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Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi

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

#161

Post by sebthomas »

decryption wrote: post #121
mdip wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll back you up on that one, even though a few of my posts pointed out some things that I think you should have also considered in your analysis. The reality is that this little PC is a solid choice to consider for a low-end home server -- especially if you have a particular need/desire for x86[0]. They're different platforms that serve different purposes and a micro-desktop like this has a lot of good uses. I used…

Nothing with an Atom CPU will do H265 playback. It'll stream fine with Plex to a playback device that supports it, but I'm not sure what's out there that supports H265. Maybe some sort of Chinese Android TV box? Glad you enjoyed the post :)

Hey thanks for the tip. I've been thinking of setting up little media station thing...getting tired of using my mac keyboard as a remote..

I have a question.. for anybody, what is the difference between using a PC as media server as OP describes, or using a little Android box thing like the Mi, or something like Apple TV?

Basically I have a MBP, and I'll be getting a TV soon, and I want to be able to easily watch dls on the TV, using a remote. And I'd prefer not to have my laptop doing the grunt work.

Any opinions/explanations appreciated! ta

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

#162

Post by sp0ck »

Kali909 wrote: post #115
therealunreal wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems they're popular for routers running pfSense. Just make sure you get a CPU that supports AES-NI, because pfSense 2.5 requires it.

I didn't know it was mandatory, thought it was just practically necessary for VPN tunnels etc. http://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm I've recently bought one of these and it's been great so far. Though its a NanoBSD currently you can squeeze an SSD in there.

Twice the price of FX160 :) I have one FX160 for over a year with bunch of home software inside docker containers and works like a charm :)

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

#163

Post by flyinghamster »

eriknstr wrote: post #135
oblib wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I purchased one of these and installed CouchDB, Apache web server, and some webs I've made and it will serve those apps just fine to a small office full of desktops connected to a LAN. I've made web apps for managing Contacts, Quotes, Invoices, Expenses, Income Reports, ToDo, Chat, and others. I can back up all my data to a remote server (IBM Cloudant for example), and to another Pi in-house as well. And I've configu…

>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…

TIL there's even a PXE boot option on the Pi 3, and several other boot modes as well.

https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/tree/master/har...

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

#164

Post by scalaris373 »

1inuxoid wrote: post #141

For people interested in building a firewall or just boards with multiple GbE ports I can recommend a swiss company PC Engines https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm They make really nice x86 boards with AMD chips.

+1 for PC Engines. Their products are a bit expensive for the hobbyist, and generally use very outdated technology, but they are as reliable as they come. I've been using an Alix 6f2 with a Mini-PciE 3g modem on a remote location with years of uptime and no problems. Same can't be said of many newer, fancier boards!

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

#165

Post by eriknstr »

flyinghamster wrote: post #163
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…

TIL there's even a PXE boot option on the Pi 3, and several other boot modes as well. https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/tree/master/har...

Sweet! I've been wondering how much work PXE boot would be.

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

#166

Post by flyinghamster »

kogepathic wrote: post #105
elchief wrote: post #47

No thanks. I'll take new over used. Just just got a W zero for $24 CAD shipped (Vancouver)

> I'll take new over used. The irony is that most corporate class hardware will last until well beyond obsolescence before breaking. I've heard people say they don't want to buy a refurbished ThinkPad because they're worried about longevity. Those things will outlast any consumer grade laptop you buy today.

True indeed. I still have a T22 and a T30, mothballed. I'm not sure what I'd even use them for these days... and the batteries crapped out long ago.

My T42 is also still useful enough to continue using, though its battery also succumbed to "always plugged in" syndrome.

My current daily driver is an i7-equipped X201 Tablet. While I don't have much use for the pen-based tablet mode, it was still a very nice laptop for a very nice price.

The X201 came with a good enough battery that I decided to set a maximum charge of 80% to (hopefully) make it last a few more years.

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

#167

Post by frou_dh »

tjoff wrote: post #125
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.

I'd imagine it be prudent to remove the battery if that is the case (which you can't on many newish laptops). I know it's tempting to utilize that free UPS but I wouldn't trust a laptop battery that's pushed way passed the intended use.

Is "pushed" the right word? Rather it seems like the battery is not doing much apart from a little "ambient" discharge for which it occasionally gets automatically topped back up to 100%.

For the plugged-in laptops I use as servers, I have a repeating task in my todo system to unplug and drain them once every couple of months. The intention being to keep the thing's own idea of its calibration honest, in case it ever gets used like a normal laptop again.

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

#168

Post by yardie »

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…

If your pi is corrupting the flash drive it's because you don't have it configured for the storage system. You should really be using raspbian which is configured out the box to limit writes to the flash drive. A journaling FS will cook a flash drive in a few months,

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

#169

Post by geppetto »

I'm using a Cubieboard as a web server and I'm very happy. It's a 50$ Raspberry clone from 2013 with better specs (for the time). Consider that: - it runs mainline kernel and a regular debian distro - 5W max (but it's idle most of the time) - has good enough specs for a webserver (proper ethernet, 1GB ram, SATA support), works better than a cheap VPS

I run apache and some low-demanding webapps on it: - dokuwiki - miniflux (feed reader) - shaarli (bookmark manager) and it serves pages via my home DSL connection (with DDNS).

I did consider the alternatives - netbook/notebooks - but for my use case reliability, safety and power consumption would be much worse. These devboard is fanless and runs everything off an SD card. OK, SD cards are slow but on failure (never happened in three years!) I can just swap it with a (recent) cloned one with almost no downtime. I could use the faster onboard NAND but it did fail once on blackout and I went back to SD cards. I could even use a SATA HDD but I don't need that much storage.

So... it depends on your use case, I guess.

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

#170

Post by candiodari »

throwanem wrote: post #132
candiodari wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really ? Because this is trivial to make using a microcontroller. Or you can use any FT232 serial interface. I mean I'd think you'd prefer an arduino for this application over pretty much everything else since you can quickly upload small programs to the arduino that keep the "fast" logic on the arduino.

Arduinos cost more than a lot of Pis, though. And the network interface of a Pi enables some really interesting capabilities that don't exist, or are harder to obtain, with a device that doesn't have one.

4 dollars, including shipping. At this price, they're pretty much disposable. Pi's seem to have bad shipping costs, so they're 20$/piece for the cheapest:

https://www.banggood.com/ATmega328P-Nano-V3-Controller-Board...

14 GPIO (although with hacks you can do more), including 10 bit DACs on all of them, and 4 with hardware PWM. Most have alternate functions, like I2C, that can be used.

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