When Did Raspberry Pi become the villain?

Summary

The video explores whether a cheap Intel mini PC provides better value than a Raspberry Pi for basic computing tasks. It compares price, performance, compatibility, and efficiency between a $130 mini PC and $100-150 for a Pi 5 setup. The Pi requires more DIY assembly but is more power efficient. The mini PC has slightly better performance but includes annoying bloatware. For light computing, the Pi is more cost-effective, but for full Windows or more performance, the mini PC works well. Neither is definitively better; both have tradeoffs depending on your needs.

Takeaways

• 😀 The Raspberry Pi requires more DIY effort to set up compared to the pre-built mini PC
• 👨‍💻 Performance-wise, the mini PC is faster but the Raspberry Pi is more efficient
• 💰 The total cost comes out fairly close between a Raspberry Pi setup and the mini PC
• 🔌 The Raspberry Pi uses less idle and load power compared to the mini PC
• 🎥 The mini PC handles 4K YouTube playback better than the Raspberry Pi
• 🤔 Choosing the right accessories like HATs and cases for optimal compatibility adds complexity with the Raspberry Pi setup
• 💾 The mini PC comes with Windows 11 Pro preloaded while the Raspberry Pi runs Linux
• 📦 The mini PC package includes useful extras like a wall mount while the Raspberry Pi is barebones
• ⏱️ Setting up the operating system is quicker on the Raspberry Pi since there's no Windows bloatware to remove
• 😊 Both options have their unique strengths so the best one depends on your use case

Q & A

What are some of the key components needed to set up a Raspberry Pi 5 system?

The key components needed are: the Raspberry Pi 5 board itself, a microSD card or SSD for storage, a power supply, a case or enclosure, a heat sink or active cooling solution, and any necessary cables or adapters like micro HDMI to HDMI.

What are some of the benefits of the mini PC over the Raspberry Pi highlighted in the transcript?

The mini PC comes pre-assembled in a nice case with storage and Windows pre-installed. It also has better performance for tasks like 4K video playback, provides an HDMI cable in the box, and has a VESA mount option the Pi lacks.

What kind of performance numbers did the Raspberry Pi 5 and mini PC achieve in Geekbench?

The Raspberry Pi 5 scored 605 single-core and 1626 multi-core in Geekbench 5. The mini PC scored higher with 844 single-core and 2430 multi-core.

Which system was more power efficient according to the measurements taken?

The Raspberry Pi 5 was more power efficient, achieving 135 Geekbench scores per watt on the multi-core test compared to 93 scores per watt for the mini PC.

What case compatibility issues were encountered when assembling the Raspberry Pi system?

The GPU header on the HAT blocked the case fan, some cases don't work with certain HATs, and the official Raspberry Pi case required modifying the HAT mount points to fit properly.

What steps are involved in setting up the operating system on the Raspberry Pi?

You can directly boot Raspberry Pi OS from a microSD card. To boot from an SSD, you likely need to first boot from SD, modify OS settings to enable the HAT drive, then install the OS on the SSD before booting from it.

What bloatware applications were pre-installed on the mini PC out of the box?

Applications like Spotify, Microsoft Office apps, LinkedIn, and ClipChamp came pre-installed on the mini PC.

What methods does the presenter suggest to obtain a Raspberry Pi 5 without paying scalper prices?

He recommends using rpilocator.com to find Raspberry Pi 5 inventory at retail prices as production volume ramps up over the coming months.

What alternatives are suggested if the Raspberry Pi 5 doesn't meet someone's needs?

Options like the mini PC tested or building your own mini ITX system are presented as alternatives that offer better performance but at a higher price.

What is the presenter's final verdict on whether the mini PC is better than the Raspberry Pi 5?

He concludes that both systems have their relative strengths and weaknesses, so there is no definitive better option - it depends on someone's specific needs and use cases.

Outlines

00:00

😀 Setting up a Raspberry Pi is more DIY vs the pre-built mini PC

Paragraph 1 discusses the differences in setup between a Raspberry Pi 5 and accessories compared to an off-the-shelf mini PC. The Pi requires purchasing separate components like storage, case, power supply and assembling, while the mini PC comes pre-built and only needs a power supply. Initial cost of Pi can range from $100-150 depending on parts vs $130 for the mini PC.

05:03

🤔 Compatibility issues trying to assemble the Raspberry Pi 5

Paragraph 2 details the compatibility issues with assembling the Raspberry Pi 5 using the official case, third-party HAT and other accessories. Things don't quite line up and fit, requiring makeshift assembly, indicating more DIY effort needed for the Pi setup vs the mini PC.

10:06

👍 Booting up both systems for the first time

Paragraph 3 shows the process of booting up both the Raspberry Pi and the mini PC for the first time. The Pi boots directly into Linux desktop with no bloatware while the PC goes through Windows setup prompts before reaching desktop. Idle power usage is lower on Pi at 3-6W vs 10W for the PC.

15:07

📊 Benchmarking performance and power efficiency

Paragraph 4 benchmarks both systems using Geekbench to compare performance and power efficiency. The PC scores higher in raw performance but the Pi has better performance per watt. PC power draw reaches 30W under load vs about 12W for the Pi.

20:14

🤝 Each device has pros and cons

Paragraph 5 concludes that each device has strengths and weaknesses. The Pi offers more customization and efficiency while the PC provides higher performance and just works out of the box. Either can be a good option depending on needs.

Keywords

💡Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a series of small, inexpensive, single-board computers developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote teaching of basic computer science and STEM fields. In the video, the Raspberry Pi 5 model is compared to a low-cost x86 mini PC. The Pi requires more DIY assembly but is more power efficient, while the mini PC is ready to use out of the box but less efficient.

💡DIY

DIY stands for 'do-it-yourself'. The presenter emphasizes how the Raspberry Pi requires much more DIY effort to set up and assemble all the parts, like the case, storage, and cooling, compared to the pre-built mini PC. He runs into some compatibility issues getting the right case and cooling solution for the Pi and its accessories.

💡HAT

HAT stands for 'Hardware Attached on Top'. It refers to add-on boards and accessories that can expand the functionality of a Raspberry Pi by stacking on top of it. The presenter uses a HAT to add an M.2 SSD to his Pi build but runs into some fit and assembly challenges getting it to work with the case.

💡scalpers

Scalpers are people who buy up scarce high-demand products like the Pi 5 just to resell them at highly inflated prices. The presenter advises not buying from scalpers and instead waiting for supply to increase.

💡Geekbench

Geekbench is a cross-platform computer benchmarking tool that measures CPU performance. The presenter runs Geekbench tests on both the Raspberry Pi 5 and the mini PC to compare their performance on single-core and multi-core workloads.

💡power efficiency

Power efficiency refers to how much processing capability a computer can deliver per watt of power consumed. The presenter finds the Raspberry Pi is more power efficient than the mini PC based on Geekbench performance per watt.

💡4K video

4K resolution refers to displays or videos with approximately 4000 pixels horizontally. The presenter tries playing a 4K YouTube video on both devices, finding the Pi struggles while the mini PC handles it smoothly.

💡Windows

The mini PC comes with Windows 11 pre-installed, while the Raspberry Pi runs Raspberry Pi OS Linux by default. The presenter highlights how Windows has more overhead, bloatware, and prompts during setup.

💡desktop computer

Both devices can function as simple desktop computers for web browsing, document editing, media playback, etc. But the presenter points out that the mini PC provides a more full-featured Windows desktop experience out of the box compared to the Linux-based Pi.

💡ITX

ITX refers to a standardized form factor for small, compact PC motherboards and cases. The presenter mentions an alternative is buying an N100 mini ITX board to build a custom low-cost and compact PC, like Explaining Computers did.

Highlights

Raspberry Pi is more DIY, requiring assembly and troubleshooting.

The mini PC comes fully assembled and just works out of the box.

The Raspberry Pi doesn't include all accessories like storage, power supply, etc.

The mini PC includes everything needed in one package.

The Raspberry Pi has compatibility issues between hats, cases, and accessories.

The Raspberry Pi needs extra cooling modifications to work properly.

The mini PC has an HDMI cable, wall mount, and warranty card included.

The Raspberry Pi has