Topic: Raspi 4 for Bitcoin Node: Still Compatible? (Read 564 times)

Chrome OS (which is default OS comes with most Chromebook) let you run Android apps, so some people wouldn't notice limitation of the device and OS.


On other hand, google use personalized algorithm on it's product (e.g. search result and suggestion on youtube) which has some controversy.


This topic talking about running full node though, so device which run full node software must connected to internet all the time.

but if you work at it you can kill off a few windows 11 spyware apps and still be online.

frankly I run nodes on linux now. as my prime choice of Mac mini's has killed the cloning ssds as external booters thus making them too hard to back up and or upgrade.

YEAH NO WORRIES I am spoiled with 14-17 cents in house and 4.7 cents at the mine.

I am a bit busy but I will get to some photos posted here. Showing the Asus running a node.

I can (unfortunately) confirm this. Chromebooks are already being issued to our primary school pupils and used in lessons. The children learn to work with these systems right from the start and therefore don't even know how limited the devices actually are.

However, I have not noticed any (excessive) advertising on the Chromebooks, no. It was very different with a Windows 11 computer that I recently had to repair. These adverts come across very obtrusively as "tips" or "suggested apps" and tempt inexperienced users to click ... and to buy:


Source

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Thanks for the clarification @philipma1957 (unfortunately, I am out of sMerits ), that's actually not as tragic as I would have expected - even though my country is among the top countries you mentioned - unfortunately.

On phones, I see Android as a necessary evil. I see no point in using a Chromebook, I've never used it and I imagine they're loaded with ads and Google's spyware. I'm not sure if that's true though, but I have no reason to find out.

That's why I unplugged the adapter from the wall socket. It's all included in the 4W.

All this is why I have been doing laptops recently  first choice.

Remember there is a loss when converting from AC to DC. And there are losses when the AC adapter is just sitting there plugged in not doing anything.

You would also have the same losses with having the adapter for the RPi plugged in.

At the pennies or nickles a day to run a node it's probably not worth worrying about.

-Dave

This got me curious, so I measured the power consumption of my coldest laptop. With the battery charged, the display on the lowest brightness setting, Wifi on and the CPU and SSD idling on the (Linux) desktop, I unplugged it. The house's electricity meter dropped 4W. That's as accurate as I can measure it, it could be 10-20% off of course, but I'd say it's quite impressive.
Here's another rule of thumb: with laptops, divide the battery capacity (in Wh) by the number of hours it's said to run on battery. The first new Lenovo laptop I checked, has a 47 Wh battery and lasts up to 10 hours (MM18) or up to 15 hours playing video. With those specs, it should be able to run a Bitcoin node on less than 5W.

Also important is the quality of the AC adapter.
In theory they should all be about the same. In the real world some of the cheap knockoff ones are bizarrely inefficient. As in you have to work hard to make them that bad.

A real Dell 90 watt laptop adapter should pull no more then 2A
I have in the pile of e-waste to be recycled some knock off fakes from Amazon that when pulling the full 90W @ 19.5 DC are pulling OVER 3A @ 125 AC or to put it another way FIRE HAZARD.

How can you actually make something that poorly with that much resistance that it gets to 130F?

So that does bring in an entire other discussion.
If you are using a full PC that will be on 24/7/365. Is buying a more efficient power supply worth it.



-Dave

well if you are 50 cents a kwatt or more  and burn 10 watts an hour it is 240 in a day or a kwatt every 4 days. say 100 kwatts in a year.

round up. so that is a $50 a year cost.

my home is 14 cents not 50 cents  so I am about 14 a year cost for a rasp pi and maybe 2x that for a laptop or a dell tiny

so 14 vs 28 and the 28 cost unit allow me full pc use.

vs 50 against 100 if you are 50 cent power cost.

I am not sure how much over 50 cents a kwatt you could be.

found this via google

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-electricity-by-country

Top 10 Countries With the Highest Electricity Costs:*
Denmark — 0.538
Germany — 0.530
United Kingdom — 0.479
Austria — 0.471
Italy — 0.470
Belgium — 0.452
Bermuda — 0.395
Spain — 0.373
Cayman Islands — 0.366
Czech Republic — 0.367



So based on that above the laptop could be as much as 107 a year to run. based on a constant 20 watts

and the rasp pi could be as low as 53.80 based on a constant 10 watts.


