Comment by moffkalast
17 days ago
So you're saying that the Pi is a proverbial Toyota Hilux and people are buying it to highway commute to work and back instead of using it for what it was meant for, and then saying it compares poorly to sedan? Yea, no shit.
If you're not using the GPIO or any of the ribbon cable peripherals there are much better options out there. But a Pi will be able to do things those machines never will.
I think they are comparing a $700 micro PC to an $80 Raspberry pi, but pretending they are in the same price range since the micro PC is available cheap in the refurb market.
You don’t need to pay that much. For example, Minisforum is selling a barebones MS-01 for $399 new. This isn’t quite apples to apples — the Raspberry Pi includes RAM (but not much), whereas the MS-01 includes a case, a cooling system, a power supply, and an RTC battery. (And the MS-01 uses a non-janky 19V supply, whereas the Raspberry Pi 5 wants a weird not-to-spec not-quite-sure-what-they-were-thinking 5V USB supply by default.)
For the price, you get massively more CPU power, 3x the number of easily connectable NVMe devices, at higher bandwidth each, 22x (!) the network bandwidth, and the ability to connect a real multi-lane PCIe card of your choice.
I still find it sad that NVMe is an afterthought in the Raspberry Pi ecosystem. SD is convenient, but it’s also slooooow, and it holds back a lot of raspberry pi use cases. The new-to-RPi5 official NVMe support still seems really awkward in the way it interferes with the overall thermal performance and the way it interferes with the IO header if you use the official board.
You don’t need to pay that much. For example, Minisforum is selling a barebones MS-01 for $399 new
That doesn't really change my point that they are comparing the Pi to a PC that costs 4 - 8 times more (and in a much larger formfactor), so it's not surprising that it's faster.
Checkout the odroid H+ series...about $125 for full x86 passively cooled system with dual nics, up to 32G of RAM, sata and m.2, etc.
> 22x (!) the network bandwidth
It's 25x, the copper ports are 2.5g. It's even more if you use the usb-4 ports for ip over thunderbolt.
Personally, I'm a fan of the odroid H+ series - full x86 SOC with dual nics, and some on-board gpu stuff for $125. I have 3 of the old H2 series and I love them.
Not only are they very different in price, the micro PC is 10x the size. Size doesn't matter for all uses, but there are going to be things where a Pi will fit but these micro PCs won't.
I got one recently that was £159 (1.4x the 8GB Pi 5 starter kit) for a 16GB i3-8109U (with 500GB SSD) and is just about 3x the volume of the Argon Neo 5 case for the Pi 5 (113 x 127 x 43mm vs 94 x 70 x 30mm).
Doesn't change the "[places] where a Pi will fit but these micro PCs won't" assertion but the pricing and sizing are not as egregious as you're suggesting.
NUCs are very similar in size
You can pick up something like an HP elitedesk g2 with 8th gen intel cpu for $100-120 on secondary markets. Most of them ship with at least 8gb ram and also a 500gb m.2 drive. A 8th gen cpu will be many many times more powerful than even the rpi 5. In addition to having quicksync for hardware media transcoding. Something the Pi still cannot do via hardware. Not to mention, its x86 - so lot more support over the ARM7
Of course, if you size and the ability to interface with other hardware via GPIO is the primary use - then yeah a SBC like a Rpi would be the better option. But for a small home server, one is better off just buying a mini-PC.
No, an apt comparison would be with a PC like a used ThinkCentre off eBay, where $50 buys you an i5 with 8 GB RAM and a real SSD.
$700? Here's one with 4GB RAM, 128GB eMMC and Linux already installed at $87,49. New.
https://t.ly/S-OW6 (shortened Amazon link)
Now the 4020 isn't certainly a monster, but I can assure you it's way more performant than a RPi. Also, bear in mind that, as is the case with many Chinese products, those mini PCs are produced in huge quantities and sold under at least a dozen different ever changing "brands". Don't let the name "Wo-We" make you think this is something deemed to disappear in a few months; the name could certainly be thrown away but the product will most certainly reincarnate under another "brand".
Linux already installed from a Chinese vendor.
I guess it’s subsidized by the malwares that come preinstalled.
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I got the $700 figuring by looking up the list price of one of the mini PC's mentioned in the article, which use an Intel i5-6500 or AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 2200GE CPU (which each have 4 cores @ 3.6Ghz), I think if they'd compared against a 2 core 2.8Ghz Celeron, it would have been more evenly matched. The Raspberry Pi 5 beats the 4020 in both single and multi-core performance in this benchmark:
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-raspberry_pi_5_b_b...
Don't let the name "Wo-We" make you think this is something deemed to disappear in a few months; the name could certainly be thrown away but the product will most certainly reincarnate under another "brand".
Does that matter? If it dies in 2 months and I can't find the manufacturer because it's operating under a different name now, is that any different than if the manufacturer folded completely?
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Bmax B1 Pro costs less than $130 for 8GB RAM and it comes with 128GB storage and a case out of the box.
For $150 you can get a new mini pc with a low power intel cpu (e.g. N100) and 8GB of Ram. It comes with an SSD, a power supply and (gasp) a case. Add those to a raspberry pi and the price is not much different.
I have been looking at a N100, are they good in general as a Pi alternative. I am mostly looking at running K8s and running apps and running things like Pihole
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