The raspberry pi's selling points are:
1. It works nearly out-of-the-box. You only have to prepare an SD card.
2. It is tiny
3. It is quite power efficient
4. It has GPIO pins, which make it usable for experimenting with hardware.
5. It has a great community (you can easily find many projects for it, and there are some great OSes available, which run nice educational software)
6. It is cheap
All of this makes it fantastic for education and as a gadget. The whole point of the raspberry pi is to be unlike other computers. You can set it up as a server, but this is not its main purpose.
The Dell Optiflex FX160 probably outperforms the pi at all measures, but it is just stupid to compare it to a raspberry pi, because it has none of its unique points which make the pi a good choice in the first place.
Now, there are actually some better raspberry pi clones out there. For those products, a title like this might make sense.
The Dell is absolutely not outperforming the RPi on power consumption. I run multiple internal- and external- facing servers (eg multiple static and Java-based Web servers, SMTP, DNS, NTP, etc) and the total power usage is generally much less than 50Wh/day.
I can throw my Internet connection router and FTTC box on as discretionary load but that's another ~300Wh/day; it is quite staggering how relatively efficient the RPi is, compared to presumably similar or lower processing requirements in the other two boxes!
> You can set it up as a server, but this is not its main purpose.
I thought the article was very clear about that as it's point. If you were thinking of using an RPi as a server, it's not meant for that, here is a better alternative.
Exactly, all the same hardware makes it possible to exchange images, bit for bit SD-card copies, that run on any of the same model RPis, this is incredibly powerful and handy. For example, installing ROS (Robot Operating System) on Linux can be a PITA, but there is a ready made ROS on Ubuntu Mate for RPi3, so you have it fully functional in minutes.
I use Asus 1001PX subnotebooks that way. They're available for about $40 on eBay. You get a keyboard, screen, WiFi, Ethernet, 250GB hard drive, and USB ports. Usually a power adapter, too.
(Only use the real ASUS power adapters; the no-name 3rd party units overheat, don't provide enough power, or in at least one case, catch fire.)
When I get one in, I put in the Xubuntu USB stick and run the memory diagnostic for an hour. If that passes, I wipe the machine completely and install Xubuntu 16.04LTS. Works fine. All the peripherals are supported. (There was some trouble with 14.04 LTS; the infamous "disappearing cursor" bug affected these units, because they had a certain model of Intel graphics processor. But that's fixed.)
I use one with a $30 USB microscope to help with surface mount soldering. Others run antique Teletype machines. One is used as a normal laptop.
A raspberry pi with external HDD running is about 5W. That's 130 kWh less than a FX160 over an always on year, or $27 at average Australian energy prices.
Sure these servers might be handy for some things, but the Pi still has a lot of advantages. For me it's small form factor, low power consumption and GPIO.
A somewhat controversial claim, but only until you discover that it's the low-profile home server use case under discussion here.
I'd go with a Qotom box for that, but something like this would be about as good and, at the cited prices, a fair bit cheaper - and wouldn't involve the same US Customs import encumbrance that I've found Qotom hardware to entail, besides. But I think it would depend on being able to find used FX160s cheaply, as the article describes, and since its description of a sudden glut in the used market seems written from an Australian perspective, I imagine that might be an issue elsewhere.
I've been dabbling with re-purposing second-hand thin clients for years (NSLU, various Wyse, Neoware and HP clients).
My current favourite is HP t520 (dual core AMD embedded apu, fanless, M2 SSD drive, a miniPCIe slot, gbit ethernet, USB 3.0 and low power consumption). I haven't measured it but HP states 7W for normal operation. More info at http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hp/t520/ & in the quick specs www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04303956.pdf
You can have one second-hand for about $60-70, and prices are bound to go down.
edit: the linked article mentions that mini-pcie can be used for an SSD. This is usually not true, as mSATA while sharing the same physical connector needs to be wired differently. You can see e.g. pcengines doing that on their apu2 boards. Even the aliexpress page mentions "NOTE:this is msata , can not use in mini pcie or wifi interface" in bold red letters
One of the other good reasons to use off the lease enterprise hardware like Dell Optiplex FX160 is that it's a great way to recycle / reuse computer hardware instead of throwing them into landfills.
