Here is the thing, I have 4 RPi’s of different generations (all the way from Zero W to 4B 4GB) that I use to host services at home for personal use.
Lately, I have realized I am running out of RAM to host more services, not to mention not enough switch ports to connect to.
Now I know the obvious solution is to get a more powerful setup (maybe a thin client) but electricity isn’t cheap and I am not particularly in the best shape financially speaking to shell out $300+ on a decent client to host my services.
Any suggestions?
Where I live, electricity is also very expensive. I monitor every watt.
I asked the same question half a year ago, here’s what I’ve learnt: RPis tend to be less reliable and aren’t that energy efficient. They’re great for small appliances, but for servers (e.g. NAS) not as much.
Get an used Thinclient/ mini PC. They cost something between 50-150€ and give you a huge performance boost, more ports, a x86 architecture, are better repairable (still often bad) and more.
Mine uses about 10-15 W on normal use, and 20 rarely when my cloud is under heavy use.
Just curious, why is an x86 architecture a sought after feature in your opinion? My understanding is that ARM is more “bang for your buck” in terms of computation effort to power draw.
I say this because my M2 (ARM based) MacBook does all sorts of heavy lifting and still lasts me more than a day on a single charge compared to my old Intel MacBook running the same services doing the exact same stuff.
Please correct me if I am wrong. I would really appreciate to learn more from people who have more knowledge than I am.
Software compatibility.
Yes but it’s also usually a small “bang”.
The new Apple silicon is a quantum leap in technology in many ways. Apple managed to make something with desktop-level power and SBC-level efficiency. It’s why they abandoned desktop computers altogether.
The industry is in the process of shifting in that direction but they’re still way behind Apple.