The defining feature of this blade is the cluster box, most notably the interconnect. PCIe can do high speed networking (just like Ethernet) but very, very few companies have really tapped into that, outside of high-end enterprise products like NVMeOF drives. It would be interesting if they are open and proactive with software development to test out their clustering setup using PCIe as the backbone (what those U.2 connectors are for). It would give lower latency and higher bandwidth than Ethernet, and supposedly would get us closer to a node-to-node ideal where CPUs are almost talking directly to one another like some dual CPU motherboards do. However, my fear is they won't get enough traction with the high-ish price to be anything more than a small niche player, especially since individually the nodes themselves aren't too incredible.
Could anybody give me an example of a niche where these kind of cluster-boxes would be used? Maybe i'm an old school person but I see SBC's in a company-setting still as a expandable microcontroller with only a few functions.
@@Peter_Enis given the RAM capacity, NPU (for which some legit galaxy-brained devs *reverse engineered* open source drivers; idek how that’s possible lol) and the GPU (which gets full upstream kernel support as of 6.10, around the corner) there’s probably a bunch of use cases for some ~AI~ things. I’m sure there’s businesses that would want to run object detection on multiple fairly high quality live video/surveillance camera streams. To be able to do that locally, free from fees and subscriptions to cloud based services? is probably worth the a $3K (incl. some big ass drives) one-time investment to many. And that’s just one, specific, use case. As an aside, Im actually curious about what was causing @raidowl to have GPU issues; the panfork drivers for the RK3588s GPU on using armbians 6.1 kernel has been really capable on my Rock 5B, though I have yet to try Jellyfin
I totally agree. I cringe when people recommend a $200 raspberry pi kit when someone says they want to learn to code. Just get a cheap mini pc because it will be more powerful, more compatible, more useful, and is still power efficient and small.
"but what if I want GPIO?" Then you aren't asking for an SBC. You just need either the serial port on a miniPC, an m2/mpcie GPIO add in card, or an arduino. SBCs have gotten so bloated that they just provide what 4th gen minipcs do but "on usb power", and then throw in GPIO to pretend like they're still for tinkering. On what planet is a mac not for tinkering, but an SBC with everything soldered is?
I think they have drifted from their initial purpose a little bit, when it was like $25 or so it was great but with costs of $200 it makes much less sense. In my mind though the real value is interfacing with electronics through the GPIO, not just to be a device to learn to program which can be done on anything.
I got a 4GB PI5 for $60, the cooler, PS, 256GB (400mb/s flash) all for under $100 total. It overclocked to 3.0ghz, can overclock the gpu to1100. It can play PS2, Gamecube, runs Ubuntu. It's nowhere near tapped on potential. The Pi4s I had got better over time too. From the manufacturer and the community making/fixing software AND the UA-cam videos showing how to do things. I have 7 Pi's in front of me. 3 running, 4 are portable. 1 of anything would not really compete with using Pi's like browser tabs. I have Android playing a tv show on a boombox (tape deck has pi4 with 5" touchscreen in place of the door.) Then this desktop w/ Ubuntu writing this comment, and another Ubuntu next to that running another instance of UA-cam to watch. I've forgotten what waiting is like, using what some people deem to be "slow" computers. There is an 8th Pi4 hanging out nearby, sadly that one lasted about a week when I made a mistake with the USB. I was sad but still had 4 others at that time. Now it is parts in the future. I can't imagine using a Mac or blowing one up, and just being okay with it. Or the cost of 7, err, 8 of them retail from new. GPIO just means fan, power and ground to me. I agree don't buy the kits, buy the parts separately and have a better experience. Don't run micro SD, use a USB flash that runs faster and overclock them all.
SBC's are still great for embedded projects, learning, prototyping, or serving as some sort of intermediate device/controller in a larger system. But for personal computer purposes, mini-PCs are definitely the way to go!
The folks at MixTile sent me one of their boards last year some time I think. I couldn't even force myself into faking interest in it once it arrived with just the board in the box. No cables. No instructions. Nothing. The team I spoke with were slow to respond and I eventually just threw it in a box and forgot about it.
I'm a big fan of Libre Computers' range of SBCs. They're dirt cheap ARM boards, but they have fully UEFI-complliant bootloaders on them, meaning you're not limited to whatever janky images they provide. They upstream drivers and configuration for all their hardware (what a novel concept!), so most up-to-date distros simply work. They've been a joy to use.
The Pi 5's SoC uses a considerable amount of energy, given its intended applications. It's not really competitive with an Intel N100 on a perf/watt basis, especially if what you want to do isn't well-optimized for Arm. But throwing out SBCs altogether is really stupid. Just because there are people who want an RPi to be a super amazing media server doesn't discount its other uses in things like weather monitoring, IP surveillance, 3D printing, robotics, etc. where GPIO is useful, if not necessary--a random Chinese x86 mini PC ain't gonna give you GPIO or PoE. tl;dr the unwashed masses want SBCs to do everything as well as x86 at a fraction the power use and are butthurt that it isn't happening
@@longdang2681 People were already trying to use pi's as desktops before that kit was released, they just leaned into that dumbass trend. I kinda hope all of those idiots move back to x86 where the should have always been as it should quieten down all the noise.
People act like the pi zeros, pi2 and 3 stopped existing when the 4 and 5 released, they are still here, still cheap and run all of the projects you can find just as well as they always did.
@@backgammonbacon The pi marketing team should have known better than to actively mislead people into buying their product for a use case that it was unsuitable for. Now they are doubling down on that mistake and releasing faster pi's; because faster speeds is what is going to turn a specialist computer into a general purpose computer? What do you tell the average Joe when they say that they have bought the 'desktop kit' version to use as a desktop; and it's from the biggest name in single board computing?
I disagree. People are treating SBC like a general purpose computer, which it could be, but SBC is really awesome as a cheap embedded system and for hardware tinkering, especially with GPIO and low power consumption. Raspberry Pi zero is good enough for most small projects, and cheap enough, too. I have plenty of mini PC and I love using them for homelab, but I won't deploy them for air quality measurement or home automation node or robotics.
I also agree with this. Raspberry pi Zero models, and the 3A+ are still what the Raspberry pi were originally meant to be. I have a raspberry pi 5, and have literally never even powered it up. But I do have it . . .
For less resource intensive services that are to be run 24/7 in the home, running headless and consuming little power and passively cooled, therefore running silently, a Raspberry Pi still can't be beaten IMO.
@@nddulac I agree about the less power hungry models. Their main advantage apart from their stellar software support is their low power consumption for 24/7 services. I just picked up a cheap second hand pair of 3Bs. I wish the Zero was as low priced as it was when it first came out but it's still a great option.
Honestly, with how expensive current gen SBCs are, I think most people are better off with an older or lower model (Pi Zero whatever) If someone needs to do Raspberry Pi things. Otherwise the sweet spot is something like an Arduino or a big boy MCU like the STM32 series for embedded projects + a mini PC for homelabbing. For how outrageously expensive newer SBCs are rn you can get both devices.
I'm with you 100% on this. The SBC market has lost both its vision of what an SBC is going to be used for (learning) and what makes them practical (cost.) I teach a class in which I want to show students how to build simple interfaces using GPIO pins. At one point, the way to do this was to get a Raspberry Pi and go to town. But during the great pi shortage, this became impractical. Then I learned about the MCP2221a breakout board available from Adafruit for $6.50. This connects to a PC (or Mac, if you are so inclined) via a USB, and gives you four GPIOs as well as I2C connectivity. Way more practical. Couple this with a BYOC or a cheap mini computer, off you go. (Bob's your uncle, Fannie's your aunt, and so forth.) So yeah - you can download Scratch for free on your PC if you want to learn programming that way (or python if you are being more practical), a USB-connected breakout for GPIO or remote sensor capability, And a $100 mini PC for desktop functionality, and you are already ahead of the game.
Totally agree. I gave up SBCs awhile ago. I bought a n100 mini PC with full x86 support. I put my Raspberry Pis in the loft and I don’t intend to use them again anytime soon. Kudos to Intel for developing the n100 with great hardware encoding, if a little slow. 😊
I concur 100%. I wanted to get an arm low power sbc for my OPNsense build but there was always something lacking, cough, 2.5ghz Ethernet. So, I went with an Intel N100 box which had 4 of the desired Ethernet ports and only cost $164 with replaceable 128GB NVMe drive and 8GB of ram. It may not sip the electricity as slowly as the sbc arm box but it does what I need and if I get bored with it, it will be a lot easier to repurpose since there is so much software available for it.
