
Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi - uptown
https://thesizzle.com.au/blog/get-dell-optiplex-fx160-instead-raspberry-pi/
======
kutkloon7
The raspberry pi's selling points are: 1\. It works nearly out-of-the-box. You
only have to prepare an SD card.

2\. It is tiny

3\. It is quite power efficient

4\. It has GPIO pins, which make it usable for experimenting with hardware.

5\. It has a great community (you can easily find many projects for it, and
there are some great OSes available, which run nice educational software)

6\. It is cheap

All of this makes it fantastic for education and as a gadget. The whole point
of the raspberry pi is to be unlike other computers. You can set it up as a
server, but this is not its main purpose.

The Dell Optiflex FX160 probably outperforms the pi at all measures, but it is
just stupid to compare it to a raspberry pi, because it has none of its unique
points which make the pi a good choice in the first place.

Now, there are actually some better raspberry pi clones out there. For those
products, a title like this might make sense.

~~~
moron4hire
> You can set it up as a server, but this is not its main purpose.

I thought the article was very clear about that as it's point. _If_ you were
thinking of using an RPi as a server, it's not meant for that, here is a
better alternative.

~~~
gr3yh47
Agree, but also, if price is a consideration the optiplex is clearly 5-10x the
cost depending on what of the listed upgrades you get for it

~~~
BryanBryce
I bought mine for $15

------
Animats
I use Asus 1001PX subnotebooks that way. They're available for about $40 on
eBay. You get a keyboard, screen, WiFi, Ethernet, 250GB hard drive, and USB
ports. Usually a power adapter, too.

(Only use the real ASUS power adapters; the no-name 3rd party units overheat,
don't provide enough power, or in at least one case, catch fire.)

When I get one in, I put in the Xubuntu USB stick and run the memory
diagnostic for an hour. If that passes, I wipe the machine completely and
install Xubuntu 16.04LTS. Works fine. All the peripherals are supported.
(There was some trouble with 14.04 LTS; the infamous "disappearing cursor" bug
affected these units, because they had a certain model of Intel graphics
processor. But that's fixed.)

I use one with a $30 USB microscope to help with surface mount soldering.
Others run antique Teletype machines. One is used as a normal laptop.

~~~
cpach
Is one hour really enough for the memory test?

~~~
pmiller2
I would think of it more as a smoke test than a burn-in test.

------
ezzaf
A raspberry pi with external HDD running is about 5W. That's 130 kWh less than
a FX160 over an always on year, or $27 at average Australian energy prices.

Sure these servers might be handy for some things, but the Pi still has a lot
of advantages. For me it's small form factor, low power consumption and GPIO.

~~~
DamonHD
> ... but unless I need the GPIO ports or the ability to run off a battery ...

And I indeed do run mine (off-grid) from a battery where every W counts, and I
do use GPIOs and ADCs!

[http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-Raspberry-
Pi-2-setup.html](http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-Raspberry-Pi-2-setup.html)

And (along with my pony) I want a system so widely used that most
questions/issues can be solved with a cut-n-paste into Google!

------
throwanem
A somewhat controversial claim, but only until you discover that it's the low-
profile home server use case under discussion here.

I'd go with a Qotom box for that, but something like this would be about as
good and, at the cited prices, a fair bit cheaper - and wouldn't involve the
same US Customs import encumbrance that I've found Qotom hardware to entail,
besides. But I think it would depend on being able to find used FX160s
cheaply, as the article describes, and since its description of a sudden glut
in the used market seems written from an Australian perspective, I imagine
that might be an issue elsewhere.

~~~
phaedrus441
This is the first I've heard of Qotom, can you elaborate?

~~~
phs2501
They make/sell "industrial" fanless Intel boxes. I got one of these[1] for a
router, and it's worked well so far. No moving parts with an SSD.

[1]
[https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KX9OU58](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KX9OU58)

~~~
throwanem
I have a similar one, but it gives up two NICs for an HDMI port - not ideal,
but it was much cheaper at the time, and I have no need for a DMZ and no
shortage of switches. It makes an excellent pfSense box!

------
puzzlingcaptcha
I've been dabbling with re-purposing second-hand thin clients for years (NSLU,
various Wyse, Neoware and HP clients).

My current favourite is HP t520 (dual core AMD embedded apu, fanless, M2 SSD
drive, a miniPCIe slot, gbit ethernet, USB 3.0 and low power consumption). I
haven't measured it but HP states 7W for normal operation. More info at
[http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hp/t520/](http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hp/t520/)
& in the quick specs www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04303956.pdf

You can have one second-hand for about $60-70, and prices are bound to go
down.

edit: the linked article mentions that mini-pcie can be used for an SSD. This
is usually not true, as mSATA while sharing the same physical connector needs
to be wired differently. You can see e.g. pcengines doing that on their apu2
boards. Even the aliexpress page mentions "NOTE:this is msata , can not use in
mini pcie or wifi interface" in bold red letters

~~~
kopijahe
I got a T620 plus for $100 repurposed as a pfsense router (added an intel NIC
card). It's neat.

------
devy
One of the other good reasons to use off the lease enterprise hardware like
Dell Optiplex FX160 is that it's a great way to recycle / reuse computer
hardware instead of throwing them into landfills.

