And you are often paying 140-200 for a pi nowadays to make it have the same usability as a laptop (pi, power supply, sata hat, data drive because SD cards simply fail after a while under server IO) while you can get cheap used laptops for 0-100.

So unless you are running it for more than half a decade (which rarely happens with selfhosters for a main server), you are probably spending more in total on the pi.

Just remove the lid entirely.

Battery charging circuits don't operate continuously when the device is charged. Pi also still needs a PSU, typically a phone charger, and for a server application would need an SSD or HDD in most cases. SD cards have lower performance, write endurance, and capacity after all. A single raspberry pi couldn't match even a somewhat old laptop in performance. In terms of actual efficiency (performance per watt) Pis don't do that well as they are using cheap processors made using old core designs and even older process nodes. Even the latest Pi 5 uses a 16nm process node with a core design from 2018. A 10 year old laptop might have 14nm process node which would be better. This means that a laptop would have more performance, so even if it had more power consumption at peak it could still end up with significantly better performance per watt, and that extra performance allows it to idle more often as it spends less time processing requests.

Of course the ultimate in performance per watt is always going to be a modern high power server or an Apple Silicon device. Mini PCs can also do well for home use, and are much lower power so better suited to less demanding usage, and have the best performance per watt for consumer devices. The M4 Mac Mini for example is pretty much best in class in performance per watt, and low power consumption at the same time.

A raspberry pi is not as efficient as people are claiming. They need up to 25W PSU for a reason. Laptops can idle lower than that certainly. Something like a MacBook Air M1 would idle in single digit territory, as would any netbook basically ever made. Only really high performance or older laptops have idle power draw issues since battery life is a major selling point of a laptop. Said laptop is probably also faster than a raspberry pi. The people building Pi clusters are really not doing themselves any favors with power efficiency.

I mean sure. If you want to compare actual efficiency then performance per watt is the metric. Here a laptop would easily win as it has higher performance for similar power. The TDP of a U class processor is only 15W normally. It would obviously help to disable things like Turbo Boost as well. Said laptop having more performance wouldn't need to stay at high power states for as long as the Pi either as it takes less time to process requests. Returning back to idle faster is a big advantage.

Not super familiar with the gpio side of things, and I also haven't dug that deep into the space lately since I already own my rpi and it works for me so take all this with a pinch of salt, but I found some options that seem reasonable

• Libre Computer Le Potato
• Orange Pi Zero 2
• Radxa Zero
• NanoPi R2S
• Banana Pi M2 Zero

There is quite a range of devices out there now with varying capabilites. Things like the Onion Omega2+, Oranage Pi, and more.

Raspberry Pi also remains good. While the Pi5 is expensive and more powerful - raspberry pi also makes the Pi Zero boards which are cheaper less capable boards which are closer to what the original raspberry Pi was but newer hardware.

I'd say the Pi5 is a heading more towards a full PC like device (hence the comparisons to cost and capability minipcs pepple are making in thia thread). But there remain plenty of lower spec machines out there now similar to the original cheap Raspberry Pi concept. And we've had high inflation recently - to some extent the cost perception avtually reflects money being worth less than it was and buying less for $10 or $20.

Not the person you're asking but personally I use Jetson nano for some work stuff (and when I upgrade the "old" one is mine), odroid I've used for some misc creations and testing, and I'm personally looking forward to trying the radxa x4 as an htpc.

What I am really excited about right now is tossing my recently acquired spare jetson nano on a drone, right now I'm setting it up to walk around with it and test CV before it gets mounted up on the drone.

Appreciate the warning!

Are any of them actually that good in efficiency though? Like a Pi 5 is probably the best in performance per watt, but it also has the highest power consumption. Realistically you wouldn't self host on anything older than a Pi 4 anyway.

The post is talking about RPis and other SBCs. Mini PCs are in a whole different category.

Well, the idea scales, if your energy is 0.33 Euro per kWh take the watts x 3 and that's your annual running cost.

A rasperry pi idles at about 2 watts vs a laptop that idles at about 4 watts. At $0.30/kwh (a very high price for electricity) you would save 5 dollars per year on electricity. This laptop trades blows with the rasperry pi and costs half the price (55$ aud vs over 200$ aud for a brand new pi 5) Even this second hand one costs 110$ aud which is twice the cost. With that cost of electricity it would take 11 years in order to break even. And that's only if you consider monetary cost and not environmental cost.

But I want to be cool and awesome! I want to constantly re-learn how to do basic things over and over because TECHNOLOGY!!!

https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23718473&cid=65450499

And I think China is evil and dumb... but I click "add to cart" on aliexpress in my sleep!

But I am deeply worried about totally renewable energy consumption by buying an endless stream of disposable baubles!

(Read above in some kind of sarcastic tone)

Um if you’re living with computers are you really „off the grid“ computers require the grid to be manufactured. If you’re off the grid because you worry about the way the worlds going and you think you’ll need to be off the grid to survive I wouldn’t make having access to computers part of the plan.

I'm glad I don't have these addictions people seem to have. "I need a computer to measure how much water my toilet uses!" "I need a computer in my refrigerator!" etc

We've passed the useful stage of computing, we are now in the "personal issues" phase.

Should see an old 6th gen i5 mini PC on a power monitor. It's basically nothing!