this famous other channel that botches tests and videos... I subbed to your channel, and I have no regrets at all =)

[@ChadMaugham]

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

[@joels7605]

RockPro64 is the answer. It's the unsung champion Raspberry Pi killer that nobody talks about. Blows the doors off of a Raspberry Pi 4 for $79 USD, 6 core processor (2x A72 and 4x A53), 4 gigs of DDR4 and an open PCIe 4x slot. YOU CAN PUT A 10 GIGABIT CARD IN THIS SBC. A bunch of the new RK3588 boards are looking very enticing as well. The price is still fairly high on those, however.

[@slabua]

Would have been nice to see the comparison with the Pi Zero 2W

[@aisaya-ana]

At my local store seem a bit expensive. - Raspberry Pi, 100$ - Pi Zero, 35$ - VIM1S, 75$ - AML-S905X-CC (Le Potato), 75$ - Orange Pi PC Plus 35$ But some how I can get aways with Orange Pi, Bcoz Pi Zero is too old.

[@thdvinh]

I have skipped RPi for long time (since ~2y ago) when doing DIY projects. An old NUC gen 6 is a very good solution: easily purchased and upgradable, very stable (for my purpose).

[@Yutaro-Yoshii]

I always thought stripping down old laptops and using it as a server gets you the most bang for the buck, but the power draw of vim1s looks very impressive. There is no way old laptops would match them in that respect.

[@Mr.Leeroy]

any x86 system would be better at anything else and in efficiency too as soon as you step up power consumption to double digit range.

[@Yutaro-Yoshii]

​@@Mr.Leeroy That's an interesting point. But even if limited to low power use, I can imagine it being useful for things like home automation and simple web hosting. Also, having a cheap semi-disposable boxes that you can ssh into would be very useful when testing out a network setup.

[@Mr.Leeroy]

@@Yutaro-Yoshii In my experience they are not worth the hassle. Restrictions and limitations due to ARM arch are everywhere, but prices are anything but cheap in reality. If you dealt with SBCs and still think they are cheap, then I'm afraid you know nothing about good deals on used x86 hardware, which is abundant and reuse is not really any different from buying new in single project instances.

[@Yutaro-Yoshii]

@@Mr.Leeroy What kind of limitation did you personally have with ARM? My friend was using it for his AI projects, but it was working fine for him afaik. Maybe there are specific things that are difficult on ARM SBC?

[@Mr.Leeroy]

@@Yutaro-Yoshii Not all software available/compatible, supporting community is orders of magnitute smaller and never long lasting, reliable storage is hard to achieve (not SD, logging resilient / redundant) and comes at premium, PCI-E connectivity is not a given and even if it is present, still mostly has zero support, broken, cryptographic applications performance is not comparable, encoding & decoding hardware exists, and rarely works out of the box, probably only in android builds.. And that's only what bothered me personally.

[@Daleon1]

My SBC perspective in right now is currently the Zimaboard 832, especially since it's on x86 Architecture. Oh and has a PCI-e slot as well as (2) SATA 6.0 Ports

[@jumpmaster5279]

23 sec, because i know where to find quality content

[@Indull]

Haven't watched one of your videos in a while and they have improved tremendously! Hats off to you sir!

[@HardwareHaven]

Man I appreciate that! I'm tryin' haha

[@BrianGiuffre]

It's a head scratcher to me, that with the state of the cost of RPi's where people are recommending alternatives to people for use cases that do not need the GPIO, that they arent recommending the plethora of X86 based $139-$169 mini/micro PCs. They are a far better option than 99% of the ARM based SBC's.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

It seems that this little device escaped from the jaws of victory by having non-compatible pinout for hats.

[@tohaason]

I use Rasperry Pi model 3 boards as CUPS servers for printers. A board with that kind of power, or just slightly more, higly reliable, and doesn't need any of the fancy high-performance 4k display stuff, but with Ethernet (100Mb is enough) and *good* sensitive wi-fi is all I'm looking for. With the ease of setup (write Debian-based image (e.g. like Raspbian), apt-get install what I need, run and forget) and 'm all set.

