RPi will still have lower power consumption and is far more compact. And mechanically reliable.
I'm in the market to replace my aging Intel NUCs, but RPi is still cheaper.
I'm in the market to replace my aging Intel NUCs, but RPi is still cheaper.
I don't think I could a RPi as cheaply once parts and power supply etc are taken into account.
The RPi Zero 2W costs $15 and runs HA just fine. One can splurge on a pricey case, microSD, and high-amp GAN charger, and still be under 50% of your spend. You don't have to buy the flagship RPi.
If it's an option I would always go with an SSD for HA. It makes a big difference in usability. Writing often and a lot to SD cards, like HA does, kills them way too fast
Strong disagree: my experience has been great, my HA has been running on a Zero 2W for more than 2 years! I have several HACS plugins enabled - just not any if the video or AI stuff. The same Pi concurrently runs PiHole. For a while, it also acted as a git mirror via iSCSI-backed Gitea, but I had to migrate Gitea off of it since it was memory-hungry. You can do a lot with 500MB in headless mode.
What moving parts do competitors have to be less mechanically reliable?
In fact, a NUC or used laptop would be even more reliable since you can replace NVME storage and RAM sticks. If your RPI ram goes bad you're shit out of luck.
>RPi will still have lower power consumption and is far more compact.
Not that big of on an issue in most home user cases as a home server, emulator or PC replacement. For industrial users where space, power usage and heat is limited, definitely.
>I'm in the market to replace my aging Intel NUCs, but RPi is still cheaper.
Cheaper if you ignore much lower performance and versatility vs a X86_X64 NUC as a home server.
> Not that big of on an issue in most home user cases as a home server
I don't know what "most home users" want, but I can understand wanting something more compact and efficient (also easier to keep cool in tighter or closed spaces), even at home.
> Cheaper if you ignore much lower performance and versatility vs a X86_X64 NUC as a home server.
Or maybe they noticed they don't need all the performance and versatility. Been there. It's plenty versatile and can run everything I need.
Unfortunately, it's close to dying. The heat from the CPU disintegrated the plastic of the SATA cable header on the motherboard. I fixed it for now with a bit of glue, but it's not going to hold indefinitely. And NUCs were pretty pricey.
RPi with a SATA/M.2 disk and a PoE hat is not that much cheaper than Intel, but it uses much less power. They also tend to not have cables that are kept under mechanical strain. I have a single-purpose RPi that's been running since 2014, and it's doing just fine.
There are dozens and dozens of NUC style / form factor machines available these days. Especially cheap ones from China. Not sure what you mean by gaping hole post 2023. I'm running 3 of them with N97 and N150 Cpus. All bought within the last 18 months.
Cheap Chinese mini PCs just aren't well documented and don't have predictable supply.
Go price out a used 1l form factor PC.
After you buy a case, and a real disk, the pi, cost savings is gone.
Meanwhile you can pick up a used 8th gen intel 1L form factor for about 100 bucks. You can pick up one that will take a PICE card for 150ish bucks, with remote management.
The 8th gen or better intel has all sorts of extra features that may make it worth while (transcoding/video support).