I am going to hook my laptop to a meter and see what it burns.

No. The netbooks / laptops have a lot of other things that will cause them to use (nominally) more power.
Circuits to charge / maintain the battery.
Things involved in dealing with the keyboard & screen. Even if you remove the screen there is still more there then just the HDMI output like the RPi.
Not a lot individually but they do add up.

-Dave

Note that this is without heavy load, but most of the time the CPU is (almost) idling anyway.

I have no experience with those, and especially software compatibility. I like "the standard" that just works.

Wikipedia has a list of low-power CPUs. The Atom stands out (but is slow), the Celeron is slow but sold in massive numbers, the i3 and up come with different power and speed ratings. There's more to it than just the CPU, my "normal" laptop gets much warmer than my spare laptop, while both have the same TDP (15W). The CPU itself doesn't use that power most of the time.
My rule of thumb: if the device doesn't get warm without using it's fan, it can't use a lot of power. But measuring is better

Thanks for the feedback LoyceV, less than 10W is absolutely impressive and far lower that I'd have expected.
Shouldn't ARM-based laptops (Chromebooks, Windows 10 ARM, ...) even be able to undercut this value? Whereby this is of course a question of the software, especially for this purpose the software will probably not be executable for ARM.

In any case, it's an interesting thought experiment and is now making me reconsider my Raspberry purchase. The Thinkpads in particular should be quite suitable for a low-watt strategy due to their processors ... I will definitely have a closer look into this topic now.

It really depends on the laptop. My old laptop takes >20W with the screen off (1 SSD, 1 HDD). I've also seen laptops (with SSD) that take less than 10W. Don't get one with a dedicated graphics card. I prefer a CPU with TDP no more than 15W.
It's going to be difficult to beat the Raspberry, but power consumption can get quite low.

In principle, this is actually a very good and, above all, cost-effective idea. But aren't the devices significantly higher in terms of power consumption than a Raspberry, for example? At least if the laptop has a dedicated graphics card, that's a few watts that the laptop needs ...

In my country, unfortunately, the energy costs actually play a (rather huge) role in the profitability calculation ...

I 've seen people mentioning RPi4 being loud using active cooling. That's true. I have bought this case, and the temperature is super stable at around 50 - 55 celcius. This case has no fan or active cooling, so if you combine it with an SSD, you will not even hear it working.

Simply not a fan of the rasp pi gear.  Not that I have not owned every model except the 5. I used them for nodes I used them with Avalon's back in the day. I used them for LN. I simply do not care for the product as I feel it's just not enough processor/ram/storage.

I do like the tiny models from dell hp and Lenovo. even Mac minis until they made their own chips design in 2020.

lastly I have been getting used laptops for the last few years which I think are the best choice.

It's not really a budget option yet, but fanless laptops exist! It's kinda funny how it took 40 years to go back to what "home computers had in the 80's. To complete the reversal, there are now phones with fans too
From my experience, many low-power (in watts, not in processing speed) laptops are completely quiet nowadays, unless they're under heavy load and need forced cooling. So after the IDB, adding 6 blocks per hour on an SSD should be quiet.

I know.
They will probably release Raspberry Pi500 with huge silent cooler, something similar exist already for RPi400.
Even with good silent fan it is probably going to be more silent than regular computer.

It's not cheap, but it's cool and small.
For people who want something stronger I would suggest used Thinkpad laptop T series, they are built like tanks, but they are not loud

You can find a bunch of used NAC devices everywhere, and you don't need latest processors for Bitcoin node.
I tested one few years ago, but it was a bit more loud for my taste.

Yeah, it's possible. Well as long as you're not using Chrome, the memory gobbler. Firefox is better.

And also if the GPU is working because we should not be stressing the CPU for videos while there's a bitcoin node running. Particularly since its a laptop so battery life is important, if it has no battery then it might as well be a mini desktop.

OP, was that statement comes from https://community.start9.com/t/raspberry-pi-no-longer-recommended-for-use-with-bitcoin-stack/779? Anyway, i mostly agree with what he said although,
1. He's not being clear whether it only applies when you HDD or any kind of storage over USB port.
2. Based on https://start9.com/, it looks like Start9 already include many running application by default.