Bought a N100 T8 Firebat 16gb ram, 512ssd and Windows. Had it setup and working within 5 minutes. Remember to set ddr5 speed to 4800 and increase tdp from 15w to 30w in bios. 140usd with shipping! Playing Steam games on it is so easy!
Whoa whoa whoa. My shitty little cluster of pi's doesnt need your sass. I mean...you're not wrong, and I dont plan on buying anymore Pi's for homelabbing because mini-pc's just give you more bang for your buck. But still, my pi's are doing their best 🤣🤣🤣
@@RaidOwl absolutely. Now Im just itching to find more mini-pcs that I can power via PoE. Thats the main thing that sets SBC's apart for me. Hows that Neosmay holding up?
I love the compact nature of these devices and how little power they consume, especially the Pi Zeros which have enough juice to handle a network wide adblocker, a Wireguard server and still host something like Navidrome. For desktop usage, even the RPi by now reaches the point that x86 is more affordable and of better use. Kinda sad given these things were designed to told kids how to code initially and give a low priced entry point into computing but that's how it is.
I think that the Raspberry Pi 5 is a good mix between performance, cost and efficiency. I am planning to get one for my homelab because my Rock Pi 4B isn't really cutting it any longer - especially when I want to run more complex services on it like VS Code Tunnel or Kasm. I had the issue where my whole internet was down because the Rock Pi crashed and so did all containers on it (with pihole being one of them)
I could not agree more. At one point ARM SBCs were amazing for what they cost. They were cheap enough that when you got bored with one you could throw it in a drawer to slowly decompose into it's component elements without a care. They haven't been that since the pi 4 became unobtanium. Glad to see someone saying it out loud.
There are cheaper solutions for that as well. I use the MCP2221a breakout ($6.50 from Adafruit) which connects via USB to provide GPIO capability on my laptop. Yeah - that's right . . I can make LEDs blink, so don't mess with me!
@@nddulac You can buy the small version of an Arduino board (I think it's called Arduino Mini, or Micro, or Nano, or something like that) for just over one dollar. An ESP32 board with integrated Wi-fi and Bluetooth for about two dollars.
Refurb Lenovo and HP SFP machines for me, I am so over Pi’s for most use cases. Not being able to get a Pi, or one less than $250, for 3 years broke me of them. Sorry Eben, we moved on.
The Pi peaked with the 3B+. After the whole shortage shit show, it really has not been better. I am glad these mini PCs are a thing and are a much better option if you want to dual boot Windows and Linux with complete compatibility for software.
My beautiful raspi5 is sitting basically unused, whats the oppositer of fomo? Buyers remorse doesnt quite line up, because i'm glad I got it, just wish I had the passion to work on it.
I've like this guys sensibility. I've delt a small amount with a Samsung smart TV Android like software and some Samsung pads, Never Again! I don't get sucked in to the High end Intel (core whatever) chip circus either. My current machine is a retired workstation Dell Precision Tower 3420 sff; core I7-6700; two drives a ssd with windows 10 and a NVME-m.2 with Linux Mint; 64Gb of DDR4. This machine never gets turned off (maybe restarted ever so often). I do have to reboot to switch drives. This is a used $250 machine, and I don't game on it just UA-cam streaming. I use the Linux drive the most. My productivity software is Libre Office and some Google programs ie Google Earth; Google Maps; G drive; Contacts. My monitor is the Samsung 55" TV and I only occasionally watch live TV and fall asleep watching the "Snooze" (News) the rest is UA-cam.
@@bjre.wa.8681You never turn that off? What’s its power consumption ? In most places in the world that would cost more to run 24/7 for a year than the actual hardware 😅
I think this situation is even harder with RISC-V sbcs too, since they're on a still relatively new ISA and most of them also can't even match the same functionality, let alone the same baseline performance at cost to most of the ARM sbcs, most particularly the current Pi boards. Their software support is also a mega miss if you want something working right out of the box because you're not only tinkering, but also building up things that aren't even in there yet. Though I do kinda hope that at some point, we'll get actually decent RISC-V boards later down the road, but at the moment it's just not there yet, dare I say in a weirder position than all these newfangled powerful ARM sbcs that make it hard to choose. _Maybe one day, there might come a better choice with enough support to go somewhere from there._
The world of embedded systems seems to continuously escape software practitioner’s understanding. SOC are literally everywhere in industrial automation. OT endpoints are different than traditional purist IT endpoints. I agree with you on one thing - all of us need to individually & collectively fiercely fight for open source. It is our only path to combating wealth inequality & innovation. Long live open source.
The pi zero, pi 3 and pi 2 are all still being sold and are all very cheap still. If you are worried about performance you are looking at entirely the wrong product category.
I think you nailed it in this video. The CHIP and Pocket CHIP were really cool devices but there was no software support for them. So now I have devices that do minimal things because there is no software support for them. To make matters worse, they do not have a straightforward setup should the software get corrupted.
I run a lot of stuff on Raspberry Pi 4 boxes... offsite backup, Asterisk, mail server, IRC server, home security system, etc. But I agree that the cost advantage of the Pi is basically nonexistent now compared to mini-PCs. The one good thing about Raspberry Pi is excellent software support. Everything just works and there's a massive community. I'm happy with my Pi setup and have no plans to change it, but if I were starting out today building up my network, I'd probably go with x86 mini-PCs.
I’d love to see a miniPC with 4 or 5 m.2 drives like we’re seeing over on the Pi side. A little 4”x4”x4” NUC with dual 2.5G LAN on an N100 cpu would be killer. I’m too lazy to be compiling my own software from source so x86 is gonna be my jam for a while.
While this board is expensive and rather for industrial use at least I assume that with their interconnect. Other RK3588 based boards are way cheaper and are great for people who like to tinker (when it comes to anything besides compute) like with the linux kernel. I’ve been using a RK3568 based one as a 2.5GbE NAS for 1.5 years and also do Jellyfin with RK3588 and try to contribute documentation. For consumers it just isn’t the x86 run and go experience but for most of the home lab stuff like Pi-Hole, HomeAssistant, etc. which you want to run 24/7 on a low power budget these boards are nice
I have to agree. Those "high power" Arm SBCs make no sense - they cost as much or more then complete mini PCs but offer a fraction of their power, I/O and software compatibility.
In Canada a Pi 5 kit with basic case and 32gig sd card will run you $270 roughly. A pi 4 with 64gig sd is about $250. I just looked up a mini PC with 16gig and 512gig drive on Amazon with prime will set you back $249.55! what is the better deal???
Totally agree! I live in Japan. Here everything used is as good as new I can buy a corem5 Fujitsu tablet computer with detachable keyboard a 13inch touch screen and docking station for less than a 70usd. It will outperform most sbc's and use less power. No way I am buying SBCs .
The Raspberry Pi Pico or Raspberry Pi Zero generally suit my purposes just fine. If I need 8GB of RAM or an 8 core CPU for my project it is probably going to be running on my Docker or Proxmox server and neither of those is running on an SBC.
Great video.. .Those prices are outrageous and that is understating it... Its about time these corporations wake up and think about what consumers / enthusiasts want...
I really enjoy my 2x pi 5s, 2x pi zero 2 ws, 2x pi pico 2s, pi zero w, and my 1 x pi 4 and I am happy having spent the money. Also I like my System76 Meerkats as well :-) I use them every day, and I really enjoy them. Since that is what I use and enjoy, I don't have much knowledge about other devices so much... and having that many devices opens up opportunities to learn how to keep them all busy (utilizing CPU where and when applicable etc.) as much as possible. Maybe it depends on your goals, your budget, your time, etc. You could go with single board computers or not, but can you learn from what you have already and can you dream up what is possible and what you need to have to be able to get there in the future...
+1 SBCs without mgf distro support are worthless within a year. So that leaves you exclusively with Rpi, and they have priced themselves out of the market. Those x86 mini PCs are awesome, i have 3 of them in a CEF Proxmox cluster all at 2.5Gb and they dont miss a beat.