[@leandrotami]

for its price it seems it has great specs. It's when we start asking for 1 or 10gbps ethernet, wifi, bluetooth, 4k support, holodeck projector and so on that prices are driven up

[@davidsalvador8989]

I use to love and be so excited by Raspberry pi business model. Now im a bit disappointed. Yes I am sure it has its specific use case however IMHO they are few and far between. I will just get a used laptop from a garage sale for 10 bucks and have a computer that is more powerful, less expensive, runs linux if I want, lets me code, has a built in monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse, comes with power supply, etc, etc.

[@jamesdavies686]

I bought a rock64 board for $19 on amazon some years back which is a pi alternative with a quad core and 1GB of RAM, it runs pihole and ddclient just fine and doesn't even register 1w on a kill-a-watt meter without the decimal point revision.

[@EraYaN]

They all have the same software availability problems though, the Amlogic SoCs are better than some for that but even then, the RPi foundation does a ton of work keeping it well supported and it shows.

[@j.j.oliphant9794]

This could be a good alternative for some of my classroom projects for my students. Its been a paid trying to get my hands on PI's lately.

[@HardwareHaven]

I’m really curious to know: - What you teach - How you use SBCs - How this works out if you try it haha

[@j.j.oliphant9794]

@@HardwareHaven I teach cloud computing at my local high school. I like to go over setting up a traditional web server first before going into cloud tools. for this last school year the project where we used the raspberry pi's to learn linux and setup a simple Wordpress server was by far the best thing we did in the class. The problem is getting my hands on enough raspberry pi's. I really hate funding all unofficial resellers making bank from buying up all the stock and reselling it on Amazon. And I'm working on a classroom budget so I really only get to purchase a few each year.

[@HardwareHaven]

Man that’s so cool

[@georgealex19]

I hate the fact that raspberry pi are so expensive now

[@Mystik314]

video is a year old, dunno why KZbin is showing it to me, but, I love stuff like this; my main issue with all these SBCs is that almost every switch I have is PoE by consequence of running IP phones in my house, it's just simply easier to have PoE switches than to worry about what port I'm plugging things into, whether they're powered or not. As a result, I keep gravitating back to the Pi series because they have PoE support. All these low-power SBCs are wonderful but always need an external device to provide power, when PoE is right there. I get that it's more costly to include PoE PD stuff on a low cost SBC, but unlike the Pi, a lot of the competitors do not even have support by an add-on module. This leaves me with two options: either use the external power connection or use a POE to USB power adapter. The latter doesn't have a lot of options and most of them are pretty much garbage to begin with; not reliable enough. So I am torn on whether or not I like/want these.

[@Dorff_Meister]

Interesting... but the down-sides are kind of a bummer, tho. I used to run lots of services from multiple RPis. I bought a couple NUC-like systems, installed Proxmox, and have never been happier. I run most my my services with docker-compose (on LXC (Proxmox container), when possible) and for things like Home Assistant, running as a VM is a huge benefit because I can make snapshots before upgrades (and rollback if the upgrade fails). Yeah, it's not exactly in the same price category, but if you buy a few of these or RPi's, you could have had NUC-like (assuming you don't need GPIO and don't mind MUCH, MUCH faster IO).

[@mniswonger]

It looks like the USB-C port supports USB 2.0 OTG in addition to power delivery, so you could use a USB-C dock to add an Ethernet port without using up the onboard USB port. Not perfect, but an option.

[@kuhndj67]

So IMO the big draw for home server is routing/firewall. IMO the dual gige pi board (DFRobot IIRC) with CM4 is REALLY hard to beat. Not only runs OpenWRT for routing and firewall... but also easily handles running the Home Assistant docker container for home automation. All for less than 4 watts in operation... that was so compelling for me I retired my esxi server on a 1u box.

[@TheChemicalWorkshop]

even with our 40c/KWH electricity i guess used mini pc is the better option unless you need a ultra small form factor

[@EdwinaRussell-u6n]

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

[@obsoletepowercorrupts]