On OS/software-level, it depends what exactly you need. If you only want to run Bitcoin full node, install any OS (Linux is recommended) and Bitcoin Core is sufficient.


In addition, Intel NUC has been discontinued anyway. See https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23790956/intel-nuc-compact-pc-discontinued. So anyone who buy it will get leftover stock and probably limited support in future.

found a link

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/



"Does Raspberry Pi 5 need active cooling?
Raspberry Pi 5 is faster and more powerful than prior-generation Raspberry Pis, and like most general-purpose computers, it will perform best with active cooling. The Raspberry Pi Case for Raspberry Pi 5, with its integrated fan, is one way to provide this."

wants a fan so it is not silent
maxes at 8gb ram



more specs from website

"Features:

VideoCore VII GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2
Dual 4Kp60 HDMI® display output with HDR support
4Kp60 HEVC decoder
LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM (4GB or 8GB)
Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi®
Bluetooth 5.0 / Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
microSD card slot, with support for high-speed SDR104 mode
2 × USB 3.0 ports, supporting simultaneous 5Gbps operation
2 × USB 2.0 ports
Gigabit Ethernet, with PoE+ support
(requires separate PoE+ HAT)
2 × 4-lane MIPI camera/display transceivers
PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals
(requires separate M.2 HAT or other adapter)
5V/5A DC power via USB-C, with Power Delivery support
Raspberry Pi standard 40-pin header
Real-time clock (RTC), powered from external battery (battery sold separately)"


I have purchased from them .

https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-5-8gb.html?cid=USD&src=raspberrypi


but $159  and you need a bigger sd stick

https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Elite-Class-Flash-Memory/dp/B08NCBVTJS/ref=sr_1_7_sspa?


so 159 + 119 = 278

 or go external ssd for 89. which is 159+79= 238

https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Portable-Photographers-MU-PE1T0S-AM/dp/B09VLK9W3S/ref=sr_1_6?


I have run rasp pi's and do not like them for this task but my power cost is less so getting a laptop on eBay and adding parts keeps me under 200 and it is better for me than a rasp pi.

Big advantage using Rpi4 for me is that it spends little electricity and it can work silently (in same cases), but I am not if it still works fine for Bitcoin node.
There is new Raspberry Pi 5 released recently and it is 2-3 times faster than previous generation, and I think this won't have any issues for bitcoin in next few years.
This is going to be more expensive, so if you already have old laptop that you don't use you can just use that instead.

yeah.  I have found i5 6500t and 16gb with a 2tb ssd is more than enough and pretty cheap.

I tend to forget that my 14 cent at home and 4.7 cent mining power is way cheaper than most people.

so burning 21 kwatts a month for this pc.


https://www.ebay.com/itm/115963393472?

is not a factor for me.

but at 40 or 50 cents a kwatt it would be a factor.

Which was why I didn't include them. The NUC both intel branded and other makes always tended to be a lot more money then an equivalent mini PC.
This even follows down to the used market.
Not sure why, it just is one of those things, at least around here.

-Dave

my bad 30 x 30 x 24 is 21600 watts a month or 21.6 kwatts

I pay 14 cents in house so it is 3 bucks a month

I pay under five cents in the mine so it is 63 cents a month.

so if a rasp pi knocks 36 dollars a year down to 6 dollars the savings is 30 usd a year.

and if its 8 a year at the mine I drop to 1.50 and save 6.50 a year.

I don’t really mind that extra money to run a node

If you pay 50 cents a kwatt its  10 bucks a month or 120 a year vs 100 a year which does add up

No, he would only use that laptop for that one purpose to run nodes. No internet browsing, Netflix or whatever.

The problem here is the lack of RAM, I don't think it's even possible to upgrade to more than 4Gb, I'm not even sure about that much. It's about some old Dell XPS machines, tiny and in solid condition.

never had an intel nuc. always seemed a bit pricy.

30W is 21 kWh/month, or 263 kWh/year. That's €100 per year (at €0.38/kWh). Assuming I create a setup for 5 years, that's €500. If a Raspi could bring it down to 6W including disk, that saves €400.

I'm on my third fan The first one broke, the second fan had less blades than the original and didn't work as well. Most of the time it's just 8-12 screws.

Don't get me started on adapters....... I've seen original adapters blow up the mainboard (twice). Most of the time the cable breaks internally, but that doesn't happen if you use it as a server.

