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Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

thesizzle.com.au

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Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#151

Post by LogicX »

mdip wrote: post #26
sams99 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a great call, an atom would struggle big time running plex, I have a Thinkcentre M92p which is tiny and silent, do wish it had a tiny bit more grunt but was pretty good value for $200.

Have you ever tried an Atom processor for running Plex? I've always been curious how it would perform. I had an older Atom device running Plex server for quite a while, but back then I almost never needed full transcoding for playback -- usually 'stream direct' which just shifts the MKV container to MP4 -- relatively easy work. And when I did have full transcode, it was either from h.264->h.264 with slightly differen…

Atom 230 in the article: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+230+%40+1... Scores a 308 on passmark. Plex recommends a score of 2000 per HD transcoded stream.

Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#152

Post by ansible »

rocky1138 wrote: post #45

Another option is just to use an old laptop. This is what I tend to do for media servers, TV computers, and the like. People give away or throw away perfectly usable machines all the time.

If you need more storage, many laptops can have the optical drive replaced with another hard drive.

http://www.frys.com/product/8845262

Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#154

Post by noja »

cosmeen wrote: post #112
throwanem wrote: post #3

A somewhat controversial claim, but only until you discover that it's the low-profile home server use case under discussion here. I'd go with a Qotom box for that, but something like this would be about as good and, at the cited prices, a fair bit cheaper - and wouldn't involve the same US Customs import encumbrance that I've found Qotom hardware to entail, besides. But I think it would depend on being able to find u…

There are also the Intel NUC's and the Gigabyte Brix. A video with some of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6O_j0-UZb4

Both of those are in another league pricewise.

Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#155

Post by INTPenis »

phaedrus441 wrote: post #5
throwanem wrote: post #3

A somewhat controversial claim, but only until you discover that it's the low-profile home server use case under discussion here. I'd go with a Qotom box for that, but something like this would be about as good and, at the cited prices, a fair bit cheaper - and wouldn't involve the same US Customs import encumbrance that I've found Qotom hardware to entail, besides. But I think it would depend on being able to find u…

This is the first I've heard of Qotom, can you elaborate?

Another option for industrial and fanless in europe is Logic Supply. I bought my "home server" from them. A very simple Xeon box with internal SSD that I use as hypervisor with a homemade iSCSI NAS for storage.

Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#156

Post by ansible »

wyager wrote: post #96
ac29 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using accelerated video decode? 1080P should be no problem for just about any Intel iGPU made in the last 5 years or so when using vaapi.

How do I check? I'm using stock ubuntu and VLC. Edit: looks like it's not. Maybe I'll try to fix it later, but probably not. That should really work out of the box. The hardware definitely supports it, per vainfo.

I've previously need to download the Intel drivers from their site to get the hardware decode working, but I don't know in your specific case.

Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#157

Post by juiced »

yeukhon wrote: post #136
floatboth wrote: post #134

After getting tired of RPis corrupting SD cards I just took my old Mac mini 2006, swapped the CPU for a Core 2 Duo (was Core Duo), flashed firmware from the 2007 model, installed an SSD (yea sure SATA 1 limits bandwidth but latency is sooo much better) and installed HardenedBSD. (For which I had to compile GRUB 2 for 32-bit EFI, because well the machine has a 32-bit EFI, and fuck no I'm not using CSM. GRUB 2 worked v…

RPi corrupting SD cards, how did you confirm it was RPi the one at fault?

I had a corrupted SD card after power outages or when I overclocked the Pi too much. After several times and re-images the damage was permanent and had to replace the SD-card.

Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#158

Post by teekert »

dotancohen wrote: post #143
Animats wrote: post #81

I use Asus 1001PX subnotebooks that way. They're available for about $40 on eBay. You get a keyboard, screen, WiFi, Ethernet, 250GB hard drive, and USB ports. Usually a power adapter, too. (Only use the real ASUS power adapters; the no-name 3rd party units overheat, don't provide enough power, or in at least one case, catch fire.) When I get one in, I put in the Xubuntu USB stick and run the memory diagnostic for an…

Where are the GPIO breakouts on the 1001PX?

This one I found using Google: [0], but there should be more out there.

[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanteckltd/rtkgpio-a-u...

Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#159

Post by regularfry »

yeukhon wrote: post #136
floatboth wrote: post #134

After getting tired of RPis corrupting SD cards I just took my old Mac mini 2006, swapped the CPU for a Core 2 Duo (was Core Duo), flashed firmware from the 2007 model, installed an SSD (yea sure SATA 1 limits bandwidth but latency is sooo much better) and installed HardenedBSD. (For which I had to compile GRUB 2 for 32-bit EFI, because well the machine has a 32-bit EFI, and fuck no I'm not using CSM. GRUB 2 worked v…

RPi corrupting SD cards, how did you confirm it was RPi the one at fault?

It was a common fault at one point. Don't know if it's fixed or not.

Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

#160

Post by eriknstr »

sirius87 wrote: post #149
eriknstr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've configured it to boot off of the Hard Drive. You don't even need an SD card in it to boot. Woah, that's awesome! I had no idea the pi 3 could do that. I have a Raspberry Pi 2 B and a 3 B at home. I host my website using the 2 B with cloudflare in front of it [1], as well as use it as a login server, but every couple of months the SD card gets corrupted. The last time that happened was a couple of weeks ago and…

> every couple of months the SD card gets corrupted. You may want to check your power supply before switching to USB storage. In my case, the corrupt SD card turned out to be an issue with the power adapter I bought for the raspi Model 3B. Switching to a better 2A adapter fixed the issue.

I am powering the Raspberry Pi from the usb port of my router and would prefer not to have an additional power adapter. However the SD corruption issues also happened previously when I was using the Raspberry Pi for something else and was using a power adapter.

To be honest I think perhaps the SD card I am using is actually bad. I seem to recall that I lost some photos from the same SD card previously when I used it in a digital camera. So I could also try replacing the SD card if I haven't already but at that point I feel like a USB stick will be just as good anyway.

I intend to configure my Raspberry Pi to not write logs and such to persistent memory in order to reduce wear on the storage since such files are of no interest to me anyway, but haven't gotten around to do so yet. Still the files for my website will be on the USB stick though so therefore I wonder, will the read and write speed be ok even with USB? I think it probably will. Additionally I've been wishing to keep the website files themselves in memory as well (but to write to disk when they are changed ofc) but haven't gotten around to that either.

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