They've done an alright job of designing that thing for the use cases people might want it for, and some people could consider those scenarios to be niche. There are things the Pi3b does which are specific to its own "partly server style" use case scenarios. Something to mention first is that both use 100Mbit ethernt and that can have an upside compared to 1GBit and it is down to the fact that it is probably connectinng to another NIC on a nother PC which will have a 100MBit NIC deliberately and for a specific rationale, and that is the fact that the 100Mbit driver in a PC (some linux or BSd or unix style box) will have a tiny file size compared to a 1000Mbit ethernet driver. It might not sound like a big deal or it might sound so rare a variable as to be esoteric but when you consider that serial COM ports are ibuquitous and slow and used to "remote in", that tiny 100MBit driver _(which might get squeezed along it or sent via some other abstruse route)_ can be a great thing to be aware of. As for the pi3b, it has community support that means it can flash firmware to boot from the USB and it also works on the pizero2W so the net power consumption across multiple devices can be worth it. Another thing the Pi3b _(importantly)_ can do is it has an OpenCl GPU driver _(which btw also works for the PiZero2W)_ which restricts the GPU to 16MB _(although a variation still exists for higher GPU RAM amounts)_ and Gaussian processes in 1.2 version OpenCl can be used which then immediately bringits GPU OpenCl in line with teh GT710 (a very popular GPU) and the APU 7600k (or APU 7650K likewise) which also has a 1.2 version OpenCL GPU capability, and they all run SciLab. Spectral analysis via Chebyshev polynomials and Gaussian (e.g. white) noise elimination make for various server use cases. All these SBC shold be called cigarette pack computers rather than "credit card" computers. They were never the size fo a credit card. Everybody always admitted a 2.5 inch HDD for a laptop was a "cigarette pack" size drive, so the same naming convention works fine on a SBC that shape, like the Pi3b too. The Pi4 is for its own use cases. The fact it can do passthrough for the GPU is useful when it s useful and not when a person simply is not using it. If they are running OpenBSD with not VM capable of passthrough, they simply won't be interested in using it for that on that day. I might add that is is worth considering how an ADSL2 internet connection (popular in the UK) is 24Mbist per second, and so, if a personis using teh 120MBps of a 802.11n wifi to propogate it, that leaves 96Mbits free which can be supplied by the 100MBits ethernet, and so it is not out of the ordinary to find that speed hits the sweet spot. You mentioned you considered an SDcard to be an expense, and so, using the 100MBits connection RJ45 in the manner I have described means cheap Cat5 cable can be used without fear of dropping packets by attempting to force a 1GBit connection down it. To some people ping is much better tha bandwidth, especially if you are sending (or maybe even streaming) data of a known quantity whereby you're simply not bothered about having more than the 100Mbits. Be mind ful also that pleny motherboards have at least one PCI legacy slot and some people shy away from IRQ conflicts when they have a bandwidth hungry PCI card in the slot next to it. It is commonplace to use use up the PCI legacy IRQ bandwidth with a soundcard or TV Capture card installed in a PCI slot next to a USB2 PCI expansion card (or RAID HBA) so that the only commonplace card you squeeze into the last slot is a 100Mbit (not 1GBit) RJ45 ethernet card for which a person might be grateful. Keep in mind that the Motherboard might already have a lot of IO like IEEE1284 and RJ45 and USB and sound-card built into itself. My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love. Also, I'd say Matthew6.

[@jonathanmarshall3974]

Aren't the Le Potato's A53 cores superior to the VIM1S A35? I understand implementation matters (along with LPDDR4 vs DDR3). Please clarify.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

"Superior" is a complicated word. It depends on the power limit. At very low power levels the A35 can outperform the A53. Very low, as in

[@deineroehre]

Nowadays home networks have 10Gbit/s via SFP+ or at least 2,5Gbit/s, 100Mbit is so 1993, Gbit Networking was broadly available and got normal around 2005, works even over Cat5e - 100Mbit/s like here might work for some VERY niche scenario like old telephone cables abused as network cable, but 100Mbit/s is a showstopper for almost every nowadays szenario.

[@tim_vtr4315]

Thx Hardware Haven for this video, Love it

[@Marshall1914]

Supposedly Raspberry Pi's are going to be much more available in the second half of this year.

[@TrinomCZ]

100M connectivity is completely fine for smart home. You will never need that much speed for just basic communication.

[@TheOnlyEpsilonAlpha]

I love that video ❤ you searched and presented a valid competitor against the expensive Raspberry Pi where i mentioned in the comments with the issues it comes with. Very well done, even that i switched back to ATX systems, i'm pretty sure, this video is helpful to others which looking for a "raspberryish" small form factor pc. Well done Man!

[@HardwareHaven]

Thanks! I'm trying. It's a lot harder than it seems to put together a good script with decent research and presentation while also not dragging on. I like to think I'm slowly improving. Positive comments like this go a long way, so I really appreciate it!