I miss the Mini-PCs in your list. I know, technically you could count them under desktops.

Ofc you shouldn't ignore the purchase of the device when considering the following points, but a NUC, for example, has lower power consumption than laptops or classic desktop PCs.
They also score with their compact shape and take up significantly less space. Some Mini PCs also offer a low noise level due to their passive cooling and are therefore almost inaudible. 

Compared to the Raspberry Pi it simply offers more powerful hardware and is not dependent on ARM architectures.

I would say that they are perfect for running a full node.

Me too, I have a pair of them that have been up just about forever 24/7 but it's still something to consider.
Also, with laptops if you do have to change the fan out it is *usually* more of a project then a desktop.

On the flip side if the AC adapter dies on a laptop it's not a big deal vs. taking apart a PC to and getting a new power supply.

The mini PCs with the external power eliminate that issue.

-Dave

I have done rasp pi
I have done mac mini
I have done hp lenovo dell tinys
I have done laptops

The 8 inch by 8 inch by 1.5 inch tinys use under 30 watts daily if they have an intel i5 6500t cpu.

that is 1 kwatt a month. who cares about power costs at that level

to me they are my favorite for nodes

you can attach it and your normal pc to a monitor that have two inputs.

This asus laptop is the first unit I used for a node. so far it is stable.

I use two other laptops for my remote access to the mines two rooms in clifton.

so far so good. over 1 year up 🆙 time in very hot rooms. running 24/7/365

It may not be designed for it, but after years af running laptops for 24/7/365, I can tell you it works just fine in most cases Just keep the fan clean, and stay away from the ones with power hungry CPUs.

I use RPi and some old laptops and some old PCs to run my nodes. All have their good side and bad side.

RPi: Good: Small, cheap, a lot of support, very low power use. Bad: Can be slow for IBD, and even as cheap as they are, you can get used laptops / PCs for free.

Laptop (assuming used): Good: Built in screen, lower power then a desktop, can be had for very little. Bad: For the most part NOT designed for 24/7/365 operations, and you have no idea how the previous owner(s) treated it. Could have been dropped, left in a hot car cooking over the summer or freezing in the winter. And so on.

Desktop: Good: Cheap (or free) and everywhere. Going to faster then the laptop / RPi for the most part. Bad: Pulls the most power, although not as bad as a laptop you don't know how the previous owner(s) treated it, would need a screen to do a lot of the initial setup.

There is no one size fits all. Something like this that I am selling still works well ( I have a couple still running) https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wts-raspberry-pi-4-8gb-in-argon40-one-m2-case-70-shipped-us-5471664
BUT, you have to then hunt down a m.2 sata and deal with the fan issue........

-Dave

Including a free i7 laptop isn't really a fair comparison Availability of cheap older hardware will depend on where you live. I can't just order hardware in New York without high shipping cost and import taxes.

I just checked: bitcoind currently uses 6-9% of one Xeon core, and 3% of the system's 32GB RAM. Except for the IBD, it really doesn't take much resources.
It's been a long time since laptops with only 1 core were sold, so it depends on which CPU you have. And if it's 15 years old, chances are it lacks RAM too.

no.

An i5 6500t hp or dell or lenovo
an i5 4500t all at this level in the tiny are good.

an i7 3700t although my asus lap top an i7 3rd gen uses linux mint 8gb and a 2tb crucial sata ssd.

If you used the asus for your node and your bitcointalk laptop along with lite browsing like amazon and ebay shopping you would be happy. that is an 11 year or 10 year old laptop.

no gaming. I even think you could youtube,netflix and run the node.

I should did up my thread and run some netflix while it does the node.

using linux really helps it. and if I want I can add ram to it and go to 16gb vs 8gb

let me find the asus I got for free on ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266476012232?

To be clear my buddy has a business and they got rid of old laptops grabbed new ones to upgrade.

So I got the model above for free.

My model has all parts working I pulled the windows ten 500gb spinner put in the 2tb sata ssd.
I loaded linux mint. I can up grade to 16gb but at this moment I do not need it.


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/so-i-got-a-free-laptop-and-am-looking-to-setup-a-linux-os-for-a-node-5468600

my thread on the laptop with linux and 2tb ssd.

