@somik said:
That's some "low-end-hosting" you got going on in there! My Pi zero 1w is unofficially retired as I just got my Pi 2w.
i was also tempted to buy a Pi Zero 2W, but I got discouraged by the same problems which put me away in buying a Pi 4 or Pi 5 later - that's temperatures. Yes, those come with more power, but also come with more heating and thermal throttling. Personally I love passing cooling - to leave them hidden in some corner of the room and forget about them. Besides, I don't really need all that computing power in such a small form-factor, nor do I need all that 4K video and whatnot.
I stopped at Pi 3 used for Retropie (on which I have an aluminium case) and Pi Zero 1W (on which I use the official plastic case). I do not intend to buy any newer version of Raspberry Pi due to temperatures. My attention nowadays started going into NanoPi boards, for keeping things low, small, and cheap
I see your point... My raspberry Pi Zero 2W "needs" a passive cooler along with a fan nearby, otherwise it thermal throttles. Same with my Pi 4 which needs a full on 1 KG aluminum cooler case and still gets too hot to touch when heavily loaded with CPU/GPU intensive work...
@somik said:
As long as the program does not write to the card very often, modern micro SD cards are good enough for these types of operations.
Modern microSD cards are getting less and less reliable, unfortunately.
Besides the amount of data written and free space available, temperature is also important.
My Sandisk Ultra 128 GB microsd cards may be 3~4 years old but are extremely reliable. I did burn one of my Samsung 256 GB microsd card from overheating in a raspberry pi 4 in it's "official" case while the other 64 GB Transcend card got burned while transferring data on my PC using a usb 3.0 card reader... The reader got so hot, I could not unplug it from the PC, the card stopped responding and had to shut down the PC to unplug the card reader...
No need. MicroSD is enough for regular use. I have 4xPi 3s running fully of microSD cards 24/7 for over 2 years. As long as the program does not write to the card very often, modern micro SD cards are good enough for these types of operations. Yes, it will be slow but will do fine in a pinch.
That's not been my experience...I've thrown out a handful of SD cards over the last couple years. What you say about don't write too often is precisely the issue...it's only a matter of time till it craps itself & you're always hoping there isn't some rogue software writing logs all the time or whatever. It can be fine even for years as you say but been on the losing side of that roll of dice once too often.
I have not had much cards fail on me. Only the 2 I listed above + one card that failed after using for 2 years in my phone and another few years in the raspberry pi running my door camera. It was constantly writing the video files to the SD card and deleting the old ones. Still lasted over 2 years without any issue. Since the card only had enough space to write 15 days of videos, it was getting overritten every 15 days. Also I suspect it failed due to heat, not overwritting as it died during an specially hot day.
According to the internet:
"An SD card’s lifespan has everything to do with how frequently it is used. According to HowStuffWorks, memory cells in micro SD cards can undergo up to 10,000 write-and-erase cycles before wearing out. Since 10,000 write cycles are the equivalent of writing and erasing the card’s content daily for nearly 30 years, memory cards are generally long-lasting."
@havoc said:
Eventually decided to just spend the 25 bucks on an adapter & ssd - crucially makes the entire pi feel tangibly faster too. But I also get that its not cheap especially when kitting out a cluster
Still have two on SD cards where I just don't care (pikvm - usually off, and ADS-B receiver which whatever).
I have found the USB to Sata adapters to be generally less reliable then the microSD cards. However USB to PCIe SSD adapters are good and I had used one in the past. But I did not see much difference in speed compared to using a fast USB 3.0 thumb drive. How is the performance for you?
Also PiKVM uses a readonly OS so nothing is written to the MicroSD card until you ssh in and run the "rw" command as sudo.
Yes...in theory SD cards should be fine, but in practice for me at least it isn't.
Maybe its the brand - mix of samsung cards and sandisk.
@somik said: However USB to PCIe SSD adapters are good and I had used one in the past.
I wouldn't for a raspberry...those can pull more peak current than rasps can provide so you risk intermittent errors. Might be OK on rasp5s though - think they have more power budget than 4s
Yes...in theory SD cards should be fine, but in practice for me at least it isn't.
Maybe its the brand - mix of samsung cards and sandisk.
@somik said: However USB to PCIe SSD adapters are good and I had used one in the past.