SBCs for embedded applications, 1L pcs or NAS with docker for running services, desktop as a desktop, need a cluster? virtualise a regular computer or server. I have a raspberry pi 3, and 4. Sold em as they sat on the shelf.
you hit the nail in the head i feel the same way , you know what i buy ? laptop motherboards instead of SBCs , SBCs just too expensive ... if i need an sbc i go on ebay and i look for a motherboard for an old laptop , i get it and then i figure out how to get video out and put power in .
For server use it will be cheaper in the long run to buy a modern N100 based PC even if it costs three times as much. Just because of power consumption.
I blame the the rpi4 'desktop' edition. Before that everyone knew that rpi were specialist computers. Whilst you 'can' use a rpi4 as a desktop computer; it's makes for an awful experience; mostly because people looking for desktop computers are looking for general purpose desktop computers with no code writing required. SBC's are not lame, they were just marketed really badly at your average Joe for whom they are completely unsuitable. A niche product that is currently marketed at the masses.
@@nddulac I wanted the retro style 'in keyboard' computer design that is the pi 400. Then I realised that a modern netbook not only had the built in keyboard but also touchpad, battery, screen, etc. For those that don't require specific things like the gpio, then the x86 equivalents are just more usable. When I see rpi4 owners struggle to boot from sata SSD, usb SSD, or connect and use other peripherals; it reminds me of how hassle free my netbook has been.
I want a small form factor that I can have AV1 decode and transcode to H264 and H265 with good quality (even if I have to use software encoding). The x86 solutions make more sense for my use case.
Great video. If they are making them then I assume some businesses must have a use for them in clustering like JeffGeerling said ( thankfully I can see it from here as I type, I'm Smart !! ) But seriously I recently found out that MSI Cubi 12M or N makes a 12th Gen with a 3 year warranty and has 4th Gen PCIe for one 2280 NVMe and a spot for a regular SSD, Dual Channel RAM for 64GB max ( not the N100 models like all of them though ). It also has 2 LAN ports. The one i3-1335U was $240 a few weeks ago but is now $259 or $261 ( barebones ) so at that price I don't know. Depending on use you may want to just spend some more and get the i5 version of the Minisforum MS-01? Unless you were set on a N100 of course, having 2 LAN's, one 2.5 GbE and one 1 GbE could open more doors down the road what you could use it for. I think the Cubi i5 model is just that much more expensive that you almost have to go with the MS-01 i5 model, except for the fact that 3 year warranty is very, very enticing. I do Not know how Minisforum handles warranties yet. I almost just bought the MSI Cubi 12M i3 just for UA-cam HTTC and run a few containers for Joplin for sure and ??, already had a Logitech K830 that I never use. I just checked and that Cubi i5 is $400 with just one left. IIRC they use Realtek though. That's one of the reasons I didn't buy it as I know Linux has issues. I probably would of screwed around with Proxmox for awhile instead to be honest, didn't want too many swear words because of Realtek. I wish they would come out with a 13th Gen with Intel i226-v dual LAN's then I assume all of you guys would review them. An i3-1335U for $325 at launch with dual Intel LAN's and a i5 for $438 at launch with dual Intel LAN's at launch with 3 year warranties to put a hamper on so many Chinese stuff would be _Nice_. Now I'm thinking I'm just going to do a new Proxmox desktop/server build and be done with it. Or is that _just the beginning_
I definitely know where you're coming from here on SBCs in general. SBCs are cool, and I like them, but they're not as compelling as they used to be. Price is always a factor. The Pi 4 shortages and price hikes certainly turned things around and made them less appealing overall. In the last few years, I've overwhelmingly favored used office PCs with the tiny/mini/micros being the obvious picks, but I also have a SFF Lenovo. Obviously, that can't compete with SBCs and 1 liter PCs in terms of being compact. And I also just recently picked up an old Zotac mini PC that looks extremely similar to, but is legally distinct from a NUC for less than the original MSRP of the Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM. And it has two ethernet ports. SBCs still have some advantages, but not as many for general use now that mini PCs have become so inexpensive. It just changed the value proposition. I think a lot of that comes down to the availability of those used 1 liter office PCs. When the Pi was new, those either didn't exist or were brand new. I remember seeing them for sale used back in 2016, but they were still expensive compared to SBCs. Now that they're all over the place, they've quite inexpensive and a great value.
The big selling point of SBCs for aspiring developers/tinkerers were thanks to a 'capable' chip with onboard pinouts, but both x86 and microcontroller options are much cheaper and very capable now. So, yeah, completely agree!
I remember getting a cab to Maplin to buy the raspberry pi in 2012, (I still have the board marked 2011) both cab and pi cost about £30. The last pi I got was a pi 4 and it cost £120, sbc game done changed. Used be about inexpensive access, now a majority of stock is consumed by universities and colleges so by the time the average consumer gets a look from scalpers they are well over priced. I went with an intel nuc for my last build, and there are much cheaper microchips if want the gpio.
They serve a purpose. People try to press them into service for things that a cheap used PC would do better. I use SBC's for the GPIO connector to control hardware. Otherwise I use a PC.
I really agree with this. I don't think it is so much that SBCs have gotten so expensive. They have gotten more expensive so it doesn't help but inflation is part of that. I think that, as you pointed out, that mini PCs have just gotten so good. In 2014 a PC in this 200-300 range would probably have been a lot bigger, like one of the 1L PCs that are common for businesses. And in this price range they probably would have use a Celeron Processor that was old by 2014 standards which means that performance sucked. Now though like you have said you can get a mini PC with a decent older laptop chip like the 5700u and actually get good performance out of it. So yes SBCs have gone up in price but what is killing them is that good mini PCs actually exist now and aren't all that expensive.
My mini-PC with a Ryzen 5700u idles at 3w and draws 10w when playing 4k videos while multitasking. It already comes with a case, 16GB RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. A Raspberry Pi just can't compete with it unless you have a specific use case that you just have to get a Raspberry Pi. That said, I do own a Raspberry Pi 5, Pi 4, and Pi-Z w and they are great gadgets but are simply to expensive currently to recommend. 😔
Hi Brett. I am going to strap on my alter-ego I like to call "Mr. Unpopular". As this persona indicates, I would like to point out that there is an alternative to both of these routes that uses roughly the same power but is a bit bigger and even has additional integrated hardware. No it won't fit into one of those newer compact mini-racks but it usually does cost less (generally speaking) and can run most of the same software as the mini PC's. What I am referring to are used laptops. Ebay is flooded with them. Many times you can even find a "lot" of them that are the same or even similar so that you could use them for clustering. As chiefly an ewaste re-use proponent, I see these as viable options and depending on what you can find, mostly as capable. Just a thought. Ok, I am ready to hear the good, bad and ugly. Let me have it.
Lol yeah I don’t really discriminate vs what people like to run in their lab. If you like laptops, great! If you like SBCs, neat! If you like $5000 epyc cpus, join my Patreon! Haha. The only thing about older used stuff is that it’s often not very power efficient for what you get, but for lots of workloads it’s fine.
honestly if you need ARM and a lot of power, none of these rockchip systems is as well supported as asahi on a mac mini, but for anything else, the right answer is "your old laptop" or a 5 year old dell from a dumpster behind a school.
I completely agree. Also three to five time higher idle power consumption is quite pointless when it's 2W vs 7W or so. And 7W for i5-6500T running some docker containers so it already has like 1% load. I can understand that RPI3B and below have some sense: it can powered from powerbank for hours or even day, it's relatively cheap, it has some GPIO pins, it's good enough for hosting some rather static website and maybe it's more limited by I/O speed of USB2 rather than CPU power, it can be a good datalogger and it has many scenarios where it's good enough. But then there is a gray zone for me: if you want something more powerful, with more RAM, better I/O speed, you can get better models with 2GB, 4GB or even 8GB of RAM and better processor from Arm to some Intel Celeron. Problem is they may be sufficient for one project, maybe two. For general purpose it would be limited either by RAM (2GB are fine to run browser in OpenBox with 4 tabs and restart it from time to time, not much else) or by slow CPU and it's not upgradable. Some refurbished minipc, maybe even miniitx board is not much more expensive than high end SBC (refurbished PC can be cheaper) and they are about as powerful as 5 year old notebooks. Plus they have enclosure, upgradable RAM, NVMe drive or SATA SSD.
