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Comment by glimshe | Hacker News Reader

Rasbperry Pis are losing their competitive edge for non-embedded applications to sub $150 mini PCs, which support Linux/Windows and will come with enclosure, NVMe slot, power button etc. The mini PCs are also generally much faster.

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That's true as long as you don't mind using modified vendor supplied operating systems. Most of these advanced boards will lock you into some patched Ubuntu version.

So far from the ones I've worked only the Pi and a patched Rockpro64 allows you to boot some generic USB installer from UEFI and have the system your way with mainline kernel support.

I didn't see any mention of UEFI in my first read through about the Pi 5. Did I just miss it?

I would like to have a quiet and reasonably performant ARM aarch64 box at this price point, but only if it supports UEFI without needing to resort to silly EFI system partition tricks (which the Pi 4 required, last I knew).

No official UEFI support at this time.

One of the differences in the Raspberry Pi 5 is the bootloader is in EEPROM. It has 2MiBytes which they doubt would be enough to fit a UEFI implementation. So it sounds to me like there isn’t much chance of UEFI this time.

2MiB could be enough space for an EFI implementation, but some features definitely would need to be disabled and it would definitely depend on how big the code for interfacing to the specific hardware on the board actually is. 4MiB is often big enough to have a functional EFI implementation, so 2MiB doesn't sound crazy to me, but I haven't tried.

The RPi4 has had a functional port of TianoCore for a while now, which is likely what they were referring to. You can use e.g. generic aarch64 UEFI Fedora images out of the box with it.

https://github.com/pftf/RPi4

RasPi 4 requires some special files in the EFI system partition and a special non-stock EEPROM, at least for the older RasPi 4 boards, maybe the newer stock come with the UEFI-enabled EEPROM image? Regardless, in my experience with other EFI-enabled boards, I've never had to put the actual EFI into the EFI system partition, the EFI itself lives in a SPI flash usually so that you can boot "from" EFI with no "disks" attached.

Definitely the RasPi 4 having the ability to run UEFI, even in this way, is good. But what I'm looking for specifically is having UEFI just like every other UEFI-enabled PC and server does it, where I don't need a disk to boot to UEFI.

I agree with you about dev boards but I think their post was focused on things like used NUCs or other small x86 machines that are only marginally larger than a Pi in an enclosure and include literally everything you'd want (enclosure, pwa fan, SATA SSD, NVMe, wifi, etc.) and the software support is there (linux / windows).

How about power consumption, especially in when not under load? I remember that Intel chips were not as efficient at it as chips with ARM cores.

Good point, I am not sure they can compete with the smaller arm development boards in that regard!

Intel's finally getting competitive in this market with the 12th/13th gen chips, because of the heterogeneous efficiency/performance core layout. That said, I pine for an ARM SoC or SBC that has a larger core count, and doesn't have embedded RAM packages, or at least offers at least 32 GB of RAM.

He's talking about off the shelf PCs, not Arm based SBCs with a wonky software stack.

hardware consistency and gpio are pretty big factors.

rpi as a compute/media node has always sort of been secondary compared to the software/hat ecosystem -- there have essentially always been better SBC choices for those workloads/media-center-ing.

personally if I wanted a media-center/nas/small-server i'd go with one of the dozens of SBCs that have onboard sata and save myself the hassle of doing it all over an overloaded usb hub.

GPIO is doable on a mini PC. For example, there are Raspberry Pi Pico firmwares out there that present as a normal gpiochip. I recently set up a pico with 3D printer firmware (Klipper, specifically) so I could control power to my actual printer, which actually works surprisingly well.

Where can I find these mini PCs? I am trying to find hardware for an upcoming project and I’m considering the Pi but would love to see some alternatives.

You can check some Beelinks or some other Chinese brands over Amazon. Note that I haven't used any of them tho I'm considering getting one.

Main home server/NAS is a Ryzen 7 Beelink with 64GB. Works a treat. Fan is audible when you're hammering the CPU (doing a large backup, unpacking downloaded media, running a Minecraft server with multiple users) but other than that it's not audible from ~5ft away.

This, I've been pretty happy with it as well, it's so much easier to set up as a kubernetes node than a RPi.

I've been fairly impressed by a couple of Beelinks Mini S12 I purchased a couple of weeks back. Intel N95 CPU, 16 GB RAM, 500GB NVMe. More than enough for checking email.

One was immediately wiped and I installed Debian 12. The other was wiped and I installed Windows 10 Pro. Both seemed to just work.

Hard to beat for less than $200 CAD.

I have a few of these that we use to test "low hardware resource" deployment scenarios, running Ubuntu. So far so good.

I’ve purchased a few HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Minis (refurbished) for about $125 on Amazon. They even come with Windows 10 if you’re looking for that. They’re a deal considering the Pi’s extra expenses like power, case, storage, etc.

Similarly, I got a ThinkCentre M73 (8GB/128GB, Win10) on eBay for £125 3 years ago. It's great.

I love the principle of the mini elitedesks, but some have a terribly annoying fan. It's not firmly attached to the chassis, so it rattles while spinning (and it spins all the time). The heatsink uses a proprietary 3 point attachment, so you can't use a big aftermarket cooler instead (even though it wouldn't fit in the case, I would have accepted the compromise).

Not sure about the <=G3 and >=G7, but the G4 and G5 have the issue. The G6 seems to have the fan attached more firmly, but I've never tested one in a quiet room.