[@bradygee]

Im looking to run a pi hole for my home network, but im also looking to host a vpn for my foreign close friends, wondering if i would be able to run the pi hole on the base OS layer then run a vm under that to host the vpn from. Does that sound like it would work? And would the pi hole also eat ads for those connected to the vpn?

[@welshtechie6832]

I have the Pi Zero 2W as well but got it at launch. Would be a good option but getting them now.....

[@HardwareHaven]

Yeah… it’s brutal haha

[@DBTechYT]

I may have to see about picking one of these up and checking it out!! Looks very promising :)

[@HardwareHaven]

I’d offer to send mine if it wasn’t in use lol

[@DBTechYT]

@@HardwareHaven Maybe I'll reach out to them and see if I can work something out :)

[@HardwareHaven]

Hopefully so! I’d love to see your takes on it as well as some tutorials I can learn from 😂

[@jakke1975]

Not that a RP is bad (i own my own), but if you're going to invest in a server to host your own services, opt for something that can actually run anything you want. RPs have many limitations and besides some micro services, they'll struggle with moderate to heavy loads. A mini PC these days has the computing power that ran a medium-sized business a decade ago and power consumption isn't even that bad.

[@alteralien2223]

Finally! Hardware with the same name as the best text editor!

[@Guardian_Arias]

I really wish old phones could be reflashed and used as single board controllers. But at least buying used laptops with broken screens is still a very viable option. Especially if you remove the old batteries and run it that way since you remove a very large parasitic load, although the built-in UPS feature can outweigh the cost.

[@-aexc-]

old phones can be so powerful too, sad that it all goes to waste super easily

[@jallen1227]

Rather take a tinyminimicro - refurb HP ProDesk 600 G4 Mini, Intel Core i5-8500T at < $200 and full windows 10 Pro. Upgrade with a larger / faster m.2 (dual available) and memory and now a powerhouse at $300 including Win11Pro opportunity.

[@justbendev2324]

To provide some context, the casting functionality does not operate in the manner described. Only devices approved by Google can receive casting because they possess a secure chip that stores a certificate issued by Google. Consequently, it is not merely a matter of developers adding software. As you might infer, becoming an approved Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) requires significant financial investment and the inclusion of numerous Google features as part of their program. For example to be able to play netflix content above 720p you must be approved by Netflix. One of their requirements for example is to have a Netflix button on the remote.

[@BingJenny-l2z]

Imagine his surprise when he discovered that the safe was full of pudding.

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi, nice video I like what you have to say and at the moment, scalpers and supply issue is pushing the raspbery pi prices through the roof Now the pizero 2w is a great piece of small pc / sbc - i have one myself doing pihole and samba for basic file sharing, mostly items i dont want in the cloud or more important things i just want to share around my home Kids homework is there, some movies and my favourite music etc - items that were in common shard flders in every pc and laptop originally Anyway, some people sort of push the pizero to far beyond its capabilities, for the next step up i now use older thin clients with large hard drives, now they wont consume 2watts power but more or less under 10 watts ( typically 3 to 5 idle and max is sort of 8-10 ) - and you can run them headless and ssh into them or use remote desktop if using widnows as a os or you can use other custom software Many of the pi alternatives are geared towards the pi3 pi 4 or better in x86 versions, but the dollars gets larger Banana / Orange / Pink ?? / Asus / Tinkerboard / Uduoo / Odroid ( sorry for spelling ) are generally more expensive and almost a different class, the Banana and orange are similar price but lack stable OS systems and a lack of GPIO suoport / apps / addons It is sort of expecting a new mini to compete against a camaro / bmw - each has there own role and place in life Anyway if there were more pi2zerow's ( i would by another 3 or 4 ) - you can use them as a desktop but will be sluggish as they are with youtube video playback My pi3 is a retro pi and my pi400 is in the box and used as a amiga and Apples OS9 virtual machine for retro games etc basically Overall there are many other option to a raspbery environment, but they are more expensive and do not have the OS stability or 3rd party support Regards George

[@janulik9535]

Odroid H3 from Hardkernel is the best what you can actually get. It takes for sure less than 3W idle (I do not know how much because cant measure less than 3W,) It runs standard x86 processor, can handle for example windows 11 easy. Equiped with hdmi, audio ports, usb ports, and the very nice 2x2.5 GiB LAN. A lot of optional accessories, for example network etc. Has M2.nvme.... So...

