shuppy (@delan) — [archived]
Plum (@plumpan) — [archived]

I'm pretty sure at least two other people have made this chost but I'm going to make it too.

If you live in the US, you can get skylake generation quad core office PCs for the same price as a 4GB raspberry pi. When you include the cost of a quality power adapter for it, you start getting into kaby lake or even first gen ryzen systems. Most of these come with 8GB of ram minimum, sometimes 16. They can be upgraded. You can get 1L PCs if size matters, or you can get SFF or Mini Desktop systems if you need expansion. They are way, way cheaper than raspberry pis when you start wanting to attach non USB IO.

They do not have GPIO. They use a lot more electricity. They're not the ideal choice for every situation, and pricing can change a LOT if you live outside of the US. But they are basically scrap on the way to the landfill that can still do a ton of stuff, and do those things for many years to come.

ruby (@srxl) — [archived]

say hi to the Gemstone Labs

a bunch of mini desktops (3 hp elitedesks, 1 dell optiplex) sitting on top of a microtik 24 port switch, all under an ikea lack table

they're all haswell boxes, and they've got more than enough power to host all my shit. if you've ever talked to me on matrix, visited my website, or seen one of my chosts with a funky embed (like this one), you've spoken with them before

not pictured: the way too overkill ryzen build NAS providing storage for them

shuppy (@delan) — [archived]

hp sff gang

two hp sff computers on a shelf, next to some ethernet switches one hp mini-sff computer on a bunnings plastic trestle table, next to our 3d printer

from left to right:

  • 0 AUD, jane (successor to daria), our opnsense home router, intel 4th gen
  • 71 AUD, tol, our plex server, intel 6th gen (with hardware video encoding!)
  • 100 AUD, smol, our 3d printer server, intel 6th gen

dozens of these things go for <200 AUD every other month at my local auction house. they’re quiet, they’re fast, and they don’t use a ton of power. would recommend.

not pictured: our big nas with 14 drives on the floor

[…] there are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of these things that you can get for under a hundred bucks, and in 15 years they will still be stacked to the rafters in ebay seller warehouses. the scale of waste in enterprise computing is literally inconceivable, it is beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend just how many phenomenally good computers are thrown out every single day.
— gravis