I wouldn't for a raspberry...those can pull more peak current than rasps can provide so you risk intermittent errors. Might be OK on rasp5s though - think they have more power budget than 4s
Both for Pi 4 and Pi 5 they are ok as long as you are connecting to the USB 3.0 ports. SSDs pulls a lot less power then mechanical harddisks and dont have spikes during spin-ups. As for Pi 3, ya... i tried it once and it broke the adapter. Probably cause of the cheap chinese adapter...
@bikegremlin
I had a pi-4b collecting dust for the past 9ish months, finally got time to put it together and this is what I did.
Booted it up with raspbian, ran yabs.sh and noticed temperatures going up as high as 70*C.
Felt bad, shut it down.
Ordered an Aluminum armor case with two fans(it isn't loud at all, not even noticeable).
I also used dietpi instead of raspbian, they claim to be much faster + more feat. than raspbian.
After armor case + dietpi, yabs took the temperature upto a max of 55*C.
I would really suggest getting that case for cooling, and a USB to SATA converter for the ssd for the files.
dietpi has a built-in installer for a LAMP stack btw, dunno how well mysql will function though.
@FatGrizzly said:
Booted it up with raspbian, ran yabs.sh and noticed temperatures going up as high as 70*C.
I wouldn't worry too much about it; Pis are pretty good at throttling themselves before they actually do any damage (to themselves; they might still set fire to your bench)
Both for Pi 4 and Pi 5 they are ok as long as you are connecting to the USB 3.0 ports.
It's unfortunately a lot sketchier than that.
USB 3.0 spec is max 0.9A
Sabrent reckons a SATA drive peak draw is 1.5 while nvme can peak at 3.. Plus conversion loss from 5V to 3.3V for nvme. So it's getting less than a third of what max required.
A lot of them will power on and work but likely be in a severe undercurrent state frequently...specifically whilst writing. And there are no obvious indications / warnings.
Both for Pi 4 and Pi 5 they are ok as long as you are connecting to the USB 3.0 ports.
It's unfortunately a lot sketchier than that.
USB 3.0 spec is max 0.9A
Sabrent reckons a SATA drive peak draw is 1.5 while nvme can peak at 3.. Plus conversion loss from 5V to 3.3V for nvme. So it's getting less than a third of what max required.
A lot of them will power on and work but likely be in a severe undercurrent state frequently...specifically whilst writing. And there are no obvious indications / warnings.
Pi 4 max current output for usb is 1.2 A (total) at 5V, which is 6W. That's a 6W for just one port if you stick to only 1 port. Although if you read the specs, it would seem like it's not enough for Sata SSD which draws "5-8 watts when writing data", that's only if you can saturate the bus, which a USB port can't do. In reality, USB power consumption when using a USB 3.0 port is only around 2~3W while writing at 120~150 MB/s (as per my test) on a Sandisk 500GB SATA SSD using a Ugreen USB3.0 to SATA cable. Similar power consumption for 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus nvme to SSD connected over a USB 3.0 USB to nvme adapter. That would be why I stopped using a SSD with my raspberry pi. It's just too slow...
EDIT:
The power consumption was measured using a USB passthrough power meter.
@somik said: Similar power consumption for 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus nvme
Similar measured power consumption on two devices with very different desired power draws because they're both being connected to a constrained source.
Your nvme is throttled to a low power state - arguably not a bad outcome given other options are not powering on or losing data.
I've since discovered that one does get lower power nvmes though. e.g. Patriot P300 @ 2W. Wish I had know that earlier.
At this point, after having checked out the prices of mini PCs and touch-screen large screens, we are considering going down that route (with a couple of thousand $ for a screen, saving $100 on the "computer"/computer won't make much of a difference).
Now, the trick is which 50+ inch touch screen to choose and how to lock the touch screen users from using anything except one website (run either online, or from a PC LAMP/WAMP install).
Relja
Relja of House Novović, the First of His Name, King of the Plains, the Breaker of Chains, WirMach Wolves pack member BikeGremlin's web-hosting reviews
@somik said: Similar power consumption for 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus nvme
Similar measured power consumption on two devices with very different desired power draws because they're both being connected to a constrained source.
Your nvme is throttled to a low power state - arguably not a bad outcome given other options are not powering on or losing data.
I've since discovered that one does get lower power nvmes though. e.g. Patriot P300 @ 2W. Wish I had know that earlier.
Exactly. When connected to a motherboard's NVMe port, the drives heats up and requires at least a fan blowing on them while in a raspberry Pi, they stay cool. So they are definitely getting throttled. Not sure if it's due to the low x1 PCIe 2.0 cause of the USB or the actual power limited due to controller not getting proper power...