A giant difference between the two, which goes unmentioned here, is that the FX160 runs on AC power at 120 volts. If you have a deployment scenario where you already have 5 volts DC but not 120 volts AC, the pi obviously makes way more sense.
The inverse is also true - the FX160 runs off of 120/240V directly, which is rather convenient if you don't want to use a 5V DC power brick that's larger than the Pi itself. Makes for a rather clean installation if you're shoving it somewhere strange (which seems likely).
Great point. Also, the Pi can be powered off USB batteries, so you could run it basically anywhere for a non-trivial amount of time, really easily. The Pi's lack of reliance on wall power is one of it's neatest features, I think.
This usecase is more about running it as a homeserver, where i guess that limitation is not that important. Of course there are a lot of usecases where the Pi is the better choice.
If you're in a bigger company, the IT department may have some smaller PCs like this to get rid of. Mine gave a bunch out, I have a Dell optiplex - but instead of the thin client it's a small i3, with a 320gb hdd and 6gb ram. It's dead silent and runs all the home server things like a champ, oh - and it was free.
But I'd still own a number of raspberry pis since they're great for hacking or just to support a cool mission (in my opinion).
I'm using a Cubieboard as a web server and I'm very happy. It's a 50$ Raspberry clone from 2013 with better specs (for the time). Consider that:
- it runs mainline kernel and a regular debian distro
- 5W max (but it's idle most of the time)
- has good enough specs for a webserver (proper ethernet, 1GB ram, SATA support), works better than a cheap VPS
I run apache and some low-demanding webapps on it:
- dokuwiki
- miniflux (feed reader)
- shaarli (bookmark manager)
and it serves pages via my home DSL connection (with DDNS).
I did consider the alternatives - netbook/notebooks - but for my use case reliability, safety and power consumption would be much worse. These devboard is fanless and runs everything off an SD card. OK, SD cards are slow but on failure (never happened in three years!) I can just swap it with a (recent) cloned one with almost no downtime. I could use the faster onboard NAND but it did fail once on blackout and I went back to SD cards. I could even use a SATA HDD but I don't need that much storage.
If you're buying one to use as a server this won't matter to you, but if you want a tiny Linux or BSD desktop, you may want to look elsewhere. The video hardware is SiS Mirage, which has terrible support in non-Windows OSes.
Yeah, using one as a desktop with a GUI is a rubbish experience. Spend a little more and get an i5-2600 SFF box for like AU$150 and it's a vast improvement.
Another option is just to use an old laptop. This is what I tend to do for media servers, TV computers, and the like. People give away or throw away perfectly usable machines all the time.
I used to do that for my media server/HTPC. The problem in my experience is that laptop fans are pretty noisy. Actually evenn the power supply can be noisy, many of them have a very audible AC hiss. Maybe it's because I tend to buy cheap laptops.
A few months ago I decided to build myself a super quiet replacement, I took a small well ventilated case[1], put an underclocked i3 in it, a fanless heatsink[2] on top, a super quiet power supply[3] and it's amazing. For about 350 euros I have a completely silent and rather powerful HTPC. A lot more expensive than the computer in TFA obviously, but well worth it if like me you can't stand fan noises.
I'd imagine it be prudent to remove the battery if that is the case (which you can't on many newish laptops). I know it's tempting to utilize that free UPS but I wouldn't trust a laptop battery that's pushed way passed the intended use.
form factor is a bit annoying, I do this with an old thinkpad and I'm thinking about finding one with a broken LCD to remove the screen assembly altogether and put the base onto a book shelf.
One nice thing about Raspberry Pis for this sort of thing is that they support the full cec protocol, so can control other devices. I use hooked up mine to switch my TV on and off via an Amazon Echo: https://github.com/simonbyrne/fauxmo
The only annoying thing is that my TV doesn't provide USB power while on standby, so I needed a separate power supply.
It depends on what you want to do with a home server. Is it a home entertainment system with ready-to-use entertainment UI? A computer in a compact case no larger than the size of a modem/router with just an OS installed (Linux, Windows, Mac OSX)?
The former is popularly taken over by the integrated system within TV / media player (yes, many of the newest DVD & BlueRay media players do come with a better, surprisingly [1], integrated system), and you can play media like Netflix / YouTube from your mobile phone.