I think this is about the only advantage, which is the lower consumption of electricity to run the nodes on the Pi. Plus is much more discreet because it requires much less space than any personal computer.

btw. Speaking of this, based on personal experience, what is the recommended minimum hardware CPU/RAM? Does it make sense to start a node on a laptop with 1 core?

I yell and scream and complain about anyone using a rasp pi to run a node.

I recently did a thread here about getting an older gen3 i7 laptop by asus. only 8 gb ram in it. and a 500gb spinner. the cost was zero.

I pulled the 500 gb put in a 2tb crucial ssd. loaded the entire blockchain in under 20 hours.

the gear works fine.  and you spend under 100 usd.

go on ebay look around you will find a decent piece of gear a laptop or a dell tiny. come to mind.

fast search on ebay


https://www.ebay.com/itm/334266133509?


80:dollars

yeah you need to buy an ssd and a second stick of ram

so add 100 bucks and you destroy any rasp pi

Yea, slow disk speeds and limited RAM can lead to a bottleneck which would cause the whole system to slow down in future.

UmbrelOS looks fine for me if you still going with the Raspberry Pi. The interface is very user-friendly. Good side-effect: If you decide to use other hardware over time, you will most likely be able to continue using UmbrelOS because it is compatible with most hardware options.

If you asked me for a personal opinion, I would recommend an Intel NUC.
There are of course many versions of hardware there. I think with a good i5 and 16gb RAM you are on the safe side. As storage I would recommend 1TB SSD to ensure enough speed and storage for the blockchain data.

You are then also flexible whether you want to use umbrelOS or a full node via Bitcoin Core.

Of course there are also cheaper solutions as @mocacinno already mentioned. That's up to each individual, but the NUCs have proven themselves time and again to be the most powerful Mini-PCs over the years.
It's a shame that the production of new devices is now stopped.

You could always go for a refurbished mini pc... Amazon sells them pretty cheap, and usually with a 1 year warrantee... For example:
https://www.amazon.com/HP-EliteDesk-Quad-Core-Professional-Bit-Multi-Language-English/dp/B08KSGKHVS/ref=sr_1_2?c=ts&keywords=Mini%2BComputers&qid=1699531680&refinements=p_n_condition-type%3A16907720011&s=pc&sr=1-2&ts_id=13896591011&th=1

This one costs about double of an rPi, but it has an i5, 16G DDR4 ram... You'll need one with a bigger disk tough, but i've seen them being sold for about the same price in the past. I'm not affiliated with amazon, nor with the seller of this device... Always use your due diligence and only buy from sellers with a good trust rating that offer some form of reasonable guarantee.

If you don't mind spending in the ~$250 range, you could even go for a new one like this: https://www.amazon.com/KAMRUI-Desktop-Computers-Computer-Dual-Band/dp/B0CF21D846/ref=sr_1_3?crid=39L6B2YW22OEE&keywords=mini%2Bpc%2B1%2BTb&qid=1699531997&sprefix=mini%2Bpc%2B1%2Btb%2Caps%2C148&sr=8-3&th=1

1Tb Nvme ssd disk, 16Gb ram, a mobile cpu (which isn't all that great, but it should be sufficient)...

I realize the price difference between one of these mini pc's and an rpi is steep, but you do get more bang for your buck...

Hi everyone,

It's been several months since I started digging into the technical aspect of Bitcoin and finally, I decided to run a node myself.

And I heard this thing that Raspi isn't a sustainable option for the Bitcoin core node. And here's what he said.

Start9 no longer recommends the use of PI for Bitcoin. Even the 8 GB is beginning to have trouble with IBD due to the increase in the blockchain size when ordinals. Matt Hill addresses that here “The Raspberry Pi, even the 8GB, is rapidly becoming obsolete. The UTXO set has grown tremendously over the last year and is now around 8GB in size. The Pi has very slow disk speeds over USB, which causes disk cache to build up. Once the cache nears 8GB, all operations will be sent to disk and become extremely slow. This is made worse if you are trying to run other services as well. We no longer recommend the Pi for Bitcoin under any configuration”

I was actually looking into getting a Raspi on either StartOS or Umbrel OS to enhance my self-sovereign computing journey with many apps on top of it. Should I refrain from getting one? What are some best "starter packs" out there for node nubies?