Hp Elitedesk and prodesk are the two 1L available models they have you want to hunt for.

Lenovo has M700, M75q (AMD) and a bunch others ranging from thin client to workstation performance.

Generally new ones are awesome at about $700 but older ones are absolutely capable for upgrading ram, disk, wifi whatever. there are modules for up to 10g and other things too. Servethehome on YouTube has a bunch of guides.

Some Dell Optiplex models are also much like this. I have a refurbed one I got for <£200 running services here at home (core i5, 16GB).

There is also a general improvement in code support by sticking with x86. I bought a similar 10 year old i5 based workstation dell and so many little things just work _better_. I didn't realize just how much of my battles were based on hardware architecture issues.

Agreed, burns so much time messing around with arm and the limited IO suite.

I did something similar too, just beware of refurbishers putting cheap/trash SSD disks in those machine, they can stop working all of a sudden sooner than later (I experienced that on my skin)

Power consumption is a consideration though depending on your use case and setup. A Pi 4 draws about 3W on light load and these G3 Minis take 10-12W.

Of course if you deck out a Pi 4 with a SSD and a fan, it'll come much closer to the G3 Mini in terms of power consumption.

The Dell wyse 5070 idles close to 3-5 watts. A bit more than the pi, but pretty close. It's older now, can be picked up cheaper than a pi off eBay. DDR 4, sata m.2, on board emmc flash. M.2 a-key for WiFi. Max 16GB ram.

When you throw in m.2, lots of ram, all that IO eats power. So the minimum idle power creeps up. Arm boards too.

TopTon is a fairly popular brand on AliExpress for these PCs, they come in nice fanless enclosures, support 2.5gbit ethernet, etc.

eBay. I've picked up thin clients for $50 which take 16G RAM and M.2 SSD.

I'm always on the lookout for the beefier chromeboxes, they're pretty small physically and pack a lot of punch for such a little box. Asus chromebox 3/i7 is my favorite so far.

Yes! I picked up a 4GB Acer chromebox with a celeron for $20. This is much better value to me than an RPi because I don't have to worry about ARM. Obviously RPi serves a different use case of tinkering with embedded dev, but tons of people are trying to put docker on these things...

Just an example https://www.newegg.com/p/2SW-003Z-00008 but countless examples on amazon,newegg,aliexpress

It seems to even support two 4k monitors (probably in 60hz)!

And they advertise up to 3 monitors support.

This is running a 5257U which is an ancient 5th gen mobile chip and even with the Iris graphics it got (much better than the usual Intel HD) only HDMI 1.4 is supported.

I got a 2018 Intel NUC for 100 EUR and love it. It's so damn fast and small, I immediately bought another one in a fit of impulse.

I just stalk eBay's Buy It Now. Got an i7-7700T w/32GB RAM and a 256GB NVMe for $163 shipped+tax. Previously got an i7-6700T with 1 stick of 16GB RAM so it was cheaper to match that for 32GB total.

If you can get friendly with local electronics recyclers or auction buyers you might do way better.

Agreed. Or if one lives near large research universities, they often sell off the equipment they no longer need for a solid deal. Sometimes they do sell computers, servers, monitors and such by the pallet, however, and I’m not sure anyone really needs a cluster that large at home haha

I use a Qotom q750g5 for my router / firewall with OpenWRT. It is absolutely fantastic, and replaced an aging Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite 3.

Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny on eBay. The M600 model is about the slowest / cheapest available and you're looking at $60ish, often with an SSD.

Unless you need the GPIO or have a pi-specific purpose, used thin clients or tiny PCs make more sense for a home server now IMO.

Interesting. Do you have any links for mini PCs like that?

Look for Servethehome's Tiny Mini Micro content.

Current Gen Intel are M100… N200 and N305 ... search for that plus mini PC. Older gens will have less expensive models around.

I used several while rpi supplies slowed and scalping had prices where it was the better option. Around $200-250 USD or so. But comes with memory, storage, case and power supply.

I see Minisforum mentioned frequently. A couple of examples

https://store.minisforum.com/collections/amd-%C2%AE-ryzen-%C...

I do think these make more sense for most people. But I'll for sure be getting a Pi 5. I sold all my Pi 3 and 4 during the pandemic since I wasn't using them.

These are $250 and $300+

Yes. That's what is the cost for a complete mini PC. Barebones are cheaper. $189.00

19V at 3x the cost, compared to the Pi5's 5V at $60

They'll probably come back soon after burning a few fingers due to lack of proper drivers and support.

imho pi's market segment is clearly nerding, tinkering and low-power gpio-adapter. using them as media-pc, router or even desktop is an exercise.

I don’t think that’s the only reason to use one. They also have value as a well known and well supported hardware target even in cases where the GPIOs aren’t needed. For example, the hobby 3D printer community uses them extensively for things like Octoprint where the GPIOs aren’t needed - but the Pi continues to be much more popular than other options because it’s very well supported. A user doesn’t need to figure out any CLI magic to get things to work, they can just grab a pre-made SD card image and go to town. And if they do have a problem, it’ll probably be the same problem that a few thousand other people have had, so solutions will be well documented.

> They also have value as a well known and well supported hardware target even in cases where the GPIOs aren’t needed

true, there are cases, but "well known" and "well supported" is the point i tried to make in favor of enterprise thin-clients and the like as they are pc's and run most commodity operating systems and applications.

> hobby 3D printer community uses them extensively

i'm sure they are (literally)

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