> the raspberry pi is still an amazingly cost effective choice

It's really not though. I've been a Pi user and fan since it was first announced, and I have dozens of them, so I'm not hating on RPi here; we did the maths some time back here on HN when something else Pi related came up.

If you go for a Pi5 with say 8GB RAM, by the time you factor in an SSD + HAT + PSU + Case + Cooler (+ maybe a uSD), you're actually already in mini-PC price territory and you can get something much more capable and feature complete for about the same price, or for a few £ more, something significantly more capable, better CPU, iGPU, you'll get an RTC, proper networking, faster storage, more RAM, better cooling, etc, etc, and you won't be using much more electricity either.

I went this route myself and have figuratively and literally shelved a bunch of Pis by replacing them with a MiniPC.

My conclusion, for my own use, after a decade of RPi use, is that a cheap mini PC is the better option these days for hosting/services/server duty and Pis are better for making/tinkering/GPIO related stuff, even size isn't a winner for the Pi any more with the size of some of the mini-PCs on the market.

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mrguyorama 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

>SSD + HAT + PSU + Case + Cooler

Zero of any of that is needed. The new Pi "works best" with a cooler sure but at standard room temps will be fine for serving web apps and custom projects and things. You do not need an SSD. You do not need a HAT for anything.

Apparently the Pi 5 8gb is $120 though WTF.

What personal web site or web app or project can't run just fine on a Pi Zero 2 though? It's a little RAM starved but performance wise it should be sufficient.

Other than second-hand mini PCs, old laptops also make great home servers. They have built in UPS!

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barnas2 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> SSD + HAT + PSU + Case + Cooler (+ maybe a uSD)

The only 100% required thing on there is some sort of power supply, and an SD card, and I suspect a lot of people have a spare USB-C cable and brick lying around. A cooler is only recommended if you're going to be putting it under sustained CPU load, and they're like $10 on Amazon.

	▲	sjsdaiuasgdia 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> a spare USB-C cable and brick lying around Particularly with Pi 5, any old brick that might be hanging around has a fair chance at not being able to supply sufficient power.

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TZubiri 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What do you mean by Cooler? Raspberry pi doesn't need a fan.

Also the other peripherals you consider are irrelevant, since you would need them (or not), in other setups. You can use a pi without a PSU for example. And if you use an SSD, you have to consider that cost in whatever you compare it to.

>I went this route myself and have figuratively and literally shelved a bunch of Pis

>and I have dozens of them,

Reread my post? I meant specifically that Pis are great for the 1 to 2 range. with 3 pis you should change to something else. So I'm saying they are good at the 100$-200$ budget, but bad anywhere above that.

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J_McQuade 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> What do you mean by Cooler? Raspberry pi doesn't need a fan.

From the official website:

> Does Raspberry Pi 5 need active cooling?

> Raspberry Pi 5 is faster and more powerful than prior-generation Raspberry Pis, and like most general-purpose computers, it will perform best with active cooling.

	▲	TZubiri 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Oh. I haven't used 5, i did 3 and 4

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Sohcahtoa82 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> What do you mean by Cooler? Raspberry pi doesn't need a fan.

Starting with the Pi 4, they started saying that a cooler isn't required, but that it may thermal throttle without one if you keep the CPU pegged.

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alias_neo 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> What do you mean by Cooler? Raspberry pi doesn't need a fan

It's recommended for Pi 5, and if you're running a Pi 4, you should at least use a little heat sink, the 4 and 5 run pretty warm, and under any load they can throttle quite easily. I run mine in a rack, in the UK where it's not very warm compared to other parts of the world, and they get pretty warm even with cooling.

> Also the other peripherals you consider are irrelevant, since you would need them (or not), in other setups

No, they're not irrelevant, because if you buy a Mini-PC you get SSD, RAM, cooling, case, PSU included in the price.

> You can use a pi without a PSU for example

You can wing it with some odd USB charger you have lying around, but my experience over a decade killing tens of high-quality microSDs in Pis, power throttling and brown outs is that you should stick to the Pi spec (5.1V) PSUs, the current can typically be lower than their rated if you're not connecting peripherals but a proper USB spec plug will be 5V not the 5.1V the Pi wants.

> Reread my post? I meant specifically that Pis are great for the 1 to 2 range

I think you need to re-read mine, I'm not suggesting replacing all of the Pis with a mini-PC, I'm suggesting replacing ONE is cost-effective NOW, when compared to Pi 5.

> So I'm saying they are good at the 100$-200$ budget

Disagree (at least as things stand here in the UK with our current pricing).

Mini-PC with N100, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, case, cooling, PSU, better IO, much better performance, etc: £128[0]

Pi 5, bare board, nothing else: £114[1]

These aren't some obtuse websites, they're places I shop all the time, PiHut is an official distributor in the UK, and the Amazon result is the second result for "mini pc".

The thing about the performance gap here is that you _can_ replace 2-3+ Raspberry Pis with a single Mini-PC for the same price as a single Raspberry Pi 5. I've occasionally seen mini PC models on Amazon go on sale for £99 and less.

I'm not talking theoretical or napkin maths, I've literally done it, I replaced a bunch of Pis with a mini PC and now the Pis sit idle because there's still LOTS of headroom on the mini PC to add more, before I need to even consider firing up the Pis again for other stuff.

The Pi, _to me_, in 2025, is a great tool for learning, and building upon, using the GPIO and the excellent resources, but for self-hosting services, it no longer adds up.

By services I mean software tools, services, things actively "doing work", not a personal blog or project that could run on a vape[2].

[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/BOSGAME-Computers-Windows-Desktop-G... [1] https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-5?src=raspberrypi... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45252817

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TZubiri 2 days ago | parent [-]

Interesting. I may be outdated

1) raspberry pis competitors have gotten better, that nuc is very cheap.

2) the pi has gone in a different direction, increasing specs and price, the 3b+ or 4a had much lower specs, price, power consumption etc...

In conclusion, if you can get an arm soc board with specs similar to the 3b+ or 4a (500mb to 2gb ram), then you can host a blog on linux for cheap. Should run you in the 50$ area. But raspberry no longer makes these, you might look into the thousands of competitors.

Additionally if you want something more serious, nucs become reasonable, while it's hard to tell whether two 50$ pis or one 200$ Intel NUC would be better. It depends on the tradeoffs.

	▲	alias_neo 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Absolutely. I wouldn't suggest one shouldn't use a Pi if it fits their use case and budget, simply that once we get to a higher end Pi, it can be cost effective to simply buy a mini PC which will be more capable for not a lot more money. The issue with competing ARM SBCs is the software support; Radxa makes some boards that are more powerful than Pis, but if you read the forums they've had hardware flaws in the designs, and they run old kernels and don't get updated, and of course there isn't the community behind it. An x86 mini pc is a different beast to a Pi, but then I think a lot of people who were hosting software on a Pi weren't specifically looking for ARM architecture anyway, unless they were, in which case stick with a Pi.