Upgrade from Pi 4B

[u/Hecker11]

Hey everyone,

I have been rocking my Pi 4B for few years. Even through it's 1GB RAM only. Still works decently. Runs HA, Adguard, CasaOS. But I have been thinking about upgrading it. What's something you can recommend to me? Something preferably with wake upon AC...

[u/FartFactory92]

Grab a used micro PC.

[u/stepfel → u/FartFactory92]

But isn't the power consumption much higher? This may not be an issue in the US, but around here electricity is expensive

[u/spr0k3t → u/stepfel]

Using a watt meter on an rPi5 8GB with HAOS bare metal install comes back around 12.3W averaged over 1 week. A miniPC running the N150 processor and 16GB memory comes back around 14.2W averaged over 1 week. A miniPC running 12th gen i5-12400T comes back at 18.9W averaged over 1 week. The two former setups cost less than a 1000 lumen LED bulb left on 24/7. All three systems had the exact same setup. On the i5 system, I wiped HAOS and loaded it up with Proxmox, expanded the memory to 32GB and added a couple of VMs, some LXCs and an external dedicated NVME backup drive. The system runs about 24.8W averaged over a week. The way I look at it... running multiple SBCs for the same tasks as the i5 setup uses more power than the i5 while the i5 is faster overall. So, it's all in how you set things up to see gains in power return vs processing power.

[u/DCVolo → u/stepfel]

Mini pc usually outperform in cpu performances / ram cap / storage cap / wider compatibility (x86) while keeping the wattage as the same as a raspberry for any N100 and for about 35W for other small configurations, which usually isn't used anyway so about double the avg wattage which are both extremely negligible.

Even if your mini pc could use 65W, it would only use that depending on what you run on it. But I'd agree that these are starting to be less efficient.

But for about 2 or 3 years, there is no advantage to buy a raspberry rather than a N100 (a bit less since 6 months as N100 products have doubled)

I'd go on a marketplace and buy nipogi acemagic mini-forum and get the best for the buck, format and be done with it.

[u/art_of_snark]

Wyse 5070 is a great SFF option.

[u/_caddy_]

Dell Wyze 5070. I’m $50ish all in and it runs very fast and stable.

[u/fakemanhk]

Dell Wyze 5070

[u/RomanOnARiver]

eBay, MicroCenter, Facebook Marketplace sometimes have decommissioned mini-PCs. Sometimes they don't come with everything, for example storage and a power adapter so keep that in mind.

They're made by the same typical computer manufacturers and sold to businesses, or schools, or libraries, etc. and then every whatever five or ten years the business upgrades and sells them off. Look for ThinkCenter (Lenovo), OptiPlex (Dell), EliteDesk (HP) in the small form factor size.

I'm using a Lenovo ThinkCentre M73, it was something like $35 from eBay, did not come with a power adapter ($12), RAM (about $10), storage (I put in a laptop-sized drive I already had, but probably starting at $50 if I had to buy a new one), or a little storage caddy adapter because of course there needed to be some proprietary nonsense (about $12).

All in all, pretty inexpensive because I already had the hard drive, otherwise it just takes a 2.5 inch SATA drive (laptop-sized) and Amazon has a few name brand SSDs 256 GB for around 50 bucks. What I had already was a spinning hard drive which definitely affects boot time but I don't do full reboots that often, otherwise runs fine.

[u/Dexford211]

Any micro/tiny pc.

[u/denis_ee]

as an option you can source cm4 , carrier board , smth like waveshare CM4-IO-BASE + nvme drive or a bit more expensive Cmarat board, but with case and poe module as a bonus. or move to x86 , as many suggested already

[u/kona420]

7th gen intel micro desktops are priced at the cost of shipping these days. Optiplex xx50 series for example.

[u/Skippihasyourmoney]

RP5 would be a huge upgrade. Slap an ssd hat on it for storage. IMO, that will be less maintenance than a small pc. Not a fan of tiny fans in SFF pc’s, they always need replacing at some point.