@bikegremlin said:
At this point, after having checked out the prices of mini PCs and touch-screen large screens, we are considering going down that route (with a couple of thousand $ for a screen, saving $100 on the "computer"/computer won't make much of a difference).
Now, the trick is which 50+ inch touch screen to choose and how to lock the touch screen users from using anything except one website (run either online, or from a PC LAMP/WAMP install).
Relja
I would get a mini PC every day of the week. Got 2 Gigabyte Brix froma few years ago running Intel Pentium Silver J5005 Processor which are slow as F but MUCH faster then even my Pi 5. Moreover, you can use a M.2 SSD as well as a SATA SSD in the same enclosure.
As for the touch screen, just running the site on full screen should be enough to "hide" all navigation bars. Chrome does support "kiosk" mode which disables all navigations.
@somik said: Similar power consumption for 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus nvme
Similar measured power consumption on two devices with very different desired power draws because they're both being connected to a constrained source.
Your nvme is throttled to a low power state - arguably not a bad outcome given other options are not powering on or losing data.
I've since discovered that one does get lower power nvmes though. e.g. Patriot P300 @ 2W. Wish I had know that earlier.
Exactly. When connected to a motherboard's NVMe port, the drives heats up and requires at least a fan blowing on them while in a raspberry Pi, they stay cool. So they are definitely getting throttled. Not sure if it's due to the low x1 PCIe 2.0 cause of the USB or the actual power limited due to controller not getting proper power...
@bikegremlin said:
At this point, after having checked out the prices of mini PCs and touch-screen large screens, we are considering going down that route (with a couple of thousand $ for a screen, saving $100 on the "computer"/computer won't make much of a difference).
Now, the trick is which 50+ inch touch screen to choose and how to lock the touch screen users from using anything except one website (run either online, or from a PC LAMP/WAMP install).
Relja
I would get a mini PC every day of the week. Got 2 Gigabyte Brix froma few years ago running Intel Pentium Silver J5005 Processor which are slow as F but MUCH faster then even my Pi 5. Moreover, you can use a M.2 SSD as well as a SATA SSD in the same enclosure.
As for the touch screen, just running the site on full screen should be enough to "hide" all navigation bars. Chrome does support "kiosk" mode which disables all navigations.
That is my impression too. Raspberry Pi makes sense for controllers and similar things where low power consumption and compact size are more important.
Relja of House Novović, the First of His Name, King of the Plains, the Breaker of Chains, WirMach Wolves pack member BikeGremlin's web-hosting reviews
@bikegremlin said:
That is my impression too. Raspberry Pi makes sense for controllers and similar things where low power consumption and compact size are more important.
Yes, the primary feature of raspberry pi is the low power and the access to all of it's GPIO pins. Moreover it was a low cost solution to prototyping (not sure I can say that anymore, with the Pi 5 costing 100+ dollars).
@bikegremlin said:
That is my impression too. Raspberry Pi makes sense for controllers and similar things where low power consumption and compact size are more important.
Yes, the primary feature of raspberry pi is the low power and the access to all of it's GPIO pins. Moreover it was a low cost solution to prototyping (not sure I can say that anymore, with the Pi 5 costing 100+ dollars).
In my opinion at $100 one can simply buy an old second-hand laptop for hosting projects and whatnot.
Raspberry Pi has shifted from a cheap low-power board with low thermals on passive cooling, into a pricey high-power board with thermal throttling and active cooling. Maybe the target consumer has simply changed to make room for more investments and profits.
In my opinion the best low-end Pi versions in my opinion remain Pi 3B+ and Pi Zero 1W. Everything beyond that is just bells and whistles for desktops which I personally don't need; but I know many people wanted because it still sells like hot bread.
@bikegremlin said:
That is my impression too. Raspberry Pi makes sense for controllers and similar things where low power consumption and compact size are more important.
Yes, the primary feature of raspberry pi is the low power and the access to all of it's GPIO pins. Moreover it was a low cost solution to prototyping (not sure I can say that anymore, with the Pi 5 costing 100+ dollars).
In my opinion at $100 one can simply buy an old second-hand laptop for hosting projects and whatnot.
Raspberry Pi has shifted from a cheap low-power board with low thermals on passive cooling, into a pricey high-power board with thermal throttling and active cooling. Maybe the target consumer has simply changed to make room for more investments and profits.
