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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I have quite a raspberrys around now but they seem kind of flimsy and unreliable. When you really need your "server" to just work for 5 or 10 years in a closet without worrying about it, you'd want something that isn't fed by a 5V transformer that is prone to dying once a year.

I'd happily pay $100 or even $200 for an "industrial" raspberry(-compatible) device. Something in a sturdy case with a reliable power supply.

I’m a bit reluctant to add another one to my closet as a 24/7 server until I find a solution to the reliability issue. I don’t want to run a proper big server because of the electricity cost either. I want something under 15W, preferably passive, with high reliability.

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Proper USB power supplies don't just randomly die once a year, that's utter lunacy.

And what exactly is stopping you from getting any 5V power source or even just rigging up an old PSU with a 10W resistor on the 12V rail and splicing the 5V onto a USB cord? This is a non-issue.

Edit: wrote this before your edit, but still stands. If there's anything to worry about reliability-wise in that timeframe it's SD card corruption, but there's plenty ways around that, whether by limiting writes or using other media.

Edit 2: hostile tone not intended, just perplexing seeing something almost akin to concern trolling done in this manner.

I just don’t like tinkering. I want what you describe but I what to pay with money, not time. Simply a raspberry with a good case, a good psu researched and tested by someone else. They aren’t that easy to find. The market for those of us who are happy to pay $50 for a case and $50 for a psu to house a $30 computer is slim I suppose.

But the pi does have a bit of a dual personality problem where it is made cheap enough to be a toy or hobby thing but people often want to run them unattended for years.

I’m not trolling I’m genuinely looking for advice on more recommended psu’s, cases, raspberry clones etc that don’t require any modding and still makes a 5 year uptime server from a pi.

Any case and any old original iPad charger will do you fine, seriously :) I'm just saying, if you want something really sturdy nothing stops you from either investing in or tinkering up whatever your fancy.

And don’t forget a pi-hole is just a MITM dns server, so if anything should blow you'll just fall back to 8.8.8.8 or ISP default or whatever...

Most cases for rpi are $3 plastic shells around the board. With a stiff cat6 cable you can’t even make it sit on a flat surface but it will hover above your shelf (good for cooling but feels a bit flimsy). That’s what my closet looks like now. Tiny boxes suspended by their tangle of cables. Disconnecting one always feels like a risk of disturbing another.

Just a bigger/heavier case, or one with good wall mounts, or a half with rack tray where you can bolt one (or more) raspberries would be perfect to get some order in the closet. Googling around now I see a lot of DIY rack mount (stacked vertically in 2U seems to be the popular choice). Just need to find someone selling that commercially.

Using iDevice chargers are a good idea.

Edit: googling further reveals this one too: https://revolution.kunbus.com/revolution-pi-series/ DIN Rails! Situation has definitely improved a LOT and shows that there really is a demand for more "industrial" use.

Glad you found something'

Since the pi does have screwholes you can also just literally mount them straight on the wall :) me I like that asthetic out in the open but if they're in the closet anyways it doesn't really matter.

ps. don't forget PoE!

I'm running a pi 4 with 4GB RAM, a quality power supply and a fan as a desktop. It is hooked up to a 23" monitor running on an SDD. It is more reliable than my older iMac (2013). And yes, you need a quality power supply, but it has been rock solid for me as well as being dirt cheap.

I also have a PI 3 taped underneath the table for simple utilities and I forget it is there because it "just works" - for the last year.

> And yes, you need a quality power supply...

Do you have a recommendation in this regard?

I have the "Offical Raspberry Pi 4 Power Supply" from CanaKit. $8 from CanaKit, also available through Amazon.

Clearly orchestrated kubernetes on a cluster of raspberrys is what you need!

>When you really need your "server" to just work for 5 or 10 years in a closet without worrying about it

Given pace of change raspberries don't seem to bad. Rasp3Bs are pretty sturdy if you get a good SD card - that's what dies in my experience

I'm personally rocking a old laptop as home server & will see how long that lasts

Laptops are good for small size and low-ish power but their tiny fans tend to clog up or start making scary sounds after a couple of years. Would like a small box with a big fan - or no fan and a heat sink type case. For rpi (at least 3’s) passive should be fine even without an advanced case I guess.

Bonus points for a half width rackmount rpi case...

People underestimate the resilience of laptops.

I've got one that's been going for 5+ years now...a good chunk of that under partial load 24/7 (BOINC).

Come to think of it it's rather quiet for 5 y/o fans...

Small form factor PCs and NUCs are great alternatives and fit that power requirement.

I personally run an Intel NUC8 at home, but I know plenty of folks who run SFF PCs like used HP 290's with great success and around 15-20W at idle.

The pihole folks have an official docker image as well, so you're not limited by the hardware alone (just time and tinkering).

Look at the apu2 line from pc-engines. I have two, and they're great devices, x86_64 even: https://pcengines.ch/

> you'd want something that isn't fed by a 5V transformer that is prone to dying once a year.

My first generation Raspberry Pi B is still going strong with all of its original equipment.

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