[@THEMithrandir09]

6:40 performance per watt would be an interesting metric there.

[@JaviepalFordring1]

Not having a 1000mb gigabyte Ethernet is a deal breaker for me, I really don't like boards with 100mb because of the network speed.

[@javamony]

Honestly id be pointing people towards to Radxa 3, 4, and 5 products just for the much better specs to price ratios on offer. The Khadas products are always waaayy too expensive in comparison to the comparible offerings from Radxa, Orange pi, and even Odroid. While all of these "pi clone" boards in general lack a great deal of the documentation the Raspberry Pi foundation supplies, along with the strong communities that come with it, my expierence with the Radxa boards has been pretty good thus far in regards to support. A great deal of the SoCs they utilize are also in the process of, or already are committed into the mainline linux kernel, which only further simplifies the process of creating and utilizing the various linux distros that are in development or already currently available. I can't wait till the RK3358 soc matures a bit more; its probably the closest we've gotten so far towards achieving a "true" desktop experience for such a low power device; and with the big little architecture it uses, depending on your use case these things can just sip power when the additional workload is uneeded.

[@brockbreacher]

HOLY COW, I didn't know the raspberry pi zero w went up that much in price! I feel kind of guilty just having it sitting in a drawer right now lol

[@RWBHere]

I can't believe that I just watched a 16 minute ad for an RPi competitor. 🤷‍♂

[@ruediix]

For the Apache bench you need to recompile to get it to run on the Pi Zero. I know, not the kind of thing you want to do for a quick test. Furthermore, the fact that you have to recompile, means you are removing hard-coded optimizations for the faster chips in the other boards which means it will score bad. This goes for any program that won't run. Chances are if it doesn't come compiled with the ability to turn off newer model optimizations it is for a reason, which is typically that performance without said optimizations is unsatisfactory.

[@humeyt]

If I may make a suggestion: research what "uptalk"/"upspeak" is and how to reduce it. Your statements sound like questions about half the time, which is probably not what you're after as a presenter. (I realize the video is kind of old, maybe you've already been working on that...)

[@kristianjensen753]

Thanks for the great video 😁 I have just started using Home Assistant and I am running that on a Raspberry Pi 3. It is running ok, given that I do not yet have many devices that it controls. I will, of course, have to upgrade at some point. Would you think that the VIM1S would make a good upgrade from the Pi 3?

[@holzwurm_hd7029]

What about the Late Panda Alpha?

[@Doesntcompute2k]

I loved this video! Thank you for taking the time and doing it. The setup you use, the video quality, the B-roll, and backgrounds, are great! Being able to actually read the chips on your B-roll is great! he VIM1S is a Raspberry Pi 3 really. It should compare to same. Khadas targets this as a set-top-box for TVs/screens because it can deliver via 5Ghz WiFi. Khadas makes great computers. Explaining Computers has done reviews over the years of them all, and comparisons. I've got four Khadas SBCs: VIM1s, VIM3, 2 x VIM4. They all have a lot of positives and I enjoy them all. Great to tinker with. VIM1s runs the garage's "smart mirror." The VIM3 wakes up sleepy computers using WOL, is the RTC source, monitors systems for up/down, and is the Openweathermap weather data distributor in the house for all (eight) smart mirrors, phones, tablets, and other computers. Khadas has a good eco-system. What I guess i hoped Beaglebone would have been. Oh and just so you don't think I'm shading one way to Khadas or not, I've 20 RP4/CM4 rack-mounted in one of my server racks. Just wish they were faster and multi-thread. And had more RAM. LOL

[@Reza1984_]

Linux on arm is not as stable as x86, I had many issues with my RP4. I would recommend buying an old mini pc, these run silent and with relatively low power consumption

[@ArtemisKitty]

To be fair, the Pi Zero W is only priced that high because it has been phased out and is becoming scarce. Th Pi Zero 2 W is available for $15 and has a quad core 64bit CPU more comparable to the Pi 3b. I would be curious how this compares, and if the 2GB vs 512MB RAM is significant enough to decide based on that.

[@HardwareHaven]

Available where? I can’t find any listed as in stock other than listings with the price jacked way up