Alternative Imgur version for the main image
Previously I was using Samsung N150P (netbook) as my home server and it served me around 6 years. >> https://programming.dev/post/708584
Though after upgrading to Debian 13, additional 90 packages were installed just with the upgrade. I also had a little adventure with it :) >> https://programming.dev/post/708488
Anyway, this new mini PC I got is from 2016 and surprisingly it has 8GB DDR3 RAM (I’m rich now). It’s generally in good condition. Even though it’s Celeron N3000, this one doesn’t have hyperthreading so only 2 cores. Still it’s a real upgrade over Atom N450 CPU.
Since last year, I was planning to get a Raspberry Pi and moving from there. However thanks to AI overlords it got so expensive I had to bail from that fantasy. I got this for 40$ and with 8GB RAM I think it was a good deal.
I was already planning to change my home server to Alpine for a while but I just couldn’t touch a perfectly fine system because lazy. So this time I went with Alpine and I already love how small it is. I just installed a couple monitoring tools and packages like sudo along with Pi-hole so currently it has quite few packages.
Don’t worry though, I’m planning to use that RAM, with time. :)
Yeah I agree, I can do many more things with this comparing to RPi. Interestingly this one also has a microSD slot, though I went with regular SATA SSD and obviously it’s quite faster than a system running on a microSD card. I just can’t believe the pricing on RPi devices. It’s almost three times the price here comparing to what I got.
The pricing is just insane. Its $450-500AUD for a 16GB pi5 (without storage), and I recently got a secondhand nuc with 16GB and storage for $200AUD.
Pis also don’t seem to have a second hand market (which as a hoarder of pi3’s I am part of the problem).
That’s just a lot!
Yeah, I checked second hand market and Pi’s are almost none-existant here and the ones I found weren’t cheap either. I also noticed that there were a lot of 32-bit Atom CPU mini PCs for 25$, but they were a downgrade from my netbook. Comparing to them 40$ is great I guess.