------
jMyles
A giant difference between the two, which goes unmentioned here, is that the
FX160 runs on AC power at 120 volts. If you have a deployment scenario where
you already have 5 volts DC but not 120 volts AC, the pi obviously makes way
more sense.

~~~
zeroping
The inverse is also true - the FX160 runs off of 120/240V directly, which is
rather convenient if you don't want to use a 5V DC power brick that's larger
than the Pi itself. Makes for a rather clean installation if you're shoving it
somewhere strange (which seems likely).

~~~
pritambaral
5V DC power adapters aren't usually larger than the Raspberry Pi.

------
nerdwaller
If you're in a bigger company, the IT department may have some smaller PCs
like this to get rid of. Mine gave a bunch out, I have a Dell optiplex - but
instead of the thin client it's a small i3, with a 320gb hdd and 6gb ram. It's
dead silent and runs all the home server things like a champ, oh - and it was
free.

But I'd still own a number of raspberry pis since they're great for hacking or
just to support a cool mission (in my opinion).

~~~
voltagex_
Do the Foundation make money when you purchase a Pi?

~~~
lucaspiller
In 2015 they had a net income of £2.8m (it's a registered charity so they
can't distribute profits) [0].

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06758215/filing-h...](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06758215/filing-
history/MzE1NTcxMzQ5MWFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Worth noting here I feel, as a general point, that profits can't be
distributed but the same monies can be paid out as wages. You can - or could
last I heard - pay people million dollar wages as a UK "Charity";
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11435754/32-charity...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11435754/32-charity-
bosses-paid-over-200000-last-year.html) quotes some £750k+ wages.

Charities can make "investments" too.

AFAIK the RPi foundation is completely straight in this respect, just worth
mentioning the general position for UK Charities IMO.

------
geppetto
I'm using a Cubieboard as a web server and I'm very happy. It's a 50$
Raspberry clone from 2013 with better specs (for the time). Consider that: \-
it runs mainline kernel and a regular debian distro \- 5W max (but it's idle
most of the time) \- has good enough specs for a webserver (proper ethernet,
1GB ram, SATA support), works better than a cheap VPS

I run apache and some low-demanding webapps on it: \- dokuwiki \- miniflux
(feed reader) \- shaarli (bookmark manager) and it serves pages via my home
DSL connection (with DDNS).

I did consider the alternatives - netbook/notebooks - but for my use case
reliability, safety and power consumption would be much worse. These devboard
is fanless and runs everything off an SD card. OK, SD cards are slow but on
failure (never happened in three years!) I can just swap it with a (recent)
cloned one with almost no downtime. I could use the faster onboard NAND but it
did fail once on blackout and I went back to SD cards. I could even use a SATA
HDD but I don't need that much storage.

So... it depends on your use case, I guess.

------
morganvachon
For anyone who needs it, here's Dell's technical guide:

[http://www.sayresd.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/PC-Dell-
De...](http://www.sayresd.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/PC-Dell-
Desktop-160-Manual.pdf)

There are some Amazon sellers who have put together complete systems running
Windows 7 or 10 for around US $100:

[https://smile.amazon.com/Dell-OptiPlex-FX160-1-6GHz-
Windows/...](https://smile.amazon.com/Dell-OptiPlex-FX160-1-6GHz-
Windows/dp/B00KXA8MMU)

If you're buying one to use as a server this won't matter to you, but if you
want a tiny Linux or BSD desktop, you may want to look elsewhere. The video
hardware is SiS Mirage, which has terrible support in non-Windows OSes.

~~~
l8rlump
He said he's running Plex on it. I wonder what the underlying OS is.

~~~
akie
Linux, because he mentions running a LAMP stack.

------
rocky1138
Another option is just to use an old laptop. This is what I tend to do for
media servers, TV computers, and the like. People give away or throw away
perfectly usable machines all the time.

~~~
tjoff
I'd imagine it be prudent to remove the battery if that is the case (which you
can't on many newish laptops). I know it's tempting to utilize that free UPS
but I wouldn't trust a laptop battery that's pushed way passed the intended
use.

~~~
frou_dh
Is "pushed" the right word? Rather it seems like the battery is not doing much
apart from a little "ambient" discharge for which it occasionally gets
automatically topped back up to 100%.

For the plugged-in laptops I use as servers, I have a repeating task in my
todo system to unplug and drain them once every couple of months. The
intention being to keep the thing's own idea of its calibration honest, in
case it ever gets used like a normal laptop again.

~~~
tjoff
Well, I'm no expert but my thoughts are that the temperature alone is damaging
for the battery (and it will be ~warm since it is basically inside the
laptop). Unless you have a way to change it the charge will also be at 100%
which is also not ideal.

The margins of error are quite small considering that they sometimes explode
well within their intended use case (which is not powered on 24/7).

The consequences of a fire in a battery is quite severe, and unlike normal
laptop usage you probably won't be around it when it starts (or, worse, you
might be asleep).

So, I'd err on the safe side and buy a UPS that at least covers the intended
use case. For something as efficient as a laptop it isn't expensive either.

------
simonbyrne
One nice thing about Raspberry Pis for this sort of thing is that they support
the full cec protocol, so can control other devices. I use hooked up mine to
switch my TV on and off via an Amazon Echo:
[https://github.com/simonbyrne/fauxmo](https://github.com/simonbyrne/fauxmo)

The only annoying thing is that my TV doesn't provide USB power while on
standby, so I needed a separate power supply.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
You can use that to your advantage and detect when the TV is powered on/off,
via a GPIO pin from the USB power of the TV.

------
yeukhon
It depends on what you want to do with a home server. Is it a home
entertainment system with ready-to-use entertainment UI? A computer in a
compact case no larger than the size of a modem/router with just an OS
installed (Linux, Windows, Mac OSX)?

The former is popularly taken over by the integrated system within TV / media
player (yes, many of the newest DVD & BlueRay media players do come with a
better, surprisingly [1], integrated system), and you can play media like
Netflix / YouTube from your mobile phone.

The latter is somewhat a customized solution, depending on what you do. I
would run on my old laptop, or I can run on a raspberry Pi (which is capable
of running HD video at 1080p), plus a large SSD network storage device (or use
"cloud" if you have a good Internet connectivity).

There are plenty options out there, but for a $60 deal (USD) is pretty good.
Most big brands can easily cost you $100+ with just Atom CPU in it. I wouldn't
mind getting one though, if it becomes available again.

[1]: Samsung BD-JM57C Streaming Blu-ray Player (love it)

------
anthony_franco
I use my Raspberry Pi to play around with sensors (such as humidity,
temperature, RFID, etc) through the GPIO pins. That's the main selling point,
I think. It's an educational product more than anything.