I realize this happening too. I have a bunch of ARM SBCs lying around, which I badly want to find a use case for, but all ideas I had so far were easier and better achievable using a VM on my Proxmox, which runs on [drumroll] an x86 mini PC! 😅
Small pc with intel n100, turn off turbo mode, change wattage to low and installed true-nas, everything works perfectly fine with decoding and rest. Linux, windows works perfectly fine with min wattage power or more if you need, like my settings > L1 15W and L2 to 25W (30W max but overheat is short time).
For power consumption, the less powerful SBCs are still better than mini PCs for those who want to run a simple service 24/7 like a web server or an Asterisk PBX.
100% agree. When I computed the Price/(Performance/Watt) metric, that's how I ended up with three OASLOA Mini PCs that had the Intel N95 processor. Yes, there were systems that were cheaper, but less performant, just as there were mini PCs that were more expensive, but also more performant, but when I optimised for all three variables simultaneously, that was the best option for my use case (Windows AD DC, DNS, Pi-hole (which became AdGuardHome)).
I used to work in a computer store running the service dept covering some of the floor when they needed help. The biggest issue is that people don’t have a clue what they want the computer for. You must have some idea what you expect the hardware to do before you get it home and realize it won’t do what you want. The pi not playing movies is usually overcome by a Kodi like OS just being a media player for it, but don’t expect that it will replace a regular PC for anything other than very basic stuff. An SBC is just for experimenting and not much else, expecting it to be used for heavy gaming is ridiculous, buy a real computer.
It's the I/O which is shit, something I took for granted with regular x86 motherboards...then you try and plug a couple of things into a Pi which the CPU can run but the hardware controllers just don't have the bandwidth.
umm, don't most ppl buy these for the GPIO capability? you didn't even mention the fact a mini pc doesn't have anyway to interact with anything but itself and usb devices unless i'm missing something?
I want to see something with ARM cpu in mITX form-factor. I know that there are some mITX boards for RPi4 CM and one from Firefly with RK3588, but I want a proper mITX ARM powerhouse. Maybe it won't happen, since it might not be practical, especially from the perspective of size.
@@RaidOwl It indeed does, but the prices bite pretty hard for now, plus they don't seem to have something more desktop-oriented. Hopefully they'll succeed in developing cheaper/smaller options, if they'd take that path ofc. Other than that - let's wait and see
my thoughts exactly. sbcs lost sight of their original purposes as low cost, low power computing platform and gunning for cluster nases and other hardware capabilities of an already existing market. for example, the orange pi may be faster than a regular pi but you are limited to what os you can install, have to download the os through a questionably shady google drive link from china that probably has malware bundled in. and there’s the lack of software support. of there is support it is in chinese or poorly worded english. sbcs have their use cases but it’s good to be reminded of that, otherwise you’ll be in a rabbit hole of spending thousands for something that could have been approached with better hardware and software support in an already existing market… not one still being developed from the ground up which may also be re-inventing the wheel… like zima ice whale casa os or the like.
These arm soc was great when they were a cheap learning platform. ARM SOC vendors lost the plot when they tried to become "real" pc/servers and more expensive than x86 in price and performance
Remember phones? Those things you used to call other people? Remember what happened to them, to the point where now you carry around something that does everything and ALSO does make phone calls? :D I think SBC are going that direction. In the beginning they were supposed to be small devices for headless tasks or productivity, and now they are basically fully fledged computers. If that make sense for some people to buy, it is up to them... I still buy a 4000 bucks computer for work and leisure, but I don't spend more than 200 bucks for a phone because I don't give a crap about what a phone does, beside phone calls and email, and yet some people spend 400 bucks for a pc or a chromebook, while they buy a 2000 dollars iPhone Max ultra pro extra +++ because they do everything with it.
When ever i hear someone ask: "Is this product best?" I always ask: "For what purpose?" I consider SBCs as toys for tickerers. If people just want something that works, i would definetely go the mini PC route. But the geek / masochist in me would say: "Where is the fun, in something that just works?"
I miss the days of non-commercial embedded projects being people with motivation putting cool stuff on hackaday. Nowadays, the people making the most noise are non-engineer-minded users complaining about software support, and how things suck because they can't play youtube videos. They also have a very monolithic view of the hardware (useless because "I can't think of who it's for"). The people whining are definitely not the people you'll see at micromouse maze competitions, or doing cool stuff with RC cars ... unless there's pre-fab kits with software support.
I want to sell all my SBCs, the cost for a usable SBC is not cheap, you need NVME, NVME adapter, cooling, etc. 😪 Mini PCs is really the choice of home lab
Even with a PCIE 3 NVME connected, you only get 1 or 2 lane max in a SBC, but you can get a PCIE4 full speed in many Mini PCs, and the power consumption only 15w(e.g intel N305) to 65w (e.g AMD 6900hx), compare to 5w - 15w SBC, that is not much
What's the point, though? Is it supposed to be a proper server? Optimised for what workload exactly? Is it a $2k learning kit? I get it, buses are cool, protocols are interesting. High speed interconnects, wide parallel data connections, impedance matched lines, error correction techniques, noise suppression, all fun stuff. But, what are you supposed to learn from a pci-x based cluster? That pci-x works? That they designed a worse protocol than what proper datacenter boxes use?
"Do you guys remember 2014?" Brett I barely remember what I had to eat yesterday.
You had 2 pieces of toast, scrambled eggs, a cliff bar, Subway, grilled salmon with asparagus and mashed potatoes, and half a Hershey's bar.
@@RaidOwldamn it. I’m hungry now.
@@RaidOwl nope
@@c1ph3rpunk not his fault I was the one that said food.
My stack of refurbished Lenovo 1L PC's keep looking good.
I have like 15 of them at home either DELL or Lenovo :D
@@jirimasarik:D
Same. Price/performance is outstanding
The defining feature of this blade is the cluster box, most notably the interconnect. PCIe can do high speed networking (just like Ethernet) but very, very few companies have really tapped into that, outside of high-end enterprise products like NVMeOF drives.
It would be interesting if they are open and proactive with software development to test out their clustering setup using PCIe as the backbone (what those U.2 connectors are for). It would give lower latency and higher bandwidth than Ethernet, and supposedly would get us closer to a node-to-node ideal where CPUs are almost talking directly to one another like some dual CPU motherboards do.
However, my fear is they won't get enough traction with the high-ish price to be anything more than a small niche player, especially since individually the nodes themselves aren't too incredible.
Agreed. There are certainly niche scenarios where this would be badass but price, software support, and cheap x86 machines are huge deterrents.
Shouldn't we already be there with PCIE tunneling over USB4/Thunderbolt? Why is thunderbolt networking still such a nightmare to set up lol
NVMeOnlyFans? I'm in.
Could anybody give me an example of a niche where these kind of cluster-boxes would be used? Maybe i'm an old school person but I see SBC's in a company-setting still as a expandable microcontroller with only a few functions.
@@Peter_Enis given the RAM capacity, NPU (for which some legit galaxy-brained devs *reverse engineered* open source drivers; idek how that’s possible lol) and the GPU (which gets full upstream kernel support as of 6.10, around the corner) there’s probably a bunch of use cases for some ~AI~ things. I’m sure there’s businesses that would want to run object detection on multiple fairly high quality live video/surveillance camera streams. To be able to do that locally, free from fees and subscriptions to cloud based services? is probably worth the a $3K (incl. some big ass drives) one-time investment to many. And that’s just one, specific, use case.
As an aside, Im actually curious about what was causing @raidowl to have GPU issues; the panfork drivers for the RK3588s GPU on using armbians 6.1 kernel has been really capable on my Rock 5B, though I have yet to try Jellyfin
I totally agree. I cringe when people recommend a $200 raspberry pi kit when someone says they want to learn to code. Just get a cheap mini pc because it will be more powerful, more compatible, more useful, and is still power efficient and small.
Choices
"but what if I want GPIO?"
Then you aren't asking for an SBC. You just need either the serial port on a miniPC, an m2/mpcie GPIO add in card, or an arduino.
