this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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To be fair, who needs 16GB of RAM on a Pi? The hell are you running on it that needs that? Are you trying to use it as a desktop?
Considering the 3 only had 2GB of ram, and the 4 only had 4GB of ram for the longest time, it's probably better to compare the 8GB model. Which is still $135.
Even the 1GB model is $50. Fucking ridiculous.
I have the 8 GB one.
I agree the 16 GB one is useless (especially how weak it is,I would rather buy a Optiplex or Thinkpad for that price with 16gb ram)
Power efficiency is still a consideration. I am 100% for rehoming business waste. I have several optiplex and think station's. Modern AMD and Intel are getting better. But still not there in efficiency. And older systems certainly aren't. But sadly, at this point unless that or space are at a premium. For home lab use they are much less viable now.
Oh true.
Thats why i bought a rpi5 (when it was still 80 usd),I love how you can run it from a powerbank and a usbc screen concurrently.
Which am currently doing with mine.
I also like how you can make it portable.
Yes I'm very interested in different ISAs myself. Looking to make a super portable system from an SBC. Although I'm waiting to see what these upcoming RVA23 RiscV SBCs are going to bring. And hopefully build something around one of them. If by the point they come out later this year Hardware just hasn't become unaffordable entirely.
Tbh I've been running some repurposed "office waste" as you put it on 8-10W and 10-12W (idle but also even with some load the consumption doesn't tick up meaningfully). On 8th gen and 7th gen intel core i5s respectively.
I don't recall how much RPis use up - I'm sure it is/can be less, but 10W is also really low, no? Especially as far as a full server box with spinning rust and all that goes.
Why not. It has enough power. But you can easily consume all that RAM if you run Minecraft server, or crypto software
But why would you do that on a raspberry?
I mean if you have one already go ahead do your thing! But here we're talking buying a new one.
At that price it's really pointless.
But at normal prices, you can slap passive radiator on it, and have perfectly decent server for these things taped to the wall behind your desk. Zero noise, minimal power consumption, works reliably 24h
Yeah sure, those small pieces are marvels for stuff like that!
It actually saves you decent money compared to regular optiplex. In 24h work power savings translate into meaningfully lower electricity cost over the year.
I think mine is like 10 watts so not very expensive yearly, like 20€. And everyone forgets that for many, it's just energy you'd use for heating anyways during many months of the year.
Yeah, but it's only 100% efficient at best. Heat pumps are 200% - 400% so it is not really a 1 to 1 as far as heating. And in warm months you have to offset that heat so it very well could be a net loss.
Sure, that 20€ will really hit me hard 😁 /j
Nice find about heat pump efficiency, I had not thought about that!
Yeah for a pi not a huge deal. But I've heard people argue it before for larger devices as well.
Yeah people buy a server rack that burns 500 watt all year around will regret it for sure.
Point is that this 20€ annual stacks over the years contributing to the long term cost of your device.
Remove the winter 10€ and it will only need 30 years to go positive! Yay!
Ehhhhh it kinda has enough power.
I have an 8GB Pi5 we use as a desktop in our living room. PiOS is sluggish to navigate, even though it’s an 8GB pi5 running off an NVMe SSD instead of a memory card. It’s just there to stream YT and Twitch and whatnot though, and it streams at 60FPS no problem once you’ve got the stream pulled up.
I wouldn’t recommend it as a desktop PC though, as navigating the OS and loading programs is not a great experience.
With 16GB you might just get away with a Jellyfin 10.11 instance.
No. I easily run that with 2gb RAM and over 60tb of shows.
The irony? 16GB is enough for running a mid-size LLM, to not connect up to the cloud.
even at $135, what does a pi offer than i can't solve with an refurb/off-lease corporate 1L minipc?
Low power consumption, GPIO pins, small form factor.
There are use cases for it. If you have robotic applications that heavily rely on machine vision and image processing it might be needed. You can also upgrade the Raspberry pi 4 and 5 with this so called AI shield, to increase performance.
ZFS pool needs like 8 GB of RAM.