~~~
moftz
I think people would be happy with two different Raspberry Pi like devices,
one with tons of GPIO and one with real SATA and 1Gbe ports. Even just having
USB 3.0 would be good enough for what most people want their Pi to do.
Fortuneately there are other SBCs out there that can do the job but not with
the huge range of out of the box compatible hardware and software that the Pi
has. I've been thinking about the OLinuXino line of SBCs for some of my
projects. At least the one benefit of having 1Gbe ports is that I can setup a
network drive for less I/O intensive projects.

------
theamk
I feel that raspberry pi has another advantage -- it teaches people that not
all computing is x86. x86 is always almost associated with proprietary close-
source code -- both in BIOS, in SMM and various motherboard peripherals. I
personally would be very happy to use simpler devices, but if you want high
performance and cheap, then x86 is your only choice.

Using non-x86 devices like Raspberry Pi is the first step in breaking this.
Yes, Pi itself has closed-source components, but once the people understand
that it is feasible and not hard to run generic server code on ARM/RISC CPUs,
the demand will appear, and the market would act and bring cheaper and faster
servers to the market. And this is already happening -- for example I think
odroids got popular only after Pi has created the demand.

So if you have a choice between x86 and non-x86, chose the latter if you can,
to make the world a bit more secure and open.

------
1inuxoid
For people interested in building a firewall or just boards with multiple GbE
ports I can recommend a swiss company PC Engines
[https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm](https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm) They make
really nice x86 boards with AMD chips.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
To me the products are different.

The Dell is a complete computer in a box.

Contrast to PC engines, which sell a collection of parts. A motherboard, a
case, an AC adapter. Etc.

Oh, and btw careful how you mount the motherboard. I.e.: _Conductive cooling
from the CPU to the enclosure through a 3 mm alu heat spreader. Please contact
us for advice if you want to integrate this board in your own enclosure._

Not that the PC Engines stuff is bad; it's just that I usually prefer to have
the manufacturer screw things together and then test the final product.

------
martinml
What a coincidence. Just this week I got a used FX160 for 15 € and right now
it's working as a home file server, router, wireless AP and general P2P
downloader.

It seems to be running fine even inside of a closed cupboard, the CPU is at
31ºC and using about 16-17 watts on average. It's warm to the touch but it
might be the apparently good thermal design of the case which allows for fully
passive cooling.

What I don't like is that (at least judging by the heat it generates) most of
the power consumption seems to be originated in the video chip, which in a
headless server is useless. I tried to disable but didn't have any luck (it's
a SiS 771/671 chip).

------
wyager
I've been using a $140 chromebox flashed with Ubuntu as an HTPC and seedbox.
It works very well and has very nice IO (lots of USB 3, HDMI, gigabit, etc.).

The only minor problem I've run into is that the processor is _just_ slow
enough that it chokes on high-entropy 1080p video. 99.5% of the time it's
fine, but if there's something on screen with lots of tiny objects moving in
lots of different directions (a swarm of locusts, an explosion in space, etc.)
the frame rate drops substantially. It makes perfect sense if you think about
how video compression works. I just wish it had a tiny bit more oomph.

~~~
ac29
Are you using accelerated video decode? 1080P should be no problem for just
about any Intel iGPU made in the last 5 years or so when using vaapi.

~~~
wyager
How do I check? I'm using stock ubuntu and VLC.

Edit: looks like it's not. Maybe I'll try to fix it later, but probably not.
That should really work out of the box. The hardware definitely supports it,
per vainfo.

~~~
ac29
Should work with mpv at least (I dont use VLC). You can use the --hwdec=vaapi
switch to make sure its on, which I believe also needs --vo=opengl for best
performance.

------
STRiDEX
Here's a google spreadsheet someone put up the last time other options were
talked about
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TCugLk0GSukeWjhsLu73...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TCugLk0GSukeWjhsLu732GR4nfMneLGSvZd7W0PHr2A/edit#gid=0)

~~~
ktta
Are you the owner of the spreadsheet? If so it is missing many x86 options
like Udoo, JaguarBoard, UP board and others.

~~~
STRiDEX
Nope, but i do hope someone makes something more complete

------
jalayir
The hackability of the GPIO pins is what keeps me going back to Raspberry Pi.

