Topic: Cheap & silent mini PC for Bitcoin node & blockchain explorer? (Read 819 times)

I like the design, but I don't like the price  
Quartz mechanism is good enough for  me as a silent wall clock.

Every watt counts, and gold rated power supply makes a huge difference compared to regular ones  

Does Raspberry have any plans to Pi500 version with integrated keyboard, similar like Pi400 that was released few years ago?

I'm thinking of using a Raspberry Pi5 with 8Gb of ram and a 2Tb Crucial P3 NVME disk. It's very quiet, well cooled, well supported and has lots of connectivity options. You can use a laptop as a terminal to control it, so you don't need a screen keyboard or mouse. Power is provided through an USB-C port. I want to use this to research my old hard drives with wallets on them, but it would be great to run a full node. The ssd is extremely fast, and that helps in handling blockchain files.

I'm still on my Dell Optiplex 9020M, and it's doing a great job, so I'm in no rush. But at some point I'll want to upgrade to newer hardware, and I'll probably go the DIY rackmount route. Looking at the Odroid H4+, that's actually the best option currently. I'd choose the Mini-ITX kit and use my own rackmount chassis. But the board seems to have everything you need: up to 48 GB of RAM, eMMC for Ubuntu Server boot volume, x4 gen3 M.2 SSD for the data volume (timechain etc.), and a SATA SSD as backup volume. Compared to the Odroid, the ASRock N100DC-ITX, while surely a nice efficient board, would probably be overkill.

As for the Odroid cases, I could see myself using one of them with a second Odroid board as a remote Lightning watchtower node. But that would be stage 3. 

Which route did you end up taking? Did you actually build that node or are you waiting for some results regarding ODROID-H4 Plus performance? (Hardkernel already has a case available in their website bt the way)

You need one of these then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmos_clock

https://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/us-en/clocks/atmos




At least with the mid range Dells and HPs that I deal with, I see a high variation of power pull from the wall when using cheap generic AC adapters vs. using the OEM ones.
Better build quality and better components probably saves you 3 to 5 watts at a minimum. Over years and years of 24/7 use that does add up to a real number.

-Dave

Don't trust, verify (with power meter).
You are assuming that everyone is using brand new fridge with class A energy classification, but I don't think they do.
I could probably give better example with electric heater or air conditioner that are biggest power consumers but I wanted to have something that is working 24/7.
Only other thing I could think off is light bulbs, but there are old style incandescent and new led lights, so it is wide range of consumption.

Here is what AI told me about average fridge power consumption:


This is what AI is saying for average laptops:

Using less power doesn't mean you have a minimalist lifestyle. I don't mind using a lot of power, but if I can do the same thing with less, I do it.

Any PC can run 24/7. If it doesn't have enough cooling, it won't last an hour. If it has enough cooling, there's no upper limit. Just clean dust from the fan once in a while.

I don't have much experience with the mini PCs but as far as I know it's not really customisable in terms of hardware so we can only make changes via software tweaks. The price of custom build decent PC can be around $200 with most recent processor which is positive than going with an outdated gen processor. Fan comes with processor itself enough for this very particular purpose but indeed a little more space along with fans comes along cabinet can reduce heat dissipation a lot.

Depends on the manufacturer & their BIOS ofc, but you could always apply additional tweaks, so the CPU will throttle faster. And there might be more options, e.g. disabling turbo boost or (depending on the CPU) hyper-threading or a couple of cores. (But you'd need to test stuff like this, especially on an off-the-shelf PC, because going too low power with BIOS tweaks might destabilize the system, and you'd worsen the situation that you originally wanted to improve.) But if you use the machine only for Bitcoin (which you should), then some BIOS tweaks might be OK.

An occasional reboot is a good thing, too, in order to free swap memory etc. My current node is running Ubuntu Server, which is probably solid enough for a reboot once a year, even on an old office Mini PC, but I still reboot about once a month when applying system updates. If you maintain your system regularly, you will automatically reboot more often.

As for fans… that's why I'm a proponent of DIY builds. For these passively cooled boards, one chassis fan would probably be sufficient to thwart any potential heat instability issue, and you could also get a model (e.g. from Noctua) that comes with a low or ultra low noise adapter, which tend to draw less additional power. Moreover, these boards usually come with a standard BIOS, and are perfectly fine for additional low power tweaks. But, as was said earlier, DIY builds cost a bit more… it will take many years to make up for the additional investment costs, maybe never, and you might prefer to use that extra money to buy some sats instead.

You guys are taking things too extreme.