The latter is somewhat a customized solution, depending on what you do. I would run on my old laptop, or I can run on a raspberry Pi (which is capable of running HD video at 1080p), plus a large SSD network storage device (or use "cloud" if you have a good Internet connectivity).
There are plenty options out there, but for a $60 deal (USD) is pretty good. Most big brands can easily cost you $100+ with just Atom CPU in it. I wouldn't mind getting one though, if it becomes available again.
[1]: Samsung BD-JM57C Streaming Blu-ray Player (love it)
I use my Raspberry Pi to play around with sensors (such as humidity, temperature, RFID, etc) through the GPIO pins. That's the main selling point, I think. It's an educational product more than anything.
I think people would be happy with two different Raspberry Pi like devices, one with tons of GPIO and one with real SATA and 1Gbe ports. Even just having USB 3.0 would be good enough for what most people want their Pi to do. Fortuneately there are other SBCs out there that can do the job but not with the huge range of out of the box compatible hardware and software that the Pi has. I've been thinking about the OLinuXino line of SBCs for some of my projects. At least the one benefit of having 1Gbe ports is that I can setup a network drive for less I/O intensive projects.
This is why I bought mine as well - what language are you using to access the GPIO pins? I've been meaning to look into using Golang, but haven't seen many people using it for that.
I feel that raspberry pi has another advantage -- it teaches people that not all computing is x86. x86 is always almost associated with proprietary close-source code -- both in BIOS, in SMM and various motherboard peripherals. I personally would be very happy to use simpler devices, but if you want high performance and cheap, then x86 is your only choice.
Using non-x86 devices like Raspberry Pi is the first step in breaking this. Yes, Pi itself has closed-source components, but once the people understand that it is feasible and not hard to run generic server code on ARM/RISC CPUs, the demand will appear, and the market would act and bring cheaper and faster servers to the market. And this is already happening -- for example I think odroids got popular only after Pi has created the demand.
So if you have a choice between x86 and non-x86, chose the latter if you can, to make the world a bit more secure and open.
For people interested in building a firewall or just boards with multiple GbE ports I can recommend a swiss company PC Engines https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
They make really nice x86 boards with AMD chips.
Contrast to PC engines, which sell a collection of parts. A motherboard, a case, an AC adapter. Etc.
Oh, and btw careful how you mount the motherboard. I.e.: Conductive cooling from the CPU to the enclosure through a 3 mm alu heat spreader. Please contact us for advice if you want to integrate this board in your own enclosure.
Not that the PC Engines stuff is bad; it's just that I usually prefer to have the manufacturer screw things together and then test the final product.
+1 for PC Engines. Their products are a bit expensive for the hobbyist, and generally use very outdated technology, but they are as reliable as they come.
I've been using an Alix 6f2 with a Mini-PciE 3g modem on a remote location with years of uptime and no problems. Same can't be said of many newer, fancier boards!
What a coincidence. Just this week I got a used FX160 for 15 € and right now it's working as a home file server, router, wireless AP and general P2P downloader.
It seems to be running fine even inside of a closed cupboard, the CPU is at 31ºC and using about 16-17 watts on average. It's warm to the touch but it might be the apparently good thermal design of the case which allows for fully passive cooling.
What I don't like is that (at least judging by the heat it generates) most of the power consumption seems to be originated in the video chip, which in a headless server is useless. I tried to disable but didn't have any luck (it's a SiS 771/671 chip).
I've been using a $140 chromebox flashed with Ubuntu as an HTPC and seedbox. It works very well and has very nice IO (lots of USB 3, HDMI, gigabit, etc.).
The only minor problem I've run into is that the processor is just slow enough that it chokes on high-entropy 1080p video. 99.5% of the time it's fine, but if there's something on screen with lots of tiny objects moving in lots of different directions (a swarm of locusts, an explosion in space, etc.) the frame rate drops substantially. It makes perfect sense if you think about how video compression works. I just wish it had a tiny bit more oomph.