SBCs have gotten so bloated that they just provide what 4th gen minipcs do but "on usb power", and then throw in GPIO to pretend like they're still for tinkering.
On what planet is a mac not for tinkering, but an SBC with everything soldered is?
I think they have drifted from their initial purpose a little bit, when it was like $25 or so it was great but with costs of $200 it makes much less sense. In my mind though the real value is interfacing with electronics through the GPIO, not just to be a device to learn to program which can be done on anything.
I got a 4GB PI5 for $60, the cooler, PS, 256GB (400mb/s flash) all for under $100 total. It overclocked to 3.0ghz, can overclock the gpu to1100. It can play PS2, Gamecube, runs Ubuntu. It's nowhere near tapped on potential. The Pi4s I had got better over time too. From the manufacturer and the community making/fixing software AND the UA-cam videos showing how to do things. I have 7 Pi's in front of me. 3 running, 4 are portable. 1 of anything would not really compete with using Pi's like browser tabs. I have Android playing a tv show on a boombox (tape deck has pi4 with 5" touchscreen in place of the door.) Then this desktop w/ Ubuntu writing this comment, and another Ubuntu next to that running another instance of UA-cam to watch. I've forgotten what waiting is like, using what some people deem to be "slow" computers. There is an 8th Pi4 hanging out nearby, sadly that one lasted about a week when I made a mistake with the USB. I was sad but still had 4 others at that time. Now it is parts in the future. I can't imagine using a Mac or blowing one up, and just being okay with it. Or the cost of 7, err, 8 of them retail from new. GPIO just means fan, power and ground to me. I agree don't buy the kits, buy the parts separately and have a better experience. Don't run micro SD, use a USB flash that runs faster and overclock them all.
@@AgalmicAutomata just brought an ESP32 and having lots of fun with it. 5 bucks on ali
SBC's are still great for embedded projects, learning, prototyping, or serving as some sort of intermediate device/controller in a larger system. But for personal computer purposes, mini-PCs are definitely the way to go!
"If the software support is ass, who gives a shit?" So much win.... 🤣
The folks at MixTile sent me one of their boards last year some time I think. I couldn't even force myself into faking interest in it once it arrived with just the board in the box. No cables. No instructions. Nothing. The team I spoke with were slow to respond and I eventually just threw it in a box and forgot about it.
I'm a big fan of Libre Computers' range of SBCs. They're dirt cheap ARM boards, but they have fully UEFI-complliant bootloaders on them, meaning you're not limited to whatever janky images they provide. They upstream drivers and configuration for all their hardware (what a novel concept!), so most up-to-date distros simply work. They've been a joy to use.
Jeff Geerling is on a flight to your house rn ....load up
Who is Jeff Geerling and why should I care?
@@terrydaktyllus1320 red shirt Jeff is coming to your house rn……..you’ll see
@@James-xg4jr Aren't red shirts the one that always end up being vaporised or falling off cliffs in the first five minutes?
No chance red shirt Jeff is indestructible
That pricing is crazy, I gave up on sbc's during the pi shortage.. Just so much easier with x86
Mini PCs come with a case. No extra charge.
The Pi 5's SoC uses a considerable amount of energy, given its intended applications. It's not really competitive with an Intel N100 on a perf/watt basis, especially if what you want to do isn't well-optimized for Arm. But throwing out SBCs altogether is really stupid. Just because there are people who want an RPi to be a super amazing media server doesn't discount its other uses in things like weather monitoring, IP surveillance, 3D printing, robotics, etc. where GPIO is useful, if not necessary--a random Chinese x86 mini PC ain't gonna give you GPIO or PoE.
tl;dr the unwashed masses want SBCs to do everything as well as x86 at a fraction the power use and are butthurt that it isn't happening
Can you really blame the unwashed masses when the rpi4 'desktop' edition was marketed to be capable of being used as a desktop?
@@longdang2681 People were already trying to use pi's as desktops before that kit was released, they just leaned into that dumbass trend. I kinda hope all of those idiots move back to x86 where the should have always been as it should quieten down all the noise.
People act like the pi zeros, pi2 and 3 stopped existing when the 4 and 5 released, they are still here, still cheap and run all of the projects you can find just as well as they always did.
@@backgammonbacon The pi marketing team should have known better than to actively mislead people into buying their product for a use case that it was unsuitable for. Now they are doubling down on that mistake and releasing faster pi's; because faster speeds is what is going to turn a specialist computer into a general purpose computer? What do you tell the average Joe when they say that they have bought the 'desktop kit' version to use as a desktop; and it's from the biggest name in single board computing?
I disagree. People are treating SBC like a general purpose computer, which it could be, but SBC is really awesome as a cheap embedded system and for hardware tinkering, especially with GPIO and low power consumption. Raspberry Pi zero is good enough for most small projects, and cheap enough, too. I have plenty of mini PC and I love using them for homelab, but I won't deploy them for air quality measurement or home automation node or robotics.
I also agree with this. Raspberry pi Zero models, and the 3A+ are still what the Raspberry pi were originally meant to be. I have a raspberry pi 5, and have literally never even powered it up. But I do have it . . .
For less resource intensive services that are to be run 24/7 in the home, running headless and consuming little power and passively cooled, therefore running silently, a Raspberry Pi still can't be beaten IMO.
@@nddulac I agree about the less power hungry models. Their main advantage apart from their stellar software support is their low power consumption for 24/7 services. I just picked up a cheap second hand pair of 3Bs. I wish the Zero was as low priced as it was when it first came out but it's still a great option.
Honestly, with how expensive current gen SBCs are, I think most people are better off with an older or lower model (Pi Zero whatever) If someone needs to do Raspberry Pi things.
Otherwise the sweet spot is something like an Arduino or a big boy MCU like the STM32 series for embedded projects + a mini PC for homelabbing. For how outrageously expensive newer SBCs are rn you can get both devices.
The problem here is with "cheap". Those recent SBC are at a price point they simply stop making sense.
I'm with you 100% on this. The SBC market has lost both its vision of what an SBC is going to be used for (learning) and what makes them practical (cost.)
I teach a class in which I want to show students how to build simple interfaces using GPIO pins. At one point, the way to do this was to get a Raspberry Pi and go to town. But during the great pi shortage, this became impractical. Then I learned about the MCP2221a breakout board available from Adafruit for $6.50. This connects to a PC (or Mac, if you are so inclined) via a USB, and gives you four GPIOs as well as I2C connectivity. Way more practical. Couple this with a BYOC or a cheap mini computer, off you go. (Bob's your uncle, Fannie's your aunt, and so forth.)
So yeah - you can download Scratch for free on your PC if you want to learn programming that way (or python if you are being more practical), a USB-connected breakout for GPIO or remote sensor capability, And a $100 mini PC for desktop functionality, and you are already ahead of the game.
Totally agree. I gave up SBCs awhile ago. I bought a n100 mini PC with full x86 support. I put my Raspberry Pis in the loft and I don’t intend to use them again anytime soon. Kudos to Intel for developing the n100 with great hardware encoding, if a little slow. 😊
I concur 100%. I wanted to get an arm low power sbc for my OPNsense build but there was always something lacking, cough, 2.5ghz Ethernet. So, I went with an Intel N100 box which had 4 of the desired Ethernet ports and only cost $164 with replaceable 128GB NVMe drive and 8GB of ram. It may not sip the electricity as slowly as the sbc arm box but it does what I need and if I get bored with it, it will be a lot easier to repurpose since there is so much software available for it.
Reliability of a lot of those are garbage. Read some of the reviews.
Bought a N100 T8 Firebat 16gb ram, 512ssd and Windows. Had it setup and working within 5 minutes. Remember to set ddr5 speed to 4800 and increase tdp from 15w to 30w in bios. 140usd with shipping! Playing Steam games on it is so easy!
Totally agree, the whole SOC ecosystem isn't as cool as it was. The whole mini pc craze is where it's at now and for good reason.
Whoa whoa whoa. My shitty little cluster of pi's doesnt need your sass. I mean...you're not wrong, and I dont plan on buying anymore Pi's for homelabbing because mini-pc's just give you more bang for your buck. But still, my pi's are doing their best 🤣🤣🤣
Lol I mean...I still love PIs. I just think the combination of their cost going up and mini pc costs coming down has put them in a weird place.
