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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

As a person who uses both, I won't leave an N100 system where I can leave a RPi5.

First, the overall footprint of an RPi5 is way smaller, plus RPi is easier to cool passively than an N100, also it allows RPi5 to be lower maintenance on the longer run.

Most N100 are noisier, hotter and bigger than a Pi5 (I have a smaller N100, but it's still actively cooled).

When paired with a decent A2 card (e.g.: Kingston Canvas Go), the SD-card related lag disappears. Add a good external SSD, you have tons of solid state storage. At that point you can just forget it.

I like my N100, and companies like GMKTec routes 2 PCIe lanes to NVMe slots allowing ~1.5GB of throughput, but for most home use, that's overkill. I rather use Pi as a server and N100 as a desktop (which is exactly what I do).

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> When paired with a decent A2 card (e.g.: Kingston Canvas Go), the SD-card related lag disappears. Add a good external SSD, you have tons of solid state storage. At that point you can just forget it.

At that point you can just underclock an N100 NUC for the same price and almost the same TDP (it's pretty much even with the SSD). Most vendors configure the CPU well into diminishing returns for marketing reasons and even a small undervolt can make them passive (the same is true of many laptops).

I get the form factor issue but exposed RPis without the enclosure (more $$) are a burned out board waiting to happen. I use them in enclosed hardware that needs gpio like 3d printers but the N100 wins every other time.

You can't rule out a fan sucking in dusty air from side or worse, bottom of the case. Most N100 systems have too much air circulation inside to forget them in the long term.

Many N100 systems come with 5W TDP as default. However, this is more of an "average" TDP. It doesn't prevent the CPU to enable its turbo and exhaust its thermal budget. Forcing it to lower envelopes via cpufreqd would work, but you're limited by your fan again, which will make everything dusty, eventually.

I have found a pretty cheap completely aluminum case [0] which sucks heat from every IC and bottom of the case via silicon thermal pads. It keeps the processor at 37 degrees, cools USB bridge and power controller too.

With no moving part, case is almost airtight. So, it's sitting snug and cool in that case. You can't burn RPi in that configuration.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/GeeekPi-Aluminum-Raspberry-Cooling-Th...

We use fanless creditcard-sized N100 from upboard without issues although we haven't done undervolting yet.

Oh, I didn't see that form factor, can you share a link?

Oh, upboard. That thing starts from $229 as a box. Not exactly cheap, and 8GB/64GB version is $279.

[0]: https://up-shop.org/default/up-7000-edge-series.html

True, it's not as cheap but significantly faster with the same approx power usage

Even with printers, you can connect via usb if we're talking Klipper..

Duet 3 with daughter boards for tool switching and multiple extruders (customized Voron 2.4)

    At that point you can just underclock an N100 NUC 
    for the same price and almost the same TDP

Good advice, thanks. Been so long since I underclocked/undervolted I literally forgot it was a thing!

> Most N100 are noisier, hotter

I went from a passively cooled RPi5 to a N100. The RPi idled at around 50°C and throttled under load. The N100 keeps 56°C under light load (the heaviest things are rtl_433, grafana, nextcloud). To keep it from throttling in heavy load I zip tied a small Noctua NF-A4x20 to the side of the case over the passive heatsink and adjusted the fan curve to only run at above 60°C. This works super well, the N100 doesn't get hotter than about 62°C under full load and the fan spins slow enough that I can't hear it at all even if I put my ear directly next to it.

Nice solution, but with the case I linked, my Pi idles around 37, and reaches 50-ish (both degrees C) at most (if I load it hard), since the case is sucking heat from all chips and bottom of the PCB.

How does it handle electrostatic discharge when touching it in that case? I used a case that was really more of an oversized heatsink[1] than a case and it was really sensitive. Managed to crash the rpi a couple of times when I touched it without touching ground first a couple of times.

edit: I replaced the thermal sticker for thermal paste, not sure if that could have affected it, the paste wasn't the conductive kind.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/GeeekPi-Aluminum-Heatsink-Raspberry-I...

The case I'm using is this [0], and my Pi never crashed while inside it, even though I bear handled it.

The room the Pi lives has a wool carpet, too.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/GeeekPi-Aluminum-Raspberry-Cooling-Th...

> To keep it from throttling in heavy load I zip tied a small Noctua NF-A4x20 to the side of the case over the passive heatsink and adjusted the fan curve to only run at above 60°C.

I applaud your creativity but surely this is an indication of the limitations of the architecture!

> The N100 keeps 56°C under light load

Thats somewhat surprising. I have an old 14nm Celeron I use as a home server and under typical usage it is a few degrees above ambient. Checking now it is 26C. There is no fan, and it just has whatever tiny stock heatsink it came with.

I wonder why N100 is running so hot for you.

Is the N100 better supported by Linux than the RPi? My RPi gets the TAINT_CRAP flag due to broadcom drivers from the staging area.

That will depend on what other hardware they put on the board. In general though N100 is just a standard x86-64 so you have a lot better odds of good support.

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