Raspberry Pi CM4

You're spending that much time on it because you're doing too much. Your use of the term "homelab" is telling. I have: * A rented VPS that's been running for ~15 years without any major issues, only a couple hours a month of maintenance. * A small NUC-like device connected to the TV for media. Requires near-zero maintenance. * A self-built 5-drive NAS based around a Raspberry Pi CM4 with a carrier board built for NAS/networking uses. Requires near-zero maintenance. * A Raspberry Pi running some home automation stuff. This one requires a little more effort because the hardware it talks to is flaky, as is some of the software, so maybe 2-3 hours a month. The basics (internet access itself) are just a commodity cable modem, a commodity router running a manufacturer-maintained OpenWRT derivative, a pair of consumer-grade APs reflashed with OpenWRT, and a few consumer-grade switches. There's no reason for me to roll my own here, and I don't want to be on the hook for it when it breaks. And if any of the stuff in the bulleted list breaks, it can sit for days or weeks if I don't feel like touching it, because it's not essential. And yes, I've hard hardware failures and botched software upgrades. They take time to resolve. But it's not a big burden, and I don't spent much time on this stuff. > I have a much more complex setup than necessary Yup. > Getting to parity with the operationalization you get from a cloud platform takes more ongoing work. You don't need this. T…

As someone that have successfully flown a RPi CM4 based payload on a cubesat, I fully agree with this. There's not enough funding in my research group to hire a dedicated test engineer so I need to both design and test my payload. It was a long lonely road It does work at the end, but shortly after we got our first data from space, I decided to quit the space industry and become a test engineer at a terrestrial embedded company instead

For $20 more (after instant coupon) you can get https://www.amazon.com/UXX-Desktop-Computer-Expandable-Frame... - Somewhat faster multicore performance, identical single core performance - Disk buses run at full speed - Runs any standard x86-64 OS and software instead of Pi/Arm specific ones - Has double the RAM - Comes with a 256 GB m.2 SSD (unfortunately not an option to buy without), can be replaced if you want more. - Comes with the case For slightly more you can get one with 2 drive bays in the factory case instead of having to build some external drive mount solution e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-4-Cores-N5095-Computer-Ethern... . If you aren't as worried on the CPU performance there are options in the $80 range that still hold these other advantages. Pi's are fun but they are slightly overhyped in terms of the absolute value for things you can do with a standard PC like build a NAS, host a server, or use as an actual PC. The biggest values are where the 1 GB RAM model can do more than you need and it's a really great value for a non-used device or where the Pi's non high speed interfaces are a benefit like IP KVMs where the GPIO can control the motheboard, the CSI can capture the HDMI output, the USB OTG can act as the USB/CD drive/Keyboard/Mouse, the NIC/Wi-fi make it easy to access, and the size makes it fit inside existing equipment without issue.

You can also use a Raspberry Pi compute module in an appropriate carrier. I use the CM4 for work and consequently it’s all I use at home too. Lovely versatile device that fits in whatever carrier you want (including one that mocks a regular pi) and it has industrial grade flash.

I spent a couple grand[1] building myself an all-flash Pi CM4 NAS that I reckon will deliver RoI in ~25 years at €0.39/kWh. I did it for the sport, mainly, and because I wanted silence and minimal power draw. It works pretty well, though! The Pi has a nice ecosystem, is better for hardware hackery than N100 mini PCs, and like all cheapish consumer products, people will kinda buy them just to buy them. I have a Pi5 sitting unused on my desk. Doing my part to pay for Eben's private island, I guess. I'll find a use for it eventually. [1] https://github.com/theodric/NASty/blob/main/NASty-bill-of-ma...

RPi5 exposes 1 lane on the PCIe connector. It routes 4 lanes to the 2040 chip that provides much of the board's I/O. IMO 1 lane is better than none. I love the CM4 because it exposes 1 PCIe lane and that can support a NVME SSD making it the first Pi that supports what I consider to be a decent storage interface.

And even the Pi 4's PCIe is fine for some things. I have a CM4-based NAS that I put together using Axzez's Interceptor board (a big thank you, Jeff: I learned about it though one of your GitHub issues where you'd been cataloging CM4 carrier boards), and it's just fine for spinning-rust hard drives. It isn't maxing out their performance or anything, but it reads and writes fast enough for anything I need to do with it.

For a home NAS, I don't think you need that much. 8 drives is hardly "mini". I have a CM4-based NAS (with it's single PCIe lane) I built for home with 4 drives and it performs well enough for my needs.

For long term applications I much prefer passive cooling (AKA a hunk of metal.) I have one Raspberry Pi 4B in a case with a small heat sink on the processor and a small fan driven from the GPIO pins. It keeps the processor within limits even when overclocked and heavily loaded. Some day the fan will stop working and the processor will overheat (under heavy load) and throttle to prevent self destruction. I have two Compute Modules (CM4s) and found a passive heat sink that is finned aluminum that covers the entire module. There is no fan to fail. I can overclock the CM4 to 2 GHz and load it for stress testing and it remains well within limits. One of these is equipped with an NVME SSD and I was surprised to see it reach excessive temperatures under heavy loads despite the PCIe x1 connection on the Pi. I got a "hunk of copper" NVME cooler, cut it to fit a 2230 NVME and it keeps the NVME SSD within reasonable limits.

Depends on your needs. The raspberry pi may have poor stock right now, but when available they are cheap, low power, and have excellent documentation. I’m designing an open source autonomous farming robot and we’ve been using the Raspberry Pi CM4 as the main computer on the motherboard for a while now. It’s perfect for us. I feel like x86 would be a mess. The I/O on the CM4 is extremely important to us, and on the custom motherboard I designed we’re using every available pin of the CM4 to communicate to serial, SPI, I2C, and GPIO peripherals on the motherboard. > Locking yourself into a very specific chip platform of a single manufacturer, just for running linux and a web server Ah, yeah, I am very much not doing this and I’m surprised you didn’t start your comment with this stipulation. I use raspberry pi for robotics where the standardized documentation and abundant I/O are extremely helpful.

When you're chasing minimum power consumption, tho, a Pi4 (in my case, a CM4) with a 200MHz base clock, a USB3 card, a SATA card with 6 SSDs attached, running 3 Alpine VMs and a couple Docker containers will idle at 12W and perform surprisingly well when asked to while drawing no more than 27W with every system running at full tilt. I didn't expect it to be as good as it is, and I can't find anything else that can touch it. But my use case is narrow and specific.