You may want to check out the rapidly growing number of RPi clones... cheaper and often more powerful, besides still having GPIO pins. You can find a nice list of options on the Armbian download page: https://www.armbian.com/download/
[+] [-] kutkloon7|8 years ago|reply
2. It is tiny
3. It is quite power efficient
4. It has GPIO pins, which make it usable for experimenting with hardware.
5. It has a great community (you can easily find many projects for it, and there are some great OSes available, which run nice educational software)
6. It is cheap
All of this makes it fantastic for education and as a gadget. The whole point of the raspberry pi is to be unlike other computers. You can set it up as a server, but this is not its main purpose.
The Dell Optiflex FX160 probably outperforms the pi at all measures, but it is just stupid to compare it to a raspberry pi, because it has none of its unique points which make the pi a good choice in the first place.
Now, there are actually some better raspberry pi clones out there. For those products, a title like this might make sense.
[+] [-] DamonHD|8 years ago|reply
I can throw my Internet connection router and FTTC box on as discretionary load but that's another ~300Wh/day; it is quite staggering how relatively efficient the RPi is, compared to presumably similar or lower processing requirements in the other two boxes!
http://www.earth.org.uk/off-grid-stats.html
(You can only see the RPi's power consumption when the networking gear is pushed back onto mains.)
[+] [-] moron4hire|8 years ago|reply
I thought the article was very clear about that as it's point. If you were thinking of using an RPi as a server, it's not meant for that, here is a better alternative.
[+] [-] teekert|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
(Only use the real ASUS power adapters; the no-name 3rd party units overheat, don't provide enough power, or in at least one case, catch fire.)
When I get one in, I put in the Xubuntu USB stick and run the memory diagnostic for an hour. If that passes, I wipe the machine completely and install Xubuntu 16.04LTS. Works fine. All the peripherals are supported. (There was some trouble with 14.04 LTS; the infamous "disappearing cursor" bug affected these units, because they had a certain model of Intel graphics processor. But that's fixed.)
I use one with a $30 USB microscope to help with surface mount soldering. Others run antique Teletype machines. One is used as a normal laptop.
[+] [-] ezzaf|8 years ago|reply
Sure these servers might be handy for some things, but the Pi still has a lot of advantages. For me it's small form factor, low power consumption and GPIO.
[+] [-] throwanem|8 years ago|reply
I'd go with a Qotom box for that, but something like this would be about as good and, at the cited prices, a fair bit cheaper - and wouldn't involve the same US Customs import encumbrance that I've found Qotom hardware to entail, besides. But I think it would depend on being able to find used FX160s cheaply, as the article describes, and since its description of a sudden glut in the used market seems written from an Australian perspective, I imagine that might be an issue elsewhere.
[+] [-] cosmeen|8 years ago|reply
A video with some of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6O_j0-UZb4
[+] [-] phaedrus441|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puzzlingcaptcha|8 years ago|reply
My current favourite is HP t520 (dual core AMD embedded apu, fanless, M2 SSD drive, a miniPCIe slot, gbit ethernet, USB 3.0 and low power consumption). I haven't measured it but HP states 7W for normal operation. More info at http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hp/t520/ & in the quick specs www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04303956.pdf
You can have one second-hand for about $60-70, and prices are bound to go down.
edit: the linked article mentions that mini-pcie can be used for an SSD. This is usually not true, as mSATA while sharing the same physical connector needs to be wired differently. You can see e.g. pcengines doing that on their apu2 boards. Even the aliexpress page mentions "NOTE:this is msata , can not use in mini pcie or wifi interface" in bold red letters
[+] [-] devy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jMyles|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeroping|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddieroger|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nerdwaller|8 years ago|reply
But I'd still own a number of raspberry pis since they're great for hacking or just to support a cool mission (in my opinion).
[+] [-] narrowtux|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voltagex_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geppetto|8 years ago|reply
I run apache and some low-demanding webapps on it: - dokuwiki - miniflux (feed reader) - shaarli (bookmark manager) and it serves pages via my home DSL connection (with DDNS).
I did consider the alternatives - netbook/notebooks - but for my use case reliability, safety and power consumption would be much worse. These devboard is fanless and runs everything off an SD card. OK, SD cards are slow but on failure (never happened in three years!) I can just swap it with a (recent) cloned one with almost no downtime. I could use the faster onboard NAND but it did fail once on blackout and I went back to SD cards. I could even use a SATA HDD but I don't need that much storage.
So... it depends on your use case, I guess.
