My Time with the Raspberry Pi 4 as a Desktop

RE: My Time with the Raspberry Pi 4 as a Desktop

quanticchaos — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 00:56:49 GMT

I'm using a celeron J4105 board (micro ITX board) that has a max consumption of 10W/h and much more processing power than the RPI (not to mention better graphics, better bus speed, better memory speed, etc etc). So, in terms of real performance those are not flattering results. Even worse, some high-end processors, like the Core i7-8565U, have a TDP or 25W. I Don't really understand the point of comparing a desktop computer with a RPI and it's absolutely illogical to say that the RPI is great cause it will "only" consume 35W/h peak while your desktop computer can consume up to 446W/h... Doing what? Can the RPI do the same as your Desktop? In that case you should buy some newer hardware cause my i7 8th gen + my Quadro 1000 + 2SSD and 32GB DDR4 RAM only consumes 100W MAX.

RE: My Time with the Raspberry Pi 4 as a Desktop

Former Member — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 22:36:31 GMT

Very enjoyable to read. Some suggestions for whatever they are worth .....

As a desktop, the first thing I upgraded for my 1GB-RAM RPi3 was disk boot & disk storage. I followed the Raspberry Pi Foundation suggested migration from MicroSD to USB disk:

Move file system to USB drive: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44177
Boot from USB drive: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md
Take out the MicroSD. Reboot and operate 100% from USB.

Besides avoiding the obvious drawbacks of a MicroSD, this migration breathed new life into my RPi3. Now, if I could only rein in Chrome and LibreOffice on their overuse of RAM! Maybe, this is less of an issue with 2GB or 4GB of DDR4.

I also set up a periodic backup procedure using the `grsync` utility (available through `apt`) to a 2nd USB disk which is normally powered off somewhere safe. After all, this is a desktop with documents and projects that need safe-keeping.

RE: My Time with the Raspberry Pi 4 as a Desktop

luigimorelli — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 09:58:40 GMT

Hi [mention:1579c9c12397462eb7227fc2e6e81a3e:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] you did it! We adopted a similar tactic for clusters of Odroids deriving power consumption, costs and processing speeds. Even when you do hard computing (like Number Theory calculations) like us, single board computers come on handy with their low profile costs and energy consumption!

Luigi

RE: My Time with the Raspberry Pi 4 as a Desktop

DAB — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 19:25:56 GMT

Good update.

Your results are about what I would expect given the huge differences involved.

Assuming you find equivalent software, you should be able to do most things on the RPi that you do with your desktop and yes, the power savings and initial cost differences are appealing.

DAB

RE: My Time with the Raspberry Pi 4 as a Desktop

three-phase — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 20:15:24 GMT

Lots of good detail in this for anyone, thinking of utilising a Pi in this manner. Thanks for posting.

Kind regards.