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Comment by phoehne | Hacker News Reader

When you add performance as a consideration, for just straight computing tasks, you might also want to consider a refurbished or used 1 liter PC. They'll have a 6th or 8th generation intel CPU and power draws usually below 60 watts. There are also some other alternatives like Orange Pi. Generally speaking, some of the other options don't have a PoE capability (my Pis are all PoE) and you lose the exposed GPIO pins. But if you're just running a web server and don't care about PoE or hooking an i2c device to it, used 1 liter machines aren't a bad way to go.

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> and power draws usually below 60 watts

That isn't really in the same class as the Pi though, it seems the various models use somewhere in the range of 1-6watt max.

Except 60 Watts of power is roughly the power-usage of a Lasko box-fan. A PC, even 10 years old, barely uses any power in the scope of things that are in our houses.

The 5W of a Rasp. Pi is extremely awkward in practice. Its "a lot smaller" than a PC for sure, but not small enough to make AA-batteries usable or otherwise a portable computer. And if you're using 18650 Li-ion cells, well... that's called a laptop / typical computer in the 30W to 60W range anyway.

There's something to be said about ESP32 / ESP8266 which actually gets you to that sub-1W level where AA batteries are viable. Its just a new set of opportunities. As it is, Rasp. Pi4 really doesn't feel much different to me (from a power-usage perspective) compared to laptops, or even PCs.

Ahh I've accidentally been referring to all of these 1 litre PCs as "NUC"s - didn't realise there was a non-intel, generic name for it

Some also call them SFF (Small Form Factor) PCs but that term for me typically means the slightly larger desktop size PCs you could set a monitor on top of. The 1L PCs are more like the thin clients hospitals have bolted on their monitors.

ServeTheHome has a great ongoing series on "TinyMiniMicro" computers that make great little home servers.

SFF is about two, two and half stacked pizza boxes when it comes to Dell OptiPlex and Lenovo ThinkCentre. There is also USFF which is tiny, but still bigger than NUC.

There's a bunch of info about 1L PCs at ServeTheHome. Look for the 'tinyminimicro' tag: https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic...

Those guys tend to buy new; although you can easily find used (but still very capable) models on Fleabay, &c. for cheaper. Usual caveats apply; but I've had good experiences after checking sellers carefully.

Manufacturers also have factory-refurbished sales websites, usually separate from their normal website (lease-returns from their financial services arm). Those come with short warranties, and an option to extend them. They are also nicely cleaned up and re-boxed, sometimes with accessories.

I have one from Fleabay and another from Dellrefurbished. Both have been running great for nearly 3 years.

Just as a heads-up, OpenBSD isn’t a great low wattage OS. My NUC came with Ubuntu and sipped power at idle, but OpenBSD doesn’t idle well and (worse) doesn’t SpeedStep on mains power either.

Install and set obsdfreqd.

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