~~~
matheweis
You may want to check out the rapidly growing number of RPi clones... cheaper
and often more powerful, besides still having GPIO pins. You can find a nice
list of options on the Armbian download page:
[https://www.armbian.com/download/](https://www.armbian.com/download/)

~~~
ekianjo
problem is That a lot have terrible hardware support. and virtually no
community following.

~~~
moftz
It gets even worse when you buy really expensive SBCs from random small
companies. You want support? They just ignore any emails because they either
can't read your language, closed up shop, or just don't care to respond. Only
good thing is that at least the hardware is amd64 and it uses drivers that are
in the kernel.

------
cottsak
Still won't be good for a file server, backup server, media server if you care
about decent write/read speeds. Sure it will prob read fast enough for your
biggest 4K MKVs but those CPUs are always the limiting factor in disk IO
performance. Get a fast SSD, get a platter disk - who cares! So you've got
100MB/s of throughput on your gigabit eth. Too bad! These CPUs do AT BEST
30-40MB/s write theoretical - most folks get around 10MB/s. Google the
benchmarks. That's crap! Those Atom CPUs are the sorry excuse for a decade of
cheap personal NAS devices (prob botnets now) with no balls.

~~~
scarface74
And the article said it would be a pretty good Plex Server as long as you
don't care about transcoding. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of a
Plex Server? If I wanted a small single use, flexible, media server, I would
get an Nvidia Shield for $200.

------
rayiner
Off-lease Dell PCs are great for this sort of thing. My AirPort Extreme isn't
quite up to the task of routing a gigabit fiber connection with all the bells
and whistles, so I got a Dell Precison T1700 off EBay. Quad core 3.2 Ghz Xeon
e3 for $150!

~~~
sams99
That is a great call, an atom would struggle big time running plex, I have a
Thinkcentre M92p which is tiny and silent, do wish it had a tiny bit more
grunt but was pretty good value for $200.

~~~
mdip
Have you ever tried an Atom processor for running Plex? I've always been
curious how it would perform.

I had an older Atom device running Plex server for quite a while, but back
then I almost _never_ needed full transcoding for playback -- usually 'stream
direct' which just shifts the MKV container to MP4 -- relatively easy work.
And when I did have full transcode, it was either from h.264->h.264 with
slightly different profile settings or MPEG-2 -> h.264. I had to configure it
for the lowest quality transcoding settings in order to avoid interrupted
playback, but it worked. I upgraded to fastest i5 that was offered about two
years ago and it's handled everything quite well -- though h.265 transcoding
takes substantially longer to start-up and seek than h.264 full transcodes.

I'm curious what modern Atom processors can handle. I know they've made some
improvements to the chips, but is it enough, yet?

~~~
decryption
The Atom is fine for Plex, just don't try to transcode any video, hah - it
sucks at that. 99% of everything I watch doesn't need transcoding though.
Sometimes the audio needs transcoding, but the Atom 230 in the FX160 handles
that.

~~~
scarface74
I have an old Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz laptop that can handle 2 streams transcoding
at once with Plex. You can buy a refurb Core 2 Duo for less than $200. Why
bother with an Atom?

------
Waterluvian
This is one of those moments where I notice the stark difference in good vs.
bad branding (in my opinion).

Raspberry Pi.

Dell Optiplex FX160.

~~~
DamonHD
I think that Dell would claim that their brand is the more valuable for their
purposes.

~~~
inetknght
I think parent comment was discussing the names rather than the hardware.

When I think "Raspberry Pi" I think "Oh yeah there's not very many of those,
and they're super cheap and low power and useful"

When I think "Dell", I think "Conglomerate"; when I think "Optiplex", I think
"stupid-expensive desktop machines"; when I think "FX160" I think "oh great a
!@#$ing model number to look up specs for". Yeah, it's 'cheap' and 'powerful'
and 'useful', but far more effort goes into identifying its purpose. And,
since it doesn't have any GPIO, it's useful _in a different way_.

Honestly, it's like comparing apples to oranges. One just keeps the doctor
away while I use the other as the base for soups.

~~~
DamonHD
Horses for courses.

I think that they are both good brands, aimed squarely at the comfort zones of
their target market segments.

------
rasz
no, buy a third gen i5 laptop with a broken screen, or even just a motherboard
from one. Lenovo X220/X230 motherboards (with 4xcore i5 ~3GHz) are $30-50.
PCIE, USB 3.0, SATA, real 1Gbit ethernet, everything Raspee lacks.

~~~
cpach
That’s tempting! Any suggestions on how to mount the motherboard outside the
laptop case?

~~~
rasz
I leave mine in original cases. There is maybe even a possibility of making it
drastically smaller by cutting off right side pcb section with USB/audio/mpcie
port, but I havent investigated it yet.

also [http://hackaday.com/2017/04/17/broken-yoga-becomes-
firewall/](http://hackaday.com/2017/04/17/broken-yoga-becomes-firewall/)

------
ibic
My main usages with RPi 3 includes: \- SSH tunnel from outside when I concern
about security / privacy \- Media box (Kodi runs pretty well) \- Running
daemons (DDNS updates, torrent, etc) \- Running some nodejs scripts

RPi 3 does these very well, why bother with a more power-consuming box? Not to
metion RPi 3 has WiFi builtin (I know it's slow, but good enough for my usage)

~~~
dingo_bat
I tried to use mine as a media box, but as the article notes, rpi can't power
an hdd over usb. And I am too lazy to get a powered usb hub and arrange a
power cord for that too.

