Used skinny consumer PCs are an unsexy, available Raspberry Pi various

“Raspberry Pi boards are laborious to get, in all probability additionally subsequent 12 months,” says Andreas Spiess, single-board fanatic and YouTuber, in his distinctive Swiss accent. He isn’t fallacious. Spiess says he and his fellow Pi devotees want “a technique to outlive” with out new boards, so he suggests trying in one of many least charming, most neglected areas of computing: used, corporate-minded skinny consumer PCs.

Spiess’ Pi replacements, urged and refined by lots of his YouTube commenters and Patreon subscribers, are Fujitsu Futros, Lenovo ThinkCentres, and different small techniques (some or all of which may very well be semantically thought of “thick shoppers” or just “mini PCs,” relying in your tastes and retro-grouch sensibilities). They’re the form of techniques you may simply discover used on eBay, refurbished on Amazon Renewed, or by different enterprise and IT asset disposition sources. They’re sometimes in good condition, given their use and setting. And in comparison with single-board fanatic techniques, many extra are being made and changed every year.

They’ve at all times been there, after all, but it surely makes extra sense to take one other have a look at them now. “Again to the longer term,” as Spiess places it (in an analogy we’re not fully certain works).

Spiess’ journey for make-do Pi servers strikes him previous trendy NUCs shortly, as they’re too costly and overpowered for House Assistant, PiHole, or perhaps a multi-container system. He appears at two sorts of skinny shoppers that work. For a single-purpose Pi alternative, nearly any Intel or AMD processor works, and you may want 4GB of reminiscence and 8GB of solid-state storage. To run a number of Pi-scale tasks off one field, Spiess suggests trying to find a more moderen processor, 8GB of reminiscence, and a 64GB or 128GB SSD (or individually upgrading both of these if doable). For his single-purpose tasks, he discovered a 34-euro Futro ($35 USD) with an AMD GX-222GC SoC; for a number of containers, he obtained fourth-generation i5 and i7 ThinkCentres for 79 and 105 euros ($82 and $109 for the time being).

Then there’s the software program. Putting in House Assistant or comparable Pi-focused photographs on the lower-powered consumer requires a USB-to-mSATA adapter or booting a Debian system off a reside USB after which flashing the inner SSD with the picture. For a multi-VM or multi-container machine, Spiess makes use of Proxmox. He installs House Assistant in a single digital machine, then IoT Stack on an AMD-64 model of Debian in one other.

It isn’t a revelation {that a} extra {powerful} pc can replicate the job of a less-powerful pc, however the delta in energy consumption and processing would possibly shock some. In comparison with a Raspberry Pi, Spiess’ cheaper Fujitsu is definitely a bit slower at ESPhome compiling than a Raspberry Pi 4, however the i5 and i7 had been greater than thrice quicker.

Utilizing a meter, Spiess measured their energy consumption. Two Raspberry Pi models consumed 12 Watts at a largely idle state, the Fujitsu at 14 W and the i5 and i7 at 16–18 W (with spikes as much as 25 W throughout excessive exercise). Shopping for skinny shoppers with newer processors and higher energy effectivity would decrease these numbers extra, however Spiess’ scratch math suggests a financial savings of solely about 24 euros ($25 USD) per 12 months, in comparison with the a whole lot of {dollars} extra they value to purchase.

It is clearly extra work to seek out the fitting steadiness of value and measurement within the used skinny consumer (or typically “mini PC”) market and extra work to get one operating tasks sometimes meant for the distinctive Pi platform. However bolstering the marketplace for second-hand computer systems is a web good, particularly if a machine excellent for tinkering or residence automation results in your community closet as an alternative of the shredder. (A tip of the hat to Hackaday for the video hyperlink).