In my opinion the best low-end Pi versions in my opinion remain Pi 3B+ and Pi Zero 1W. Everything beyond that is just bells and whistles for desktops which I personally don't need; but I know many people wanted because it still sells like hot bread.
I got 5 Pi 3 B+ & 2 Pi Zero W that agrees with you.
I also got 2 Pi 4 B & one Pi Zero 2W that disagrees with you
I regularly use the Pi Zero 2W with passive heatsink running Pi KVM. It's slow and it does thermal throttle unless you point a fan at it, but it's better then the latency experienced with a Pi zero w and it does not require additional power like a Pi 4 B, so it's a good compromise....
Comments
I see your point... My raspberry Pi Zero 2W "needs" a passive cooler along with a fan nearby, otherwise it thermal throttles. Same with my Pi 4 which needs a full on 1 KG aluminum cooler case and still gets too hot to touch when heavily loaded with CPU/GPU intensive work...
My Sandisk Ultra 128 GB microsd cards may be 3~4 years old but are extremely reliable. I did burn one of my Samsung 256 GB microsd card from overheating in a raspberry pi 4 in it's "official" case while the other 64 GB Transcend card got burned while transferring data on my PC using a usb 3.0 card reader... The reader got so hot, I could not unplug it from the PC, the card stopped responding and had to shut down the PC to unplug the card reader...
I have not had much cards fail on me. Only the 2 I listed above + one card that failed after using for 2 years in my phone and another few years in the raspberry pi running my door camera. It was constantly writing the video files to the SD card and deleting the old ones. Still lasted over 2 years without any issue. Since the card only had enough space to write 15 days of videos, it was getting overritten every 15 days. Also I suspect it failed due to heat, not overwritting as it died during an specially hot day.
According to the internet:
"An SD card’s lifespan has everything to do with how frequently it is used. According to HowStuffWorks, memory cells in micro SD cards can undergo up to 10,000 write-and-erase cycles before wearing out. Since 10,000 write cycles are the equivalent of writing and erasing the card’s content daily for nearly 30 years, memory cards are generally long-lasting."
I have found the USB to Sata adapters to be generally less reliable then the microSD cards. However USB to PCIe SSD adapters are good and I had used one in the past. But I did not see much difference in speed compared to using a fast USB 3.0 thumb drive. How is the performance for you?
Also PiKVM uses a readonly OS so nothing is written to the MicroSD card until you ssh in and run the "rw" command as sudo.
Websites have ads, I have ad-blocker.
If a standard MicroSD becomes a concern, maybe a better option would be a MicroSD with "endurance" tag as these should last longer.
Radxa Zero 3W would come in mind.
Personally I stick to raspberry pi cause they have better firmware support and documentations for those edge cases where things don't work.
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Or just netboot the Pi. Problem solved (although you do then need a server to netboot it off...)
Yes...in theory SD cards should be fine, but in practice for me at least it isn't.
Maybe its the brand - mix of samsung cards and sandisk.
I wouldn't for a raspberry...those can pull more peak current than rasps can provide so you risk intermittent errors. Might be OK on rasp5s though - think they have more power budget than 4s
Both for Pi 4 and Pi 5 they are ok as long as you are connecting to the USB 3.0 ports. SSDs pulls a lot less power then mechanical harddisks and dont have spikes during spin-ups. As for Pi 3, ya... i tried it once and it broke the adapter. Probably cause of the cheap chinese adapter...
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@bikegremlin
I had a pi-4b collecting dust for the past 9ish months, finally got time to put it together and this is what I did.
Booted it up with raspbian, ran yabs.sh and noticed temperatures going up as high as 70*C.
Felt bad, shut it down.
Ordered an Aluminum armor case with two fans(it isn't loud at all, not even noticeable).
I also used dietpi instead of raspbian, they claim to be much faster + more feat. than raspbian.
After armor case + dietpi, yabs took the temperature upto a max of 55*C.
I would really suggest getting that case for cooling, and a USB to SATA converter for the ssd for the files.
dietpi has a built-in installer for a LAMP stack btw, dunno how well mysql will function though.
I wouldn't worry too much about it; Pis are pretty good at throttling themselves before they actually do any damage (to themselves; they might still set fire to your bench)
It's unfortunately a lot sketchier than that.