~~~
bbayer
It can power 2.5 inches usb HDD with no issues. All you have to do is get an
official power adaptor and set max_usb_current to true.

~~~
dingo_bat
Gotta try this.

~~~
omnimus
I havent even set the option and rpi2 started to work with one usb drive when
i plugged it in the original adapter.

~~~
dingo_bat
Maybe rpi2 is better for this. I have the old one.

------
StillBored
I guess it depends on your use case, but after years of running a couple ARM
based devices as a home network/NAS server I switched back to an x86. Keeping
the ARMs working is just to much effort, and the ARM devices with good support
(rpi) don't have reasonable storage or networking options.

The prime example was crashplan. Every year or so they would push a new
package, and I would end up taking their jar files apart to replace the native
x86 packages with ARM binaries. Then there was the ongoing problems with
performance or running out of RAM on machines with soldered RAM. Today you can
get low power skylake motherboard/celerons which are sub 15 watts in normal
operation and and have very fine grained power controls which allow them to go
into suspend or idle below 5W.

------
oblib
This is a pretty sweet deal on a Pi 3:

[https://www.wdc.com/products/wdlabs/wd-picompute-
centre.html...](https://www.wdc.com/products/wdlabs/wd-picompute-
centre.html#WDLB032RNN)

~~~
oblib
I purchased one of these and installed CouchDB, Apache web server, and some
webs I've made and it will serve those apps just fine to a small office full
of desktops connected to a LAN.

I've made web apps for managing Contacts, Quotes, Invoices, Expenses, Income
Reports, ToDo, Chat, and others. I can back up all my data to a remote server
(IBM Cloudant for example), and to another Pi in-house as well.

And I've configured it to boot off of the Hard Drive. You don't even need an
SD card in it to boot.

Plus, it comes with all the apps already installed on Raspbian so it works
well as a desktop PC too. That's a pretty sweet deal.

~~~
eriknstr
>I've configured it to boot off of the Hard Drive. You don't even need an SD
card in it to boot.

Woah, that's awesome! I had no idea the pi 3 could do that.

I have a Raspberry Pi 2 B and a 3 B at home. I host my website using the 2 B
with cloudflare in front of it [1], as well as use it as a login server, but
every couple of months the SD card gets corrupted. The last time that happened
was a couple of weeks ago and since I'm currently away from home there's
nothing I can do to fix it until I get back so now my website is down and
additionally I can't send data to my desktop computer for backup, though
fortunately I have two external drives with me so I can have multiple copies
of my data still just not at different physical locations.

Totally going to put the 3 B in charge of my website and have it boot from a
USB stick instead of from SD.

Searched and found a post with more details about this from the Raspberry Pi
guys: [https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pi-3-booting-part-i-usb-
mas...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pi-3-booting-part-i-usb-mass-storage-
boot/)

[1]:
[https://github.com/eriknstr/interweb](https://github.com/eriknstr/interweb)

~~~
flyinghamster
TIL there's even a PXE boot option on the Pi 3, and several other boot modes
as well.

[https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/tree/master/har...](https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/tree/master/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes)

~~~
justin66
The network boot can be made to work on the RPi 2, I believe. You still need
an sd card in there to host the updated boot ROM but it won't be used for
anything except booting, so it should be pretty safe from corruption.

------
6nf
cached
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:s46TcT...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:s46TcTQooSgJ:https://thesizzle.com.au/blog/get-
dell-optiplex-fx160-instead-raspberry-pi/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au)

------
alistproducer2
I use 2 pis as cable boxes (running kodi). For me the pi as a media server is
appealing because it's size basically makes it part feel like it's built into
the TV. There's no fan whirling or power adapter hanging around anywhere. It
has never had any stuttering issues with HD content.

It's powerful enough for what I want to use it for and it's tiny enough as to
be basically invisible. Could I get more bang for the buck? Sure. But there's
something to be said for the qualitative aspects of hardware preferences.

------
Jaruzel
I was almost convinced there, as a low cost retro games emulator that didn't
look horrible under my TV... until I noticed that there are no audio ports on
the back of the unit. As there's also only VGA/DVI you are stuck for a nice
clean way to get a video+audio signal to your amp or TV.

The moment you start having to plug extra bits in (i.e. USB to SPDIF) you've
completely undone the the reason to get one imho.

I'll stick to my bread-box mini-itx units. That said, I do like the custom
integrated PSU in the Dell.

------
JD557
One of the main advantages of the Raspberry Pi that I rarely see anyone
mention is the composite video output.

It's incredibly easy to build an emulation box with a Raspberry Pi that you
can connect to an old CRT TV an have the true retro game experience.

If I wanted to do the same on a normal desktop PC, I would need to look around
for an old graphics card with a composite output or for some HDMI<->composite
adapter (which are quite expensive IIRC)

------
gcb0
just get an AMD 5350 APU.

4 or 8 cores at 2+ghz plus a very decent gpu. with a high end motherboard you
get it for $100! and there is one itx motherboard that cames with a 20V input
plug to not even need a psu!

best part: mine with a ssd and a hdd streaming movies to the tv in 1080p
(supports 4k but i get tearing) de will only consume 35W!

~~~
htsh
If you have a microcenter near you, you get the cpu / ASRock mini-itx mobo
(with dc input) for < $50. I have a couple of these in tiny m350 cases and
have been very happy.

