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Comment by InvaderFizz | Hacker News Reader

Completely depends on intended use case. If your goal is good compute and connectivity, a used minipc or a new N100 is the obvious choice.

If you need GPIO, the Pi is the obvious choice.

I end up with multiple N100 systems and a single RaspberryPi.

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I use the odroid H series(1) for basic 'small server' usage. Dual nics for use as a firewall, DDR5 upto 48G, multiple sata ports, m.2 port, etc. Totally silent and very low power draw. They run from like $125 to $175 new, depending on model.

I've had 3 of the old H2 series and I really love them...

1.https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-h4-h4-h4-ultra

Also worth considering getting the $6 Pi Pico microcontroller in such a pairing. Keeps the microcontroller capabilities at a lower cost and without having to maintain 2 operating systems across 2 different architectures.

Yeah, any PC can have GPIOs if you plug a cheap USB microcontroller into it. That's more or less how the Pi5 works internally anyway, as they've moved the main SOC to more modern silicon processes its internal GPIOs have become less able to tolerate hobbyist abuse, so now they proxy the GPIOs through their custom southbridge chip instead, which is an amalgamation of a microcontroller and various other peripherals.

Indeed, a USB MCU is my preferred GPIO these days. It makes my peripherals platform independent, and I can do my code development at my comfy desktop workstation with its big displays.

I find it easier to write real-time code on the MCU.

In fact, I've disciplined myself to make all of my projects -- hardware and software -- capable of running on any modern platform. It turns out that's not hard to do.

> If you need GPIO, the Pi is the obvious choice.

There are so many USB GPIO modules that I don't think the Pi is so "obvious." Plus if you blow out your USB GPIO, replacement is a far easier thing to consier.

How does the idle and loaded power draw compare between an Rpi 4 (or 5, if you prefer) and an N100? Genuinely would like to know, because I think power usage (and heat) is an important part of the equation.

Both are <10W idle. https://youtu.be/-DSTOUOhlc0?si=_NeLAZ9Xv6iQZ5xl. Load power is 25W for the Intel N100.

Ya, I'm surprised the author didn't mention N100. One of the appeals of the pi vs 1L is the power consumption. N100's changed that.

Very much this. If you just need a small, low power computer to be a server or whatever, it's hard to beat used business/enterprise SFF computers or a new N100 based NUC.

rPi's defining use case is as a microcontroller, it can also serve as just a computer but it most definitely isn't optimized for that.

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