 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Raspberry Pi 5 prices etc...
| Author | Message | ||||
Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 10006 |
Modern hardware prices are INSANE. I looked at buying a standard PI5 with 4GB of RAM - $250 now. Screw that. I wanted it, to build a FreeNAS machine, and use external USB3 drives. I was GIVEN FOR FREE this week, two dual-core 3GHz HP machines with 4GB of RAM and 250GB SSD's running Windoze 10. I plan to make use of one of these, with a big HDD, and something like FreeNAS, which will be more then happy on a dual-core 3GHz machine and 4GB of ram, so long as I don't try to use ZFS. New hardware prices are out of control cos of the AI crap. A good time to reuse old PC's that WON'T run Windoze 11, but would be perfectly happy with some form of Linux. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
Mixtel90 Guru  Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 9008 |
Raspberry Pi prices have been getting sillier for a while now but that sounds expensive. the 4GB version is a touch over £100 here including VAT but plus carriage. You can get a miniPC on AliExpress with 8GB RAM and 256 GB SSD for around £140 at the moment, including shipping and taxes, all boxed up in a metal case with HDMI, VGA, 2 GbE ports and 4 USBs. Slowish Celeron CPU though. Costs about twice the price for a faster Celeron. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 11717 |
ExplainingComputers was talking about this. The problem for the Pi5 is using a high density single RAM chip which is silly expensive. DDR4 hasn't been hit so badly and you can bet those cheap devices are DDR4 (or even less) |
||||
| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 9008 |
Ah, that would make sense. They will almost certainly be Chinese manufactured RAM too. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1493 |
In my opinion, the Pi 5 seems a bit overkill for a USB NAS. A Pi 4 should be able to do the same job here, as well as your dual-core 3GHz HP machines with 4GB of RAM. The bottleneck isn’t the CPU speed, but the USB and network speeds. I haven’t bought a Pi 5 to replace my Pi4 Retropi. Instead, I’ve got a €150 N100 mini PC running Batocera. 'no comment |
||||
| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 9008 |
I love miniPCs, especially silent ones. :) My days of messing about with towers full of fans are gone now - I prefer silence to performance. lol Need more storage? add another NAS, or even the 3TB USB3 drive that it feels like I will never fill with anything useful... Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
 Print this page |
 |
The Back Shed's forum code is written, and hosted, in Australia. | © JAQ Software 2026 |