------
avodonosov
Any ideas how to use a mobile phone for a home server? (At least mobile phones
don't have fan noise.)

~~~
thexa4
You can attach an USB Ethernet Network Card using USB On-The-Go. Then if you
have a rooted OS you can run whatever you want or you can create an app
instead.

You probably want an OTG cable that allows you to charge it while using the
network card.

------
tyingq
Depends on what it's for, I suppose. These have no ram or hdd. I'd spend $75
on a used Asus Chromebox instead. Then you get 2gb ram + 16gb ssd. And you can
reflash it to run regular Linux. Has an open ram slot too.

Or, if you want a fast dev board, the Odroids are $35 to $60.

~~~
morganvachon
> _Or, if you want a fast dev board, the Odroids are $35 to $60._

The Odroids are fast, yes, but they are stuck with old kernels in Linux, buggy
drivers (especially video), and a very limited OS compatibility list overall.
If you're developing with the Odroid as your target, fine, but for general
purpose computing you're better off with the Pi if you want ARM, or else a
cheap x86 box like the article mentions.

~~~
tyingq
The Asus Chromebox is a cheap x86 box. It is basically a cheap NUC.

As for odroid, I mentioned it because one of the points in referenced article
was lackluster speed on the Rpi. If the Rpi is fast enough for what you're
doing, none of this is needed.

~~~
morganvachon
Yep, speed is the biggest issue on the RPi, both the CPU itself (even the Pi
3) and the network/USB bandwidth. The Odroid is faster, but what's the point
of having the fastest board in town if you can only run one or two broken
distros on it?

~~~
tyingq
Depends on what you're doing with it I suppose. Everything I've needed dev
boards for has been headless, so I never had to deal with GPU driver issues. I
recall rpi having issues in that area before as well though.

Odroid says it works with Ubuntu 16.04. that's the current LTS, isn't it?

------
hashkb
I spent $300 on a refurbished 3ghz HP tower for my HTPC. I don't understand
why everyone wants to run Plex and do all that downloading on toy hardware.
The time saved during setup and operation due to it being a faster machine
pays the difference.

------
logicallee
The main thing that will be of interest to people about the comparison:

>Raspberry Pi, case, power adaptor AUD$73.26. Dell Optiplex FX160 around
AUD$60

translated to USD:

>Raspberry Pi, case, power adaptor US $54.19. Dell Optiplex FX160 around US
$44.39.

(I used Google to convert the currency, didn't look up prices.)

~~~
mdip
Gah - thanks for pointing this out! I made an error that I'm guessing a few
others' did -- I compared the $35USD against the $59AUD price. This makes a
little more sense.

There are a few things that offset this, though. The eBay OptiPlex ships
without RAM. The author points out that this adds a minimal $20AUD, but that
offsets the sticker price difference. In addition, if Hacker News is the
target audience and you folks are anything like me, I have a medium sized box
filled with USB cables and power adapters -- more than half of which meet the
specs to power a Pi, not to mention about 4 high-end multi-port units, one of
which sits where my servers are and has available ports. Plus, on my
nightstand next to me are three 16GB MicroSD cards that I could re-purpose for
a Pi, so those costs are very efficient for me -- I'd just end up actually
using something that's laying around.

Neither come with substantial storage, though. So you're going to be buying a
drive to attach to either if you want to serve up video files or the likes.

This puts them about even at sticker price, but you're not leaving them in the
box. You have to consider total cost of ownership with a PC just like with a
car. The author states that these are _silent_ but it has an HDD fan and it's
unclear if there are other fans in the device -- these will wear. And then
there's the cost of electricity. I couldn't find any data on power consumption
at load/idle but a look at the specs indicates that this ships with a (rather
economical/small) 50W power supply (it's 87% efficient). 50W for a PC is quite
good, but it's awful compared against a Pi. The Pi is 1.4W idle and 3.7W at
load[0]. Granted, more would be required for any external disks being added,
but going SSD would be low power as well. Assuming the device will be 'always
on', the Dell PC will cost substantially more.

[0] If this source is to be believed, anyway:
[https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-
consumption](https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption)

~~~
coredog64
I keep having awful luck with USB power adapters and RPis, to the point that I
buy a specific adapter to go with each Pi.

~~~
mdip
It can be a little tricky, but if you know what the adapter is rated to handle
it usually isn't too tough to find one that works. About 5 years ago I ordered
some 4-port 2.1A Monoprice PoS adapters for a few bucks a piece. I routinely
use these for my RPis, but with only _one_ RPi plugged in (add any second
device and the thing will start flaking).

------
agumonkey
Also, a real time clock is probably included on the FX160. And sleep states.

------
mdip
As others have pointed out, there are definitely some flaws with the logic
applied here.

> It’s faster, cheaper and still relatively small

Yes, the Optiplex is going to perform better at a lot of things. The prices
I'm seeing are around $60 -- the Pi is either $10 for the Zero with WiFi or
$45 for the "3" with a reasonably sized Micro SD card. Granted, your needs may
include more storage than what's offered by a Micro SD card, so that would set
the sticker price higher, but the Optiplex that was linked to didn't include
storage, either. But the bigger area where the Pi is going to be less
expensive is in power utilization. The Pi is _really_ cheap to run. These
things don't even need active cooling to run well.

