[PoshBreeze]

Yes. You can get dirt cheap mini-pcs / NUC like devices on ebay for next to nothing and they aren't too crazy on the power front.

The biggest problem for the Raspberry PI platform if you are using it as a home server or like a lite desktop is the lack of proper storage.

However I do like the pi for things where you set them up and forget about it. I run a pi-hole on an old Pi 2. However that could be run as a docker container on a small home server / NAS.

[subscribed]

You cannot just compare raspberry pi specifically with all the slew of the random no name / ephemeral mini-pc builds, they're not the same.

I was trying to find something deemed reliable for myself (I need two: one to replace kodi, one as the home storage) and I just don't know. Some have good prices and terrifyingly bad reviews, some look decent but in-depth reviews show significant design shortcomings (eg very bad air circulation inside, 2.5G ports but one chip for this and dosk, for example.

[PoshBreeze]

You can compare them because they overlap in use cases especially as lite-desktop/emulation/media/home-server.

The PC ecosystem is more open so of course you are going to find lots of no name brands on amazon/ebay/ali-express or wherever you are looking. These N100/N150 piece of kit have 1000s of reviews on youtube. There are a few brands that seem dominate and seem to be reasonably well built.

A lot of the mini-pcs / nuc you find on ebay are Dell/Lenovo/HP decommissioned stuff that you can put 16/32gb of ram in and a proper NVME. To do something similar with a PI you need to buy a PI5 and some additional hardware, it about two/three times more expensive. Yes they do consume more power but typically it isn't crazy.

The ARM ecosystem isn't just RPi either. There are other manufacturers offering small credit sized arms boards but their drivers/software/firmware isn't nearly as good as the RPi.

[import]

You can get beelink or minisforum. I have both and they’re rock solid.

[kccqzy]

If you want a name brand mini PC, I'll note that System76 also sells one under the name of Meerkat. And traditionally Intel sells them itself but these days the official successor is ASUS.