Upgrading from a Pi4 to NUC clone?
!homelab Hello there,
I’ve been running a little army of raspberry pi and libre computer lepotato for many years now.
Sometime died of overheating, one died because the microsd card failed so hard that some kind of electrical shock took off the whole pi.
I’m looking at this trend: replace that with a single or a 2 node cluster of mini pc.
The point is I still want to consume as less electricity as possible. So low TDP CPUs <10 to 15W is my most important criteria, then 2 disk bays (don’t care about the form factor or connector).
Reading buyers comments on Amazon indicates that cheap Chinese mini pc have their ssd dying quickly, or their motherboard, or their power supply, sometimes in months, not even a year.
Would you please recommend a low power mini pc please ? It may be Chinese but from a reputable brand (which I fail to determine).
CameronDev
in reply to Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌 • • •Is a secondhand "official" nuc not an option?
I can't speak to any of the Chinese brands, but minisforum seems well liked.
For what's worth, your making the right call. I did this a few years back with some second hand nucs, and everything has just been way smoother to deal with on x86
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Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌
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evidences
in reply to Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌 • • •Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌
in reply to evidences • • •For instance, Intel 9600T would draw at the minimum 25W and is rated for 35W.
RagingToad
in reply to Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌 • • •I'm not here to recommend a NUC (because I don't know), but a thing about the Pis: I have several, some have been constantly running in some form ore another for 10 years, and I have had 0 issues with overheating or SD-cards.
Also I only use the official power supplies.
The Pi 4 and 5 have heating issues, so I added passive cooling to them (if I would do heavy tasks like transcoding I would add active cooling, but that is not my scenario).
They are reliable little machines
(Also they are limited in CPU and memory, so I also have a NUC. It's an official Intel so not the kind you want
)
Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌
in reply to RagingToad • •The microsd that killed one of my Pi (a Pi3) didn't overheat, it just literally exploded, one face of the plastic case was split in two. My conclusion is that i was creating a short circuit, and damaged the Pi board.
Before I got cooling right, two Pi were really overheating, one died (actually it boots, but freeze). Then I started using radiators or metal cases using the whole case as a dissipator. And a slow fan on top of that for Pi4 and Pi5.
I would totally look at a NUC by Intel, I'm not restricted to Chinese mini pc at all. Actually I'm looking at Intel NUC but they are like twice the price of other mini pc... so I'm still investigating.
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3aqn5k6ryk
in reply to Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌 • • •Im running Aoostar R1 Intel n100 for 3 months now. I bought it barebone. I bought the ram, ssd and hdd seperately. It has 1x m.2 nvme slot and x2 3.5/2.5" disk bay. But i swap the wifi card to another nvme because im not using it.
Intel spec is 6w for n100 but my r1 total wattage is 32w idle including extra usb fan at the top. A bit at the high side after researching around but i dont really mind.
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3aqn5k6ryk
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