But it's also not really fair to equate these two devices. It's not even fair
to say 'for a home server' \-- that all depends on _what_ you're going to use
it for. If you're using it as a low power home server for sharing files and/or
basic web app, REST service or home automation hub and have no intention of
doing processor intensive tasks like media re-encoding[0], the Pi is a good
fit and economical to leave powered on all the time. My Plex server, in fact,
points to a device that's a Pi competitor which has archived media on it.

Then, there's noise and heat. Provided spindle drives aren't used, Pis are
completely _silent_ and generate substantially less heat than a full-sized PC.
I am fairly certain the Atom processor in that Dell has active cooling. Even
if it's a heat-sink only design, those usually include ducting that feeds off
one or more _other_ fans in the device (which end up being more
powerful/louder to handle cooling the extra components). Minimally, there's at
least one fan running all the time. Yes, you can buy quiet fans (adding to the
cost) and nearly eliminate this sound, but in my case, my Pi clone doesn't
even have a heat-sink on the CPU. It shares a case with three, rather hot,
drives (though I've designed it with ducting and separation to reduce the
impact of this heat). It has been running that way for over a year without
difficulties.

[0] The specific mention of Plex leads me to believe the author was targeting
those of us who want a Plex Media Server on an RPi. I'm not sure how well Plex
works on the Pi, but I use my Plex server with a Roku and many of my videos
_must_ be re-encoded to h.264/MP4 from h.265/MKV on the server in order to
play them back -- I also have to re-encode to a lower bitrate when I'm remote.
I'm not confident the Pi could handle those tasks.

[1] It's either a Banana Pro or Orange Pi; can't remember -- I haven't had to
touch the hardware since I set it up. It's Ethernet attached with a 1TB SATA
drive and two 2TB USB disks. The device handles the task perfectly. In fact, I
only set it up because my i5 server case was too small to take on the storage,
so I printed up a case to house the Pi clone and the drives. It also serves up
a REST service that my SmartThings uses to control my garage door and older
Pioneer receiver, as well as a node service that lets my Alexa control my
Roku. I even had it set up to run Octoprint to control my 3D printer, but
purchased a Pi 3 for that because I wanted to relocate the printer.

~~~
decryption
I use Plex on the FX160 and basically nothing needs to be transcoded. Streams
fine to my PS4, Chromecast and iOS devices. The content I have is in H264
though, I don't leech/encode any H265 yet.

~~~
mdip
I hadn't thought about that - the Atom processor might not be sufficient for
typical transcoding tasks, either. While it may perform better than the ARM,
can it do a full transcode to H.264 -> H.264 at different profiles/bitrates or
MPEG-2 to H.264? If it _can_ , that would cover a lot and I don't think the
ARM processor in the Pi would be up to that task. If it _can 't_, then the
added speed doesn't really help any since it wouldn't be fast enough to reach
the threshold of usefulness.

I'm _guessing_ that the Atom processor in that device can't handle
H.265->H.264. I'm using a two-year-old i5 (top-end of that class of processor
at the time) and while it _manages_ , it's pretty close to the edge with the
version of ffmpeg they're using.

------
thinkmassive
The article claims the Intel Atom 230/330 CPU is vastly superior to the
Raspberry Pi CPU, then says "look at these benchmarks" and links to a page
last updated in August 2013. I would like to know how the single core Atom
compares to recent versions of the Pi that have a quad core.

------
squarefoot
Sadly free shipping and price in AU$ almost always means it will ship only in
Australia.

Interesting for other uses, surely not for HD video playing, which to me is
the only strong selling point for a RPi now that the Orange, Nano PIs and
other SBCs surpassed it nearly in every other aspect.

------
pcr0
Site seems to be down

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170515001126/https://thesizzle...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170515001126/https://thesizzle.com.au/blog/get-
dell-optiplex-fx160-instead-raspberry-pi/)

~~~
RachelF
Site must be running off a Dell FX160 ;-)

------
pmorici
Minnowboard sounds like the open source equivalent. It also has gpio, i2c,
etc...

------
floatboth
After getting tired of RPis corrupting SD cards I just took my old Mac mini
2006, swapped the CPU for a Core 2 Duo (was Core Duo), flashed firmware from
the 2007 model, installed an SSD (yea sure SATA 1 limits bandwidth but latency
is sooo much better) and installed HardenedBSD. (For which I had to compile
GRUB 2 for 32-bit EFI, because well the machine has a 32-bit EFI, and fuck no
I'm not using CSM. GRUB 2 worked very well.)

Unfortunately there is an issue with the Ethernet:
[https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206567](https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206567)
so right now my home server is on Wi-Fi :D Which has been perfectly reliable
so far, thanks to the good old Atheros card.

~~~
yeukhon
RPi corrupting SD cards, how did you confirm it was RPi the one at fault?

~~~
juiced
I had a corrupted SD card after power outages or when I overclocked the Pi too
much. After several times and re-images the damage was permanent and had to
replace the SD-card.

------
yellowapple
I rescued a bunch of these after they were thrown out by a hospital for which
I worked. Absolutely fantastic little machines; they run OpenBSD or your
average GNU/Linux distro like a charm.

------
funkaster
Looks like a good option, but if want to stay in arm land and need more power
and connectivity (sata/more ram/gbit ethernet) the bananapi might be a good
alternative.

------
MBCook
Wow. The Optiplex is $10 AUD cheaper.

And then if you follow the other advice and spend $20 AUD on RAM, and buy an
SSD, and do a few other things...

It's not cheaper.

------
dsc_
Woke up today, went to hackernews while still in bed, found this article, read
2 sentences, bought one.

You better be right!

------
dmix
> H.264 decoding cards

What's the purpose of installing one of these in a home server? (Genuinely
curious)

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Media server

------
OriZelig
Anybody knows if this chipset (SiS Mirage 3) has 3D support on Linux (for
Kodi/OpenELEC)?

------
beedogs
If it had any way to provision a second non-USB Ethernet port, I'd already own
several.

