I dunno when it happened but I swear SBCs were the new best thing in the universe for a while and everyone was building cool little servers with their RockPis and OrangePis.

Now it’s all gone x86 and Proxmox with everyone shitting on Arm. What happened? What gives?

Is my small army of xPis pointless? What about my 2 Edge routers?

I’ve got about 6 xPis scattered round my flat - is there anything worth doing with them or should I just bin them?

All thoughts, feelings and information welcome. Thank you.

  • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
    182·
    11 months ago

    2 - 8 watts of power for a Pi vs 9-150watts for an x86 system. There are definitely use-cases.

    I use a Pi for DHCP, DNS with PiHole, Tailscale Subnet Router, Rustdesk server, Vaultwarden, Syncthing (connects to local device shares, rather than run ST on each device), ArchiveBox, and working on instant messaging (maybe SimpleX, not sure yet). It’s kind of maxed out.

    But all this runs under 8watts (actually it’s so low my smart switch doesn’t even register the consumption).

    • arglebargle@lemm.eeEnglish
      112·
      11 months ago

      Uh, my server is an x86, is fanless and the cpu idles at 9 and maxes at 12. Is much faster then my pi and has quicksync.

      I run plex, jellyfin, smb shares, mealie, tailscale and rerouting, notes, and books.

      I like my pi but performance per watt isn’t as drastic with x86 if you build for it. Did I mention it’s also fanless? Passive heating that just works on the cpu.

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Nice!

        Yea, I’ve been eyeing a box like that, looks like it could be useful.

        Yep, it’s all tradeoffs, gotta know what you’re shooting for. My Pi cost $5, I’m using an old phone charger (I have many), and an old microsd. If anything fails, I just grab another from the junk box.

        All I know with my current use-case is I can’t measure the power consumption with the tools I use. I imagine that means under 5w draw (not really sure what it’s capable of measuring).

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      11 months ago

      New X86 processors are as efficient as the Apple M series. They are far more power efficient than a Pi under load, though they will consume slightly more at idle. But not nearly as much as you’re suggesting.