@@RaidOwl absolutely. Now Im just itching to find more mini-pcs that I can power via PoE. Thats the main thing that sets SBC's apart for me. Hows that Neosmay holding up?
@@ImARichard It's solid. I wish they made one with more pcie lanes though.
You get to state you have _heterogenous_ home cluster if you have few pi boards there too :)
I love the compact nature of these devices and how little power they consume, especially the Pi Zeros which have enough juice to handle a network wide adblocker, a Wireguard server and still host something like Navidrome.
For desktop usage, even the RPi by now reaches the point that x86 is more affordable and of better use. Kinda sad given these things were designed to told kids how to code initially and give a low priced entry point into computing but that's how it is.
I think that the Raspberry Pi 5 is a good mix between performance, cost and efficiency. I am planning to get one for my homelab because my Rock Pi 4B isn't really cutting it any longer - especially when I want to run more complex services on it like VS Code Tunnel or Kasm. I had the issue where my whole internet was down because the Rock Pi crashed and so did all containers on it (with pihole being one of them)
Used tinyminimicros ftw! Started with a NUC but the lenovos with dual nvme and pci slot are slept on
I could not agree more. At one point ARM SBCs were amazing for what they cost. They were cheap enough that when you got bored with one you could throw it in a drawer to slowly decompose into it's component elements without a care. They haven't been that since the pi 4 became unobtanium. Glad to see someone saying it out loud.
If you weren't buying these to use the GPIO pins, then it's never been worth it.
TLDR: You only need raspberry pi if you want GPIO pins.
There are cheaper solutions for that as well. I use the MCP2221a breakout ($6.50 from Adafruit) which connects via USB to provide GPIO capability on my laptop. Yeah - that's right . . I can make LEDs blink, so don't mess with me!
You can use an esp32 for gpio for way cheaper
@@nddulac You can buy the small version of an Arduino board (I think it's called Arduino Mini, or Micro, or Nano, or something like that) for just over one dollar. An ESP32 board with integrated Wi-fi and Bluetooth for about two dollars.
Refurb Lenovo and HP SFP machines for me, I am so over Pi’s for most use cases. Not being able to get a Pi, or one less than $250, for 3 years broke me of them. Sorry Eben, we moved on.
The Pi peaked with the 3B+. After the whole shortage shit show, it really has not been better. I am glad these mini PCs are a thing and are a much better option if you want to dual boot Windows and Linux with complete compatibility for software.
My beautiful raspi5 is sitting basically unused, whats the oppositer of fomo? Buyers remorse doesnt quite line up, because i'm glad I got it, just wish I had the passion to work on it.
I could not agree more. I have a dell tiny running my service 24/7 - would not trust anything else
I've like this guys sensibility. I've delt a small amount with a Samsung smart TV Android like software and some Samsung pads, Never Again! I don't get sucked in to the High end Intel (core whatever) chip circus either. My current machine is a retired workstation Dell Precision Tower 3420 sff; core I7-6700; two drives a ssd with windows 10 and a NVME-m.2 with Linux Mint; 64Gb of DDR4. This machine never gets turned off (maybe restarted ever so often). I do have to reboot to switch drives. This is a used $250 machine, and I don't game on it just UA-cam streaming. I use the Linux drive the most. My productivity software is Libre Office and some Google programs ie Google Earth; Google Maps; G drive; Contacts. My monitor is the Samsung 55" TV and I only occasionally watch live TV and fall asleep watching the "Snooze" (News) the rest is UA-cam.
@@bjre.wa.8681You never turn that off? What’s its power consumption ? In most places in the world that would cost more to run 24/7 for a year than the actual hardware 😅
I think this situation is even harder with RISC-V sbcs too, since they're on a still relatively new ISA and most of them also can't even match the same functionality, let alone the same baseline performance at cost to most of the ARM sbcs, most particularly the current Pi boards. Their software support is also a mega miss if you want something working right out of the box because you're not only tinkering, but also building up things that aren't even in there yet. Though I do kinda hope that at some point, we'll get actually decent RISC-V boards later down the road, but at the moment it's just not there yet, dare I say in a weirder position than all these newfangled powerful ARM sbcs that make it hard to choose.
_Maybe one day, there might come a better choice with enough support to go somewhere from there._
The world of embedded systems seems to continuously escape software practitioner’s understanding. SOC are literally everywhere in industrial automation. OT endpoints are different than traditional purist IT endpoints. I agree with you on one thing - all of us need to individually & collectively fiercely fight for open source. It is our only path to combating wealth inequality & innovation. Long live open source.
The pi zero, pi 3 and pi 2 are all still being sold and are all very cheap still. If you are worried about performance you are looking at entirely the wrong product category.
I think you nailed it in this video. The CHIP and Pocket CHIP were really cool devices but there was no software support for them. So now I have devices that do minimal things because there is no software support for them. To make matters worse, they do not have a straightforward setup should the software get corrupted.
I run a lot of stuff on Raspberry Pi 4 boxes... offsite backup, Asterisk, mail server, IRC server, home security system, etc. But I agree that the cost advantage of the Pi is basically nonexistent now compared to mini-PCs.
The one good thing about Raspberry Pi is excellent software support. Everything just works and there's a massive community. I'm happy with my Pi setup and have no plans to change it, but if I were starting out today building up my network, I'd probably go with x86 mini-PCs.
I’d love to see a miniPC with 4 or 5 m.2 drives like we’re seeing over on the Pi side. A little 4”x4”x4” NUC with dual 2.5G LAN on an N100 cpu would be killer. I’m too lazy to be compiling my own software from source so x86 is gonna be my jam for a while.
maybe the embedded space is too complicated for most end users.
2015:
SBC >>>>> Mini PC
2024:
Mini PC >>>>> SBC
While this board is expensive and rather for industrial use at least I assume that with their interconnect. Other RK3588 based boards are way cheaper and are great for people who like to tinker (when it comes to anything besides compute) like with the linux kernel. I’ve been using a RK3568 based one as a 2.5GbE NAS for 1.5 years and also do Jellyfin with RK3588 and try to contribute documentation. For consumers it just isn’t the x86 run and go experience but for most of the home lab stuff like Pi-Hole, HomeAssistant, etc. which you want to run 24/7 on a low power budget these boards are nice
I have to agree. Those "high power" Arm SBCs make no sense - they cost as much or more then complete mini PCs but offer a fraction of their power, I/O and software compatibility.
The HDMI In and Out made me instantly think of using at as a capture device maybe along side a more powerful rig to do AV1 encoding.
*it
just get smol $120 mini pc that will crush that garbo board
In Canada a Pi 5 kit with basic case and 32gig sd card will run you $270 roughly. A pi 4 with 64gig sd is about $250. I just looked up a mini PC with 16gig and 512gig drive on Amazon with prime will set you back $249.55! what is the better deal???
Totally agree! I live in Japan. Here everything used is as good as new I can buy a corem5 Fujitsu tablet computer with detachable keyboard a 13inch touch screen and docking station for less than a 70usd. It will outperform most sbc's and use less power. No way I am buying SBCs .
The Raspberry Pi Pico or Raspberry Pi Zero generally suit my purposes just fine. If I need 8GB of RAM or an 8 core CPU for my project it is probably going to be running on my Docker or Proxmox server and neither of those is running on an SBC.
Nailed it. Software support is just not there yet.
Great video.. .Those prices are outrageous and that is understating it... Its about time these corporations wake up and think about what consumers / enthusiasts want...
I really enjoy my 2x pi 5s, 2x pi zero 2 ws, 2x pi pico 2s, pi zero w, and my 1 x pi 4 and I am happy having spent the money. Also I like my System76 Meerkats as well :-) I use them every day, and I really enjoy them. Since that is what I use and enjoy, I don't have much knowledge about other devices so much... and having that many devices opens up opportunities to learn how to keep them all busy (utilizing CPU where and when applicable etc.) as much as possible. Maybe it depends on your goals, your budget, your time, etc. You could go with single board computers or not, but can you learn from what you have already and can you dream up what is possible and what you need to have to be able to get there in the future...