USB 3.0 spec is max 0.9A
Sabrent reckons a SATA drive peak draw is 1.5 while nvme can peak at 3.. Plus conversion loss from 5V to 3.3V for nvme. So it's getting less than a third of what max required.
A lot of them will power on and work but likely be in a severe undercurrent state frequently...specifically whilst writing. And there are no obvious indications / warnings.
Pi 4 max current output for usb is 1.2 A (total) at 5V, which is 6W. That's a 6W for just one port if you stick to only 1 port. Although if you read the specs, it would seem like it's not enough for Sata SSD which draws "5-8 watts when writing data", that's only if you can saturate the bus, which a USB port can't do. In reality, USB power consumption when using a USB 3.0 port is only around 2~3W while writing at 120~150 MB/s (as per my test) on a Sandisk 500GB SATA SSD using a Ugreen USB3.0 to SATA cable. Similar power consumption for 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus nvme to SSD connected over a USB 3.0 USB to nvme adapter. That would be why I stopped using a SSD with my raspberry pi. It's just too slow...
EDIT:
The power consumption was measured using a USB passthrough power meter.
Websites have ads, I have ad-blocker.
Similar measured power consumption on two devices with very different desired power draws because they're both being connected to a constrained source.
Your nvme is throttled to a low power state - arguably not a bad outcome given other options are not powering on or losing data.
I've since discovered that one does get lower power nvmes though. e.g. Patriot P300 @ 2W. Wish I had know that earlier.
At this point, after having checked out the prices of mini PCs and touch-screen large screens, we are considering going down that route (with a couple of thousand $ for a screen, saving $100 on the "computer"/computer won't make much of a difference).
Now, the trick is which 50+ inch touch screen to choose and how to lock the touch screen users from using anything except one website (run either online, or from a PC LAMP/WAMP install).
Relja
Relja of House Novović, the First of His Name, King of the Plains, the Breaker of Chains, WirMach Wolves pack member
BikeGremlin's web-hosting reviews
Exactly. When connected to a motherboard's NVMe port, the drives heats up and requires at least a fan blowing on them while in a raspberry Pi, they stay cool. So they are definitely getting throttled. Not sure if it's due to the low x1 PCIe 2.0 cause of the USB or the actual power limited due to controller not getting proper power...
I would get a mini PC every day of the week. Got 2 Gigabyte Brix froma few years ago running Intel Pentium Silver J5005 Processor which are slow as F but MUCH faster then even my Pi 5. Moreover, you can use a M.2 SSD as well as a SATA SSD in the same enclosure.
As for the touch screen, just running the site on full screen should be enough to "hide" all navigation bars. Chrome does support "kiosk" mode which disables all navigations.
Websites have ads, I have ad-blocker.
That is my impression too. Raspberry Pi makes sense for controllers and similar things where low power consumption and compact size are more important.
Relja of House Novović, the First of His Name, King of the Plains, the Breaker of Chains, WirMach Wolves pack member
BikeGremlin's web-hosting reviews
Yes, the primary feature of raspberry pi is the low power and the access to all of it's GPIO pins. Moreover it was a low cost solution to prototyping (not sure I can say that anymore, with the Pi 5 costing 100+ dollars).
Websites have ads, I have ad-blocker.
In my opinion at $100 one can simply buy an old second-hand laptop for hosting projects and whatnot.
Raspberry Pi has shifted from a cheap low-power board with low thermals on passive cooling, into a pricey high-power board with thermal throttling and active cooling. Maybe the target consumer has simply changed to make room for more investments and profits.
In my opinion the best low-end Pi versions in my opinion remain Pi 3B+ and Pi Zero 1W. Everything beyond that is just bells and whistles for desktops which I personally don't need; but I know many people wanted because it still sells like hot bread.
I got 5 Pi 3 B+ & 2 Pi Zero W that agrees with you.
I also got 2 Pi 4 B & one Pi Zero 2W that disagrees with you
I regularly use the Pi Zero 2W with passive heatsink running Pi KVM. It's slow and it does thermal throttle unless you point a fan at it, but it's better then the latency experienced with a Pi zero w and it does not require additional power like a Pi 4 B, so it's a good compromise....
Websites have ads, I have ad-blocker.
https://www.fully-kiosk.com/
Fully kiosk software which could be used in cheapo tablets. If i am not wrong the idea was based on something fro that
I believe in the good luck. Harder than I work luckier i get.
The zimaboards and zimablades are currently on sale too fyi...better fit for things that need x86