~~~
puzzlingcaptcha
Have you considered pcengines boards?
[https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm](https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm)

------
elchief
No thanks. I'll take new over used.

Just just got a W zero for $24 CAD shipped (Vancouver)

~~~
kogepathic
> I'll take new over used.

The irony is that most corporate class hardware will last until well beyond
obsolescence before breaking. I've heard people say they don't want to buy a
refurbished ThinkPad because they're worried about longevity.

Those things will outlast any consumer grade laptop you buy today.

~~~
flyinghamster
True indeed. I still have a T22 and a T30, mothballed. I'm not sure what I'd
even use them for these days... and the batteries crapped out long ago.

My T42 is also still useful enough to continue using, though its battery also
succumbed to "always plugged in" syndrome.

My current daily driver is an i7-equipped X201 Tablet. While I don't have much
use for the pen-based tablet mode, it was still a very nice laptop for a very
nice price.

The X201 came with a good enough battery that I decided to set a maximum
charge of 80% to (hopefully) make it last a few more years.

------
hathym
better alternatives than the Raspberry Pi here
[https://www.armbian.com/download/](https://www.armbian.com/download/)

I highly recommand the odroid xu4

------
cftm
tl;dr - Buy this stock of FX160's on ebay now, they're better I promise.

------
FluffyTheWalrus
actually its not a bad idea if you don't care about size...

------
igsmo
how's the capacitor rot on these optiplexes?

------
tiatia
Consider the New Banana PiR2

It is supposed to have GBit Ethernet now: [http://www.banana-
pi.org/r2.html](http://www.banana-pi.org/r2.html)

------
tworc
#neverconsiderdell

~~~
saintfiends
Care to explain? I pretty much exclusively buy Dell laptops. Their linux
support is pretty good these days.

------
Meph504
Perhaps it's just me, but I feel I'm seeing more and more thinly veiled
advertisement on HN.

I mean, almost every claim debatably, is an exaggeration or blatantly false.

As CFTM pointed out, the whole thing is a bunch of weak arguments for you to
buy some old, out out lease hardware on ebay.

Or buy a known good product, spend the extra cash on the accessories you want,
and get what you want.

~~~
zaroth
What's your theory, that the author is actually the one selling the units on
eBay?

TFA made a reasonable argument for why this was a great deal. I can't find any
fault, and certainly it's not an ad.

~~~
decryption
I'm definitely not selling them! I just think they're cool. I picked one up
out of curiosity and thought I'd let people know. I did chuck my affiliate
code on the eBay link though.

~~~
mdip
I'll back you up on that one, even though a few of my posts pointed out some
things that I think you should have also considered in your analysis.

The reality is that this little PC is a solid choice to consider for a low-end
home server -- especially if you have a particular need/desire for x86[0].
They're different platforms that serve different purposes and a micro-desktop
like this has a lot of good uses. I used to use a similar device _as_ my
playback PC and loved that I could play back every format without having
something have to transcode it for me[1].

It didn't even cross my mind to think of that post as 'advertising' or that
you might be the actual seller, and I use affiliate links any time I link to a
product where I have an affiliate account. I think I've made $5 over a few
years, so I wouldn't be inclined to think the inclusion of an affiliate link
causes a post to be considered spammy or a motivation to spam. For me, it's
just easier to click the associates banner at the top and get a short-link
that way.

Personally speaking, I enjoyed the post and think it had plenty of value _even
though_ I didn't agree completely with the conclusion and decided to pull a
'Someone is Wrong on the Internet!'[2]. So to offset this small amount of
grief you have received, consider this my 'Many Thanks for Sharing' and
encouragement to continue to do so.

[0] Personally, I reload my computer enough and it's always painful for me to
go through the steps of setting up my environment for cross-compiling to ARM.
I never quite get it right on the first try and often give up half-way
through, delaying getting things done that I want to do. If it's x86, I can
compile locally and cp away.

[1] I'm not sure if that processor could handle H.265, but at the time I was
running this device -- which later became my Plex server -- H.265 didn't
exist. If it _can_ play back h.265, that would make this quite a solid product
for that purpose.

[2] And this being 10:30 PM, my time, I'm literally:
[https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

~~~
decryption
Nothing with an Atom CPU will do H265 playback. It'll stream fine with Plex to
a playback device that supports it, but I'm not sure what's out there that
supports H265. Maybe some sort of Chinese Android TV box?

Glad you enjoyed the post :)

~~~
sebthomas
Hey thanks for the tip. I've been thinking of setting up little media station
thing...getting tired of using my mac keyboard as a remote..

I have a question.. for anybody, what is the difference between using a PC as
media server as OP describes, or using a little Android box thing like the Mi,
or something like Apple TV?

Basically I have a MBP, and I'll be getting a TV soon, and I want to be able
to easily watch dls on the TV, using a remote. And I'd prefer not to have my
laptop doing the grunt work.

Any opinions/explanations appreciated! ta