+1 SBCs without mgf distro support are worthless within a year. So that leaves you exclusively with Rpi, and they have priced themselves out of the market. Those x86 mini PCs are awesome, i have 3 of them in a CEF Proxmox cluster all at 2.5Gb and they dont miss a beat.
SBCs for embedded applications, 1L pcs or NAS with docker for running services, desktop as a desktop, need a cluster? virtualise a regular computer or server. I have a raspberry pi 3, and 4. Sold em as they sat on the shelf.
you hit the nail in the head i feel the same way , you know what i buy ? laptop motherboards instead of SBCs , SBCs just too expensive ... if i need an sbc i go on ebay and i look for a motherboard for an old laptop , i get it and then i figure out how to get video out and put power in .
Just buy a second hand desktop - got a i5 8400 for 46GBP (about $60 USD) 6 months ago.
For server use it will be cheaper in the long run to buy a modern N100 based PC even if it costs three times as much. Just because of power consumption.
May have to keep to the Turing pi 2 + rockchips/Jetsons
The thing the SBC's have going for them best is 5V power. Not needing to plug it in to 110 makes a big difference in small form factor computers.
I blame the the rpi4 'desktop' edition. Before that everyone knew that rpi were specialist computers. Whilst you 'can' use a rpi4 as a desktop computer; it's makes for an awful experience; mostly because people looking for desktop computers are looking for general purpose desktop computers with no code writing required. SBC's are not lame, they were just marketed really badly at your average Joe for whom they are completely unsuitable. A niche product that is currently marketed at the masses.
Yes. I own a pi 400, but have literally never even turned it on. Because . . why?
@@nddulac I wanted the retro style 'in keyboard' computer design that is the pi 400. Then I realised that a modern netbook not only had the built in keyboard but also touchpad, battery, screen, etc. For those that don't require specific things like the gpio, then the x86 equivalents are just more usable. When I see rpi4 owners struggle to boot from sata SSD, usb SSD, or connect and use other peripherals; it reminds me of how hassle free my netbook has been.
I want a small form factor that I can have AV1 decode and transcode to H264 and H265 with good quality (even if I have to use software encoding). The x86 solutions make more sense for my use case.
Great video. If they are making them then I assume some businesses must have a use for them in clustering like JeffGeerling said ( thankfully I can see it from here as I type, I'm Smart !! ) But seriously I recently found out that MSI Cubi 12M or N makes a 12th Gen with a 3 year warranty and has 4th Gen PCIe for one 2280 NVMe and a spot for a regular SSD, Dual Channel RAM for 64GB max ( not the N100 models like all of them though ). It also has 2 LAN ports. The one i3-1335U was $240 a few weeks ago but is now $259 or $261 ( barebones ) so at that price I don't know. Depending on use you may want to just spend some more and get the i5 version of the Minisforum MS-01? Unless you were set on a N100 of course, having 2 LAN's, one 2.5 GbE and one 1 GbE could open more doors down the road what you could use it for. I think the Cubi i5 model is just that much more expensive that you almost have to go with the MS-01 i5 model, except for the fact that 3 year warranty is very, very enticing. I do Not know how Minisforum handles warranties yet. I almost just bought the MSI Cubi 12M i3 just for UA-cam HTTC and run a few containers for Joplin for sure and ??, already had a Logitech K830 that I never use. I just checked and that Cubi i5 is $400 with just one left. IIRC they use Realtek though. That's one of the reasons I didn't buy it as I know Linux has issues. I probably would of screwed around with Proxmox for awhile instead to be honest, didn't want too many swear words because of Realtek. I wish they would come out with a 13th Gen with Intel i226-v dual LAN's then I assume all of you guys would review them. An i3-1335U for $325 at launch with dual Intel LAN's and a i5 for $438 at launch with dual Intel LAN's at launch with 3 year warranties to put a hamper on so many Chinese stuff would be _Nice_. Now I'm thinking I'm just going to do a new Proxmox desktop/server build and be done with it. Or is that _just the beginning_
I definitely know where you're coming from here on SBCs in general. SBCs are cool, and I like them, but they're not as compelling as they used to be. Price is always a factor. The Pi 4 shortages and price hikes certainly turned things around and made them less appealing overall. In the last few years, I've overwhelmingly favored used office PCs with the tiny/mini/micros being the obvious picks, but I also have a SFF Lenovo. Obviously, that can't compete with SBCs and 1 liter PCs in terms of being compact. And I also just recently picked up an old Zotac mini PC that looks extremely similar to, but is legally distinct from a NUC for less than the original MSRP of the Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM. And it has two ethernet ports. SBCs still have some advantages, but not as many for general use now that mini PCs have become so inexpensive. It just changed the value proposition. I think a lot of that comes down to the availability of those used 1 liter office PCs. When the Pi was new, those either didn't exist or were brand new. I remember seeing them for sale used back in 2016, but they were still expensive compared to SBCs. Now that they're all over the place, they've quite inexpensive and a great value.
The big selling point of SBCs for aspiring developers/tinkerers were thanks to a 'capable' chip with onboard pinouts, but both x86 and microcontroller options are much cheaper and very capable now. So, yeah, completely agree!
I remember getting a cab to Maplin to buy the raspberry pi in 2012, (I still have the board marked 2011) both cab and pi cost about £30. The last pi I got was a pi 4 and it cost £120, sbc game done changed.
Used be about inexpensive access, now a majority of stock is consumed by universities and colleges so by the time the average consumer gets a look from scalpers they are well over priced.
I went with an intel nuc for my last build, and there are much cheaper microchips if want the gpio.
They serve a purpose. People try to press them into service for things that a cheap used PC would do better. I use SBC's for the GPIO connector to control hardware. Otherwise I use a PC.
I really agree with this. I don't think it is so much that SBCs have gotten so expensive. They have gotten more expensive so it doesn't help but inflation is part of that. I think that, as you pointed out, that mini PCs have just gotten so good. In 2014 a PC in this 200-300 range would probably have been a lot bigger, like one of the 1L PCs that are common for businesses. And in this price range they probably would have use a Celeron Processor that was old by 2014 standards which means that performance sucked. Now though like you have said you can get a mini PC with a decent older laptop chip like the 5700u and actually get good performance out of it. So yes SBCs have gone up in price but what is killing them is that good mini PCs actually exist now and aren't all that expensive.
My mini-PC with a Ryzen 5700u idles at 3w and draws 10w when playing 4k videos while multitasking. It already comes with a case, 16GB RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. A Raspberry Pi just can't compete with it unless you have a specific use case that you just have to get a Raspberry Pi.
That said, I do own a Raspberry Pi 5, Pi 4, and Pi-Z w and they are great gadgets but are simply to expensive currently to recommend. 😔
Hi Brett. I am going to strap on my alter-ego I like to call "Mr. Unpopular". As this persona indicates, I would like to point out that there is an alternative to both of these routes that uses roughly the same power but is a bit bigger and even has additional integrated hardware. No it won't fit into one of those newer compact mini-racks but it usually does cost less (generally speaking) and can run most of the same software as the mini PC's. What I am referring to are used laptops. Ebay is flooded with them. Many times you can even find a "lot" of them that are the same or even similar so that you could use them for clustering. As chiefly an ewaste re-use proponent, I see these as viable options and depending on what you can find, mostly as capable. Just a thought. Ok, I am ready to hear the good, bad and ugly. Let me have it.
Lol yeah I don’t really discriminate vs what people like to run in their lab. If you like laptops, great! If you like SBCs, neat! If you like $5000 epyc cpus, join my Patreon! Haha. The only thing about older used stuff is that it’s often not very power efficient for what you get, but for lots of workloads it’s fine.
honestly if you need ARM and a lot of power, none of these rockchip systems is as well supported as asahi on a mac mini, but for anything else, the right answer is "your old laptop" or a 5 year old dell from a dumpster behind a school.
I completely agree. Also three to five time higher idle power consumption is quite pointless when it's 2W vs 7W or so. And 7W for i5-6500T running some docker containers so it already has like 1% load.
I can understand that RPI3B and below have some sense: it can powered from powerbank for hours or even day, it's relatively cheap, it has some GPIO pins, it's good enough for hosting some rather static website and maybe it's more limited by I/O speed of USB2 rather than CPU power, it can be a good datalogger and it has many scenarios where it's good enough.
