[esskay]

I've used Pi's dating back to the first one (even had one from the first batch manually packaged up by Eben and co). They're good, but arent without their issues. Power management has been a consistent problem with every single Pi. That combined with the Raspberry Pi Trading Co's behaviour over the last couple of years made me move to alternatives.

Once an 8GB pi cost more than an i3 or i5 mini pc that is capable of being upgraded it became completely pointless even considering them.

The only things I now have running on Pi's is my PiHole on an old Pi 2 - it's been flawless for years, and a Pi 3 that handles humidity detection in the utility room and turns on an extractor fan.

[duffyjp]

I'm with you on this. I have the Pi Zero W and Pi Zero 2 W. These are IMO the ideal devices in their lineup. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for when computers had limitations but I love them. I have the old one running PiHole, (so DNS stays up if I reboot my server) and the other doing monitoring. I've had zero problems doing everything over wifi, and actually being wifi is a benefit for my internet monitoring since wifi going down on my mandatory AT&T router wouldn't be captured by an ethernet connected device.

[ThatPlayer]

I also like the Pi 3A+ as an in-between. Especially before the release of the Zero2 as the Zero1's CPU was a bit too weak.

[nirav72]

Pi Zero 2 W are still hard to find. Even though the Rpi 4 supplies have gotten better in the past few months.

[tjoff]

https://rpilocator.com/

It's been in stock for months every time I cared to look.

[nirav72]

Looks like only 1 U.S seller has it in stock. The others have the Zero W. Not the 2. But thanks, I hadn't looked at the rpilocator in a while and was waiting for my local Microcenter to get them.

[Wowfunhappy]

> Once an 8GB pi cost more than an i3 or i5 mini pc

But the Pi probably costs less once you factor in energy costs, no?

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Depends on workload and the machine; some x86 machines are sufficiently low power that pis lose their advantage.

[doublepg23]

X86 machines have had perfectly fine idle wattages for ages now. I’m not sure why people think an x86 machine is sucking 50W at all times or something.

[accrual]

Anecdata: I have a netbook from around 2009 with an Atom processor. Default clock is 1.6 GHz but I ran it at 800 MHz. With an SSD inside, it sips power and ran 24/7 basic web services for years.

[cptcobalt]

no actual data here: no power (Watts) provided for the netbook to enable a fair comparison.

It's great that it did not become ewaste, and a computer you have is better than one you don't have, but people likely shouldn't pick up old netbooks over something like a pi.

[accrual]

I agree. The machine is remote so I don't have it on hand, but I believe the stock AC adapter is rated for 40 watts according to a search online. However, I haven't recently plugged it into my Kill-A-Watt to see the actual draw, especially since I run it at half frequency. I'll bring it with me next time I'm out there for an upgrade to see what it actually pulls. :)

[piyh]

It's because ATX PSU desktops have high idle whereas a laptop, embedded device, or ATX12VO doesn't. People mean different power delivery methods and bundle it all up under x86 vs ARM

[duffyjp]

I tried measuring the wattage of my Pi Zero W when I got it but my Kill-A-Watt just registered 0 even when running stress -c 1. ;)

[dgacmu]

You can measure it with an inline USB power meter. They generally run between half a watt idle and 2 watts depending on what you're doing (using a camera, Wi-Fi, and keeping the CPU busy) and if you've shut down things like the video output and LEDs to try to save power.

[esskay]

A lot of it depends on what you use it for, in my usecase I've kept the two Pi's I mentioned as they sip a tiny amount of power. The Lenovo Thinkcentre I've got sits idle at around 7w but it's running a fair few service I use for dev work throughout the day, and the Pi would struggle to cope.

If you used one for something equivilent to a pihole then I think yes it would cost more over time, although we're likely talking many years of 24/7 runtime for it to then become more expensive, the low power x86 chips are a lot more efficient than they used to be.