[eamonnsullivan]

So, I saw this link and immediately thought, "I bet the discussion will be about how we should use N100s, instead." I wasn't disappointed. Even on dedicated Pi forums, you see that happening.

I guess I understand this point of view if you were trying to use Pis to experiment with Kubernetes or something. You'd have built your own (desktop) PC or a personal server rack for that kind of thing, years ago. But for the vast majority of typical uses (Home Assistant, VPNs, etc.) a Pi is going to be way more than you need. It will sit there and silently and reliably run, for years at a time, powered by a USB cable. I know mine have.

Why would I consider replacing those with a bigger box, fan noise and a power brick? Maybe I'm missing something?

[placardloop]

I think the reality is that a lot of people don’t use or care for the main Pi features like the GPIO pins or camera connectors, and aren’t using them in places where space or power is constrained. They’re purely looking for a cheap amount of compute.

For those use cases, it makes sense that performance per dollar is the top metric that many people look for. Pi used to be king there too, but as Pi prices have gone up and the price of other cheap compute has come down, it’s harder to justify the Pi. The Pi is still a great board, but a Pi5 with case, power supply, SD card will run you $100+ (throw in an SSD and you’re at $200+ easy), meanwhile an N100 PC can be had for the same price.

[elcomet]

I'm wondering why there isn't a cheapest alternative to the pi without those features that most find useless. Or a more powerful for the same price

[Filligree]

The N100 is the more-powerful-same-price option.

[zamadatix]

It's kind of like a keyboard without LED lights for status, pop up tabs for the angle, and a recessed guide for the USB cable. Would it technically be cheaper without those things? Sure... but it also costs next to nothing to add them. Once a keyboard gets to $10 almost all of the cost is already put into "being the best keyboard for $10".

There are certainly cheaper, <$100 TCO, alternatives to the Pi or N100 PCs... but they are accordingly worse performing. One thing Pi is really good at is having well supported options on the ultra low end. The Pi Zero 2W for $15 - it's crap performance but cheap. The Pi Pico microcontroller starts at $4 if you don't need a full OS (or just need to augment an existing box with GPIO over USB). If you're building a PC out of a Pi it's just not a differentiated option vs an actual PC is all.

[bluGill]

You can still buy the earlier pi models. The zero is $10 and the B+ is $30 - both in stock at adafruit (the first supplier I happened to check)

[numpad0]

I think software compatibility and power supply are two major issues. Non-x86 boards generally only run manufacturer supplied outdated Kernel, and x86 units are often only compatible with included AC supply.

Devices that solves both of those problems tend not to be price competitive with Pi, and many ends up paying for a Pi.

[zamadatix]

N100 are often no fan and the power brick need not be much different than the one that feeds the Pi. At the end of the day the max wattages aren't much different.

The biggest thing the Pi line gets you is good GPIO and premade hats using it (with prepackaged OS images). If you're just running standard software like a home assistant or VPN then it doesn't make much sense. Doubly so on articles about OCing it.

[teamonkey]

I think a lot of people on the internet try to use the Pi as a home media server or file store and can’t envision it being used for anything else.

It’s versatile but really it has always sucked at those things. Yes, get a used N100 if that’s your goal.

The Pi shines in education and as an embedded device where power, size and maintainability are important. I spotted one the other day in one of those presses that crush pennies as a souvenir. It displayed an instructional video on a screen and also seemed to control the card reader device on the front. Why would you use a N100 in that context?

[zamadatix]

The Pi Zero 2W and Pi Pico make a ton of sense for those kinds of use cases. The Pi 5 (and 3/4) try too hard to be a PC to just fall short anyways.

[teamonkey]

2W, maybe. Pico, no. Driving a payment system and displaying an interactive video is still a job for a SBC not a microprocessor, even a modern one.

Raspberry Pi have found a price level and form factor that works for customers. The raw speed of the 5 is probably overkill for most user applications (the 4 is too IMO) - though edge AI and robotics need it, so there is demand. But ultimately the speed is there because a faster ARM chip fits within the cost-power-size requirements of the board.

[zamadatix]

Pico was meant to shine for much of the education half (e.g. micro-python controlled mini robots without the hassle of complex and poorly supported developer environments, OS management and configuration, or hardware complexity at a couple $ cost point), not the interactive media half (which would target the Zero 2W usage case over a full blown PC style Pi).

The compute module variants do tend to shine in the edge robotics niche where you need to do some processing in a custom form factor and don't want to design or source a SoC directly... but you don't really need the "rest of the PC" the standard Pi models provide. Pis (any model) are a bit of a shit fit for edge AI in general though. The memory bandwidth is god awful (even compared to cheaper SBCs) and the hardware to meaningfully offload matrix operations just isn't there like it is in a lot of other embedded boards fit for purpose. This leaves you spending more $ to use more Watts for less AI compute vs typical embedded AI options.

The Pi foundation's big break was targeting ultra low cost markets (i.e. sub $50 TCO) with a well supported device that has/had a lot of hacker community mindshare. Any product they've made beyond that focus (i.e. not the embedded or microcontroller variants) has been a pretty bad technology fit which ends up in more drawers than deployments despite the hype.

[bhouston]

The mini underpowered PC market appears to be the only new market Intel is winning these days.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

And they sold NUCs to ASUS. For mini PC servers I would always go intel for QVS transcoding. AMD is not on the same level as Intels media engine.

Intels iGPUs also support SR-IOV these days so you can get GPU acceleration to multiple VMs.

Streaming (local network - Sunshine/Moonlight) these days is really good. So good I consider moving my gaming machine to the garage and just stream it to a thin client or steam deck.

[michaelt]

> But for the vast majority of typical uses (Home Assistant, VPNs, etc.) a Pi is going to be way more than you need.

Ah, but if a Pi is more than you need,

you wouldn't be reading an article about boosting performance with SDRAM tuning

or indeed caring about the RPi 5 when the RPi 3 was more than good enough.