[+] [-] morganvachon|8 years ago|reply
http://www.sayresd.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/PC-Dell-De...
There are some Amazon sellers who have put together complete systems running Windows 7 or 10 for around US $100:
https://smile.amazon.com/Dell-OptiPlex-FX160-1-6GHz-Windows/...
If you're buying one to use as a server this won't matter to you, but if you want a tiny Linux or BSD desktop, you may want to look elsewhere. The video hardware is SiS Mirage, which has terrible support in non-Windows OSes.
[+] [-] decryption|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellowapple|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l8rlump|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uzoodoo|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rocky1138|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simias|8 years ago|reply
A few months ago I decided to build myself a super quiet replacement, I took a small well ventilated case[1], put an underclocked i3 in it, a fanless heatsink[2] on top, a super quiet power supply[3] and it's amazing. For about 350 euros I have a completely silent and rather powerful HTPC. A lot more expensive than the computer in TFA obviously, but well worth it if like me you can't stand fan noises.
[1]http://www.coolermaster.com/case/mini-itx-elite-series/elite... [2]https://www.arctic.ac/eu_en/alpine-11-passive.html [3]http://www.bequiet.com/en/powersupply/248
[+] [-] tjoff|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ansible|8 years ago|reply
http://www.frys.com/product/8845262
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonbyrne|8 years ago|reply
The only annoying thing is that my TV doesn't provide USB power while on standby, so I needed a separate power supply.
[+] [-] gm-conspiracy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yeukhon|8 years ago|reply
The former is popularly taken over by the integrated system within TV / media player (yes, many of the newest DVD & BlueRay media players do come with a better, surprisingly [1], integrated system), and you can play media like Netflix / YouTube from your mobile phone.
The latter is somewhat a customized solution, depending on what you do. I would run on my old laptop, or I can run on a raspberry Pi (which is capable of running HD video at 1080p), plus a large SSD network storage device (or use "cloud" if you have a good Internet connectivity).
There are plenty options out there, but for a $60 deal (USD) is pretty good. Most big brands can easily cost you $100+ with just Atom CPU in it. I wouldn't mind getting one though, if it becomes available again.
[1]: Samsung BD-JM57C Streaming Blu-ray Player (love it)
[+] [-] anthony_franco|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moftz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kzisme|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theamk|8 years ago|reply
Using non-x86 devices like Raspberry Pi is the first step in breaking this. Yes, Pi itself has closed-source components, but once the people understand that it is feasible and not hard to run generic server code on ARM/RISC CPUs, the demand will appear, and the market would act and bring cheaper and faster servers to the market. And this is already happening -- for example I think odroids got popular only after Pi has created the demand.
So if you have a choice between x86 and non-x86, chose the latter if you can, to make the world a bit more secure and open.
[+] [-] 1inuxoid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhantomGremlin|8 years ago|reply
The Dell is a complete computer in a box.
Contrast to PC engines, which sell a collection of parts. A motherboard, a case, an AC adapter. Etc.
Oh, and btw careful how you mount the motherboard. I.e.: Conductive cooling from the CPU to the enclosure through a 3 mm alu heat spreader. Please contact us for advice if you want to integrate this board in your own enclosure.
Not that the PC Engines stuff is bad; it's just that I usually prefer to have the manufacturer screw things together and then test the final product.
[+] [-] scalaris373|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martinml|8 years ago|reply
It seems to be running fine even inside of a closed cupboard, the CPU is at 31ºC and using about 16-17 watts on average. It's warm to the touch but it might be the apparently good thermal design of the case which allows for fully passive cooling.
What I don't like is that (at least judging by the heat it generates) most of the power consumption seems to be originated in the video chip, which in a headless server is useless. I tried to disable but didn't have any luck (it's a SiS 771/671 chip).
[+] [-] wyager|8 years ago|reply
The only minor problem I've run into is that the processor is just slow enough that it chokes on high-entropy 1080p video. 99.5% of the time it's fine, but if there's something on screen with lots of tiny objects moving in lots of different directions (a swarm of locusts, an explosion in space, etc.) the frame rate drops substantially. It makes perfect sense if you think about how video compression works. I just wish it had a tiny bit more oomph.
[+] [-] ac29|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] STRiDEX|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply