It's a good idea until you consider the fact that a Raspberry Pi will be astronomically more power efficient.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Look for refurbished elitedesk g5, it runs debian magnificantly! I splurged a bit on the memory and ssd and have a quite nice desktop (developer).
A RPi is going to be smaller, quieter, and 10x more energy efficient though...
There are probably a dozen things you can do to save energy on orders of magnitude higher than using a pi.
Then do them. It's still not going to decrease the energy use of your server.
Only if you're running it at full load all the time and comparing that to a comparable number of raspberry pis it would take to do the same amount of work. Also, only if you live in a cold climate and the heat generated is not a concern and power is supplied by a renewable source so power isn't a concern.
Also, Raspberry Pi first got popular because of the size and cost. Now it's popular because it's popular. Not hating on them, I think they're cool, but they're not cheap any more. Especially with the scalping.
Getting x86_64 based systems is going to mean much less headache. Unless you truly truly need the size I wouldn't consider getting a Pi or other SBC. Just go to literally any used marketplace (Facebook, Craigslist, etc) and get anything.
but they're not cheap any more
People say this, but they really are still cheap.
The original Raspberry Pi Model B launched for £22 in 2012. The entry level Raspberry Pi 5 is £46, but adjusted for inflation that's only £32 in 2012 money. So only £10 more expensive in real terms.
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is only £14.40, which is only £10 in 2012 money. Compare this to the original Raspberry Pi Model A, which launched for £16.
People look at the headline cost of the high end RPi 5s (£115 for the 16GB model, £76 for the 8GB), but fail to recognise that there was nothing comparable to these in the Raspberry Pi lineup before, and these are not the only models in the Raspberry Pi lineup now.
Inflation adjustment doesn't really tell the whole story though, it's not like salaries have gone up by the same amount. Regardless, I don't like dealing with the Zero unless I specifically need something that tiny. It's just too annoying. Don't get me wrong! They're cool! I'm just saying unless I really need a Pi Zero I wouldn't wanna work with one. I'd rather work with x86_64 than Arm. Like even just getting Java working was really tricky on Zero. Much like a microcontroller has limitations for what you can run on them but they have other benefits, Zeros aren't really general purpose.
So yeah, dirt cheap used laptop for general purpose server beats out dirt cheap Pi in my book.
10£ more, or 50% more expensive?
That's only true for the high-end Pi 5. Lower-powered models like the zero 2 are still cheap, and they're a lot easier to find than a few years ago.
Which part? Because the "it's not x86" is even more annoying to deal with on Pi Zero lol.
I'm sure silicon valley are stepping on each other, vying to get their hands on these super cheap laptops for their 24/7 AI training.
They aren't very useful for much besides hobby projects. Modern hardware is more energy efficient and will be cheaper in the long run compared to anything that would be considered e-waste. The only advantage an old laptop has is the initial cost, so it makes sense for a small home server.
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Yeah... I'm not going to stick a clunky old laptop on top of my bookshelf and have it run 24/7 as my PiHole. My Pi Zero 2 W is far more appropriate.
No reason why a laptop wouldn't work though.
I mean, a lot of things would work, I could power it all with potato batteries if I had enough. The Pi Zero 2 W only cost ~£15 anyway.
I agree that the Zero is up to the task, but I prefer a wired connection for my home DNS/DHCP server and if I understand correctly the Pi5 has better wired ethernet than its predecessors... Yeah, utilization is laughable, but there's something to be said for reduced lag time too:
Hostname: pihole
CPU: 0.2% on 4 cores running 318 processes (0.3% used by FTL)
RAM: 25.9% of 2.0 GB is used (7.4% used by FTL)
Swap: 35.9% of 512.0 MB is used
Kernel: Linux pihole 6.12.25+rpt-rpi-2712 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.12.25-1+rpt1 (2025-04-30) aarch64
Uptime: a month (running since Sunday, May 18th 2025, 17:54:59
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I had the accounting self hosted web app on it until I was too lazy for accounting and now I am in so called hot water and must make bunch of shit up using mathematical apparatus
But it worked really well for a year or so
damn you all, now I impulse bought an old thin client for 30EUR :-) but, fwiw: I mostly use RPi for my purposes, up to RPi4; RPi 5 I think missed the mark, with its active cooling requirement and power use. (and price...) the only use case where an i86 alternative is justified is my jellyfin setup (where realtime transcoding is needed).
As a Pi Hole, the Pi 5 doesn't require active cooling.
Now, I am running a separate Pi 5 with a HAILO 8 for Frigate monitoring of a bunch of video streams, and it does need a little air movement, so I built a box with a 200mm fan pulling through a filter and I just threw all my Pis in there along with the Frigate rig so they stay nice and cool... I'm thinking that I should probably switch Frigate over to a Pi 4 for the h.264 hardware decoder, but the 5 is working fine for my needs and endless tweaking gets boring...
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