But then there is a gray zone for me: if you want something more powerful, with more RAM, better I/O speed, you can get better models with 2GB, 4GB or even 8GB of RAM and better processor from Arm to some Intel Celeron. Problem is they may be sufficient for one project, maybe two. For general purpose it would be limited either by RAM (2GB are fine to run browser in OpenBox with 4 tabs and restart it from time to time, not much else) or by slow CPU and it's not upgradable. Some refurbished minipc, maybe even miniitx board is not much more expensive than high end SBC (refurbished PC can be cheaper) and they are about as powerful as 5 year old notebooks. Plus they have enclosure, upgradable RAM, NVMe drive or SATA SSD.
I realize this happening too. I have a bunch of ARM SBCs lying around, which I badly want to find a use case for, but all ideas I had so far were easier and better achievable using a VM on my Proxmox, which runs on [drumroll] an x86 mini PC! 😅
Small pc with intel n100, turn off turbo mode, change wattage to low and installed true-nas, everything works perfectly fine with decoding and rest. Linux, windows works perfectly fine with min wattage power or more if you need, like my settings > L1 15W and L2 to 25W (30W max but overheat is short time).
For power consumption, the less powerful SBCs are still better than mini PCs for those who want to run a simple service 24/7 like a web server or an Asterisk PBX.
100% agree.
When I computed the Price/(Performance/Watt) metric, that's how I ended up with three OASLOA Mini PCs that had the Intel N95 processor.
Yes, there were systems that were cheaper, but less performant, just as there were mini PCs that were more expensive, but also more performant, but when I optimised for all three variables simultaneously, that was the best option for my use case (Windows AD DC, DNS, Pi-hole (which became AdGuardHome)).
Seems like unless you need lots of gpio pins there's no point in Pi's unless you are very power constrained
i still have one running - but where to find a proper stable cable to connect the mini-HDMI ?
and matching monitor that is neither huge and microbic.
I used to work in a computer store running the service dept covering some of the floor when they needed help. The biggest issue is that people don’t have a clue what they want the computer for. You must have some idea what you expect the hardware to do before you get it home and realize it won’t do what you want. The pi not playing movies is usually overcome by a Kodi like OS just being a media player for it, but don’t expect that it will replace a regular PC for anything other than very basic stuff. An SBC is just for experimenting and not much else, expecting it to be used for heavy gaming is ridiculous, buy a real computer.
I’m just stoked we have so many compute options to choose from these days.
When he said, "If the software support is @ss, then who gives a sh!t?" ---- I felt that.
I don't understand why these sbc 's are putting usb 2 , in a type c form factor.
Who does that .
I would just wish we soon would have SBC’s with ECC ram. Then they could be used by people who want correct results.
for the lab where it’s always plugged in, i buy your argument, but if you are trying to do anything mobile or off a battery an ARM sbc is much better.
I agree
I gave up on SBC with RPI3, now that the prices are astronomical-oh hell no!
It's the I/O which is shit, something I took for granted with regular x86 motherboards...then you try and plug a couple of things into a Pi which the CPU can run but the hardware controllers just don't have the bandwidth.
Yeah on paper they always sound cool then I get them and I'm like "uhhhh I'll just spin up a VM on my server or something"
Agree. You can get a mini x86 system. New or used for a lot better price.
I'm only considering them to play with their implementation of tcp/ip over pcie
I admit i have 2 dell minis that do everything my pi used to do but better. I keep looking for sues for the pi and gathering dust is the most popular
Where’s the new PC?? Threadrippers are in stock yk
If I had to wager. The next gen of this SBC will be released before any community and software support forms around this POS.
I use SBCs for projects. And pick the model by needs. Mostly, a pi zero 2 OR pi 4 is enough. Pi 5 for big stuff... all under $100.
umm, don't most ppl buy these for the GPIO capability? you didn't even mention the fact a mini pc doesn't have anyway to interact with anything but itself and usb devices unless i'm missing something?
Got a raspberry pi 4. Probably wont upgrade unless someone design something cheaper smaller more powerful.
may want to blur the title of the video at 2:48
I want to see something with ARM cpu in mITX form-factor. I know that there are some mITX boards for RPi4 CM and one from Firefly with RK3588, but I want a proper mITX ARM powerhouse. Maybe it won't happen, since it might not be practical, especially from the perspective of size.
Ampere sounds promising. If we can get a stable Windows for ARM running on it I’d be so hot for it.
@@RaidOwl It indeed does, but the prices bite pretty hard for now, plus they don't seem to have something more desktop-oriented. Hopefully they'll succeed in developing cheaper/smaller options, if they'd take that path ofc.
Other than that - let's wait and see
Maybe there will be a qualcom x elite mainboard in the future.
@@erk_0483 hopefully...though my guess - maximum that would happen is something like NUC/mini PC similar in size
my thoughts exactly.
sbcs lost sight of their original purposes as low cost, low power computing platform and gunning for cluster nases and other hardware capabilities of an already existing market.
for example, the orange pi may be faster than a regular pi but you are limited to what os you can install, have to download the os through a questionably shady google drive link from china that probably has malware bundled in. and there’s the lack of software support. of there is support it is in chinese or poorly worded english.
sbcs have their use cases but it’s good to be reminded of that, otherwise you’ll be in a rabbit hole of spending thousands for something that could have been approached with better hardware and software support in an already existing market… not one still being developed from the ground up which may also be re-inventing the wheel… like zima ice whale casa os or the like.
I loved the netduino Rip.
Can get an old i7 7700HQ laptop for less than a RPi 5 around here.
These arm soc was great when they were a cheap learning platform.
ARM SOC vendors lost the plot when they tried to become "real" pc/servers and more expensive than x86 in price and performance
Remember phones? Those things you used to call other people? Remember what happened to them, to the point where now you carry around something that does everything and ALSO does make phone calls? :D I think SBC are going that direction. In the beginning they were supposed to be small devices for headless tasks or productivity, and now they are basically fully fledged computers. If that make sense for some people to buy, it is up to them... I still buy a 4000 bucks computer for work and leisure, but I don't spend more than 200 bucks for a phone because I don't give a crap about what a phone does, beside phone calls and email, and yet some people spend 400 bucks for a pc or a chromebook, while they buy a 2000 dollars iPhone Max ultra pro extra +++ because they do everything with it.
Sad to say i agree.... They have gotten too expensive.
Android won't let you mount a network drive so using in a home lab will be stifled by Google's profit strategy.
When ever i hear someone ask: "Is this product best?"
I always ask: "For what purpose?"
I consider SBCs as toys for tickerers. If people just want something that works, i would definetely go the mini PC route.
But the geek / masochist in me would say: "Where is the fun, in something that just works?"
I miss the days of non-commercial embedded projects being people with motivation putting cool stuff on hackaday. Nowadays, the people making the most noise are non-engineer-minded users complaining about software support, and how things suck because they can't play youtube videos. They also have a very monolithic view of the hardware (useless because "I can't think of who it's for"). The people whining are definitely not the people you'll see at micromouse maze competitions, or doing cool stuff with RC cars ... unless there's pre-fab kits with software support.
I want to sell all my SBCs, the cost for a usable SBC is not cheap, you need NVME, NVME adapter, cooling, etc. 😪 Mini PCs is really the choice of home lab
Even with a PCIE 3 NVME connected, you only get 1 or 2 lane max in a SBC, but you can get a PCIE4 full speed in many Mini PCs, and the power consumption only 15w(e.g intel N305) to 65w (e.g AMD 6900hx), compare to 5w - 15w SBC, that is not much
I’m hearing news about this new thing called silicon on a chip
I think it’s pronounced “salsa”
What's the point, though? Is it supposed to be a proper server? Optimised for what workload exactly?
Is it a $2k learning kit?
I get it, buses are cool, protocols are interesting. High speed interconnects, wide parallel data connections, impedance matched lines, error correction techniques, noise suppression, all fun stuff. But, what are you supposed to learn from a pci-x based cluster? That pci-x works? That they designed a worse protocol than what proper datacenter boxes use?
As of today, if you don't take the gentoo/LFS route to use these machines, you can't exploit everything they can offer. It's not user friendly.