• hanke@feddit.nuOP
      0·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, I enjoyed my time with k3s setup at home as well, but right now I don’t really want nor need that 😄

  • kekmacska@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    i think the best choice is a cheap used pc or laptop, or server. Reduces electric waste. I also host my own server on a 19 year old Dell Insprion 1300

    • null@slrpnk.net
      0·
      2 years ago

      Reduces electric waste

      A lot of older equipment actually wastes more electricity.

      But it will cut down on electronic waste.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Not necessarily.

        A i5-6500 has a TDP of 65W while a i5-13600K has a TDP of 150W.

        If you get something modern that has the performance of a i5-6500 it will be a little bit more efficient. The key is that more performance uses more power.

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 years ago

      Yes, but also no. Older hardware is less power efficient, which is a cost in its own right, but also decreases backup runtime during power failure, and generates more noise and heat. It also lacks modern accelerated computing, like ai cores or hardware video encoders or decoders, if you are running those appd. Not to mention lack of nvme support, or a good NIC.

      For me a good compromise is to recycle hardware upgrades every 4-5 years. A 19 year old computer? I would not bother.

      • Tja@programming.dev
        0·
        2 years ago

        I have a Lenovo M710q with a i3 7100T that uses 3W at idle. I’m not mining bitcoin, server is idle 23h a day if not more.

      • kekmacska@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        my 19 year old laptop runs the web server just fine, and only needs 450 mb ram even with many security modules. it produces minimal noise

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 years ago

      Think centre tiny here

      Low consumption, two ddr4 slots, one 2.5" slot and one nvme slot! Lots of outside slots.

      Costed less used than a new pi too. They have gotten too expensive IMO.

    • Zink@programming.dev
      0·
      2 years ago

      Yeah what I’ve always done is use the previous gaming/workstation PC as a server.

      I just finished moving my basic stuff over to newer old hardware that’s only 6-7 years old, to have lots of room to grow and add to it. It’s a 9700k (8c/8t) with 32GB of ram and even a GTX 1080 for the occasional video transcode. It’s obviously overkill right now, but I plan to make it last a very long time.

      • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        This is why rack mounts were made. Hell, I’ve seen a lot of custom builds where people have mapped out the server on their wall and it takes up no floor space. Something like this: https://i.xno.dev/kG9Wx.jpg

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          2 years ago

          A rack takes up as much space as a fridge though, and mounting things to the wall is risky. You better make sure you really got it into the stud in the wall. Also, don’t do that if you live in an earthquake zone.

          • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            2 years ago

            Only full size racks. You don’t need to buy a full size rack. You can get very small racks these days that are smaller than a little chest cooler. And why are you under the impression that you have to mount it on the wall?

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
      0·
      2 years ago

      I would have disagreed with you when Pis were like $50 and chaining 3 Pis together with a hard drive was a fun project to do self hosting.

      Now to get to the beefiest raspberry pi, it’s $120. And in the range, yeah, for price and reliability, use a mini-pc/laptop.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Raspberry Pis are way overhyped and overpriced.

    Also this is totally wrong. Once you start it just keeps growing unless there is some other factor.

  • passepartout@feddit.org
    0·
    2 years ago

    Switched from a raspberry pi 3 to a second hand x86 thin client (lenovo thinkcentre m920q) because raspberry pi 4 were not available at the time. Made me learn proxmox and a bunch of other cool stuff my raspi couldn’t handle.

    I’m rooting for ARM / RISC-V to become more popular in desktop computing / servers though.

      • QuazarOmega@lemy.lol
        0·
        2 years ago

        Very much so, not quite ready for prime time maybe, but you can play with it, StarFive is quite well-known for their chips in this space for example

      • passepartout@feddit.org
        0·
        2 years ago

        There are some Raspi competitors offering SBCs with RISC-V chips, there is even a RISC-V Mainboard for the framework laptops, but the last time I checked they sadly didn’t reach the performance levels of comparable ARM chips.

    • mesamunefire@lemmy.worlddeleted by creatorEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I’ve always liked riscv. Just the idea of literally everything on the device being open source is a fun idea. Manuals to everything.

      • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        2 years ago

        Just because the ISA is open source doesn’t mean that the end product or even the design will be open source.

        RISC-V is licensed permissively, giving anyone the right to make a proprietary (or FOSS) RISC-V processor.

        Often times, you’ll see mostly open source cores, but then some extention is proprietary.

    • tofuwabohu@slrpnk.net
      0·
      2 years ago

      Waiting for proxmox-arm becoming a thing (I know there’s some community versions trying it but I’m not sure how reliable they are)

        • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          Apple Silicon Macs do a great job with virtualization. Outside of them there’s just no nice high end hardware that’s well suited for something like proxmox. It’s either low end SBC, or the hyper proprietary ARM servers that I don’t think we can even buy.

  • mesamunefire@lemmy.worlddeleted by creatorEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    With Linux any old computer from yesteryear can become a quick server. That’s what I do, just make sure you got backups.

  • shortrounddev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I’ve discovered that there are a lot of medium-tier software engineers who immediately will go straight to horizontal scaling (i.e: just throw hardware at it), and I’ve seen instances where very highly skilled engineers just write their code better, set things up on a bare metal server, cache things, etc. and manage with just a single badass server

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Even just the choice of programming language makes a big difference. Running a JVM language or NodeJS, Python, Ruby etc., you can be bottlenecked by a Pi. Meanwhile, Rust or C/C++ will use barely a fraction of those resources.

    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 years ago

      Right? I just spin up another process on my home server. No need to get more hardware involved for something that’s inherently a software problem.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Yup, a pi is enough for me.

    Well… 5 Pis and an ancient NUC running proxmox are enough for me. And a DS920+… and an old laptop running docker are enough for me.

    • highball@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I use a DO droplet with docker compose. Filthy dev here too. Much cheaper overtime than buying and hosting home server equipment.