Minimalist life is understandable what about this new trend, power saver?

Mini PCs are not really suitable for 24/7 operations cause it comes with congested area, more heat so probability of crashing is high and many of this kind doesn't come with cooler fans.

Been there, done that. The energy crisis made me more aware.
I wouldn't compare my fridge with a node though: I can't really go without a fridge. But if I were to buy a new one, it would be an energy efficient one. Now that I check it: you're wrong on the power consumption. This one (260l fridge, 103l freezer) consumes 11.9W on average. That's a lot less than my current laptop. That's really impressive!

Lol. I bought one without a "tic" sound every second. But now that it's getting older, it makes 5 sounds per second.

Sure, but we are not talking big savings here, unless you turned all devices in your house to lower power.
Refrigerator and other devices are spending much more power and they are working 24/7.
It's not a bad idea to buy power meter for sockets to check how much power they all use.

Same here.
I even purchased totally silent analogue wall clock.

The issue for something like this goes back to what I said above. Cost.
But the ODROID boards start at $100 before case / power supply / RAM / Drive.
A pre-built one with all of that but not fan-less is $200

Depends on what you are looking for. But by the time you add 16GB of RAM and a 1 TB m.2 you are looking at more money.

-Dave

Hardkernel have released the new ODROID-H4 series, and the H4 Plus would probably be the best choice for a DIY node build:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h4-plus/

It uses one of Intel's N-series chips, but the N97 instead of the N100; the N97 is a little more powerful, with passively cooled 12 W TDP instead of 6 W, but since it's such a tiny board, it will idle at only 2,7–2,8 W when using DC power; maximum 48 GB of DDR5 memory; 2 * 2.5 GbE RJ45 ports; an eMMC slot for the boot volume, e.g. Ubuntu Server; an M.2 slot with four lanes for full gen3 x4 speed, e.g. as the node's data volume for the timechain etc.; four SATA ports via PCIe 3.0 x1 for either 2 * 500 MB/s SATA SSDs or 4 * 250 MB/s SATA HDDs; so you could use one SATA SSD or HDD as a backup destination for your data volume, in case your primary data volume is corrupted… or use three SATA SSDs in RAID5 or RAIDz1 as the primary data volume, with the M.2 SSD (or a fourth SSD or HDD) as backup.

Hardkernel will release cases for these tiny boards, but there's also a Mini-ITX kit, if you want to put this into your own chassis, e.g. a rackmount:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/h4-mini-itx-kit/

At 4 cents a day profit I'd have free heating all winter Unfortunately, I've never seen any mining that's worth it considering the prices here.

or do the p320 pc I linked with an 8gb discrete gpu. and hope for a decent gpu mining run.

I earned far more then the power it costs. At the moment it earns about 4 cents a day profit I dont bother using it since 4 cents a day profit is meh. But many days it made 40 cents a day.

That kills the nuc or the rasp pi.

I owned four different rasp pi the 1 the 2 the 2b? the 3

when I started seeing cheap 8 inch by 8 inch by 1.5 inch tiny pcs I switched.

I then found the p320 which fits the t1000 8gb gpu I would never use a rasp pi I likely won’t use the nuc

but they finally lowered the nuc prices to compete with the lenovo p320 the hp optiplex and the dell tiny

Sort of, the next factor is cost.
As I pointed out you can get silent mini PCs but they cost more since you are more or less getting it in a full metal case that is essentially a giant heatsink.
You can even get full size PCs that are mostly silent: https://silentpc.com/fanless-pcs/
But they cost a lot more.

It all depends on what you are looking for.

-Dave

I'd like to think that every watt counts, especially if you can do the same task with less electricity, and especially for tasks that run 24/7. At € 0,2718/kWh, each additional watt costs €2.38 per year. If you can get 20 watts off by buying the right hardware for the job, and plan to run it for 6 years before replacing it, it's worth spending up to €285 more on the hardware.

Usually, power and noise go hand in hand. Less power means less cooling. I used to have loud hardware around me, but now really appreciate quiet things.

Depends on the device.
The cheaper ones have fans. There are ones that are more money that are fanless.
Plastic case and a cheap fan cost a lot less then a big chunk of aluminum

-Dave

I understand the need to save power with low-power mini PC devices, but running a node 24/7 is not spending all that much power like bitcoin mining does.
However, I do appreciate when something is silent and quiet and I am ready to pay for that.

Does Intel N100 devices have passive or active cooling?
This days I more prefer AMD than Intel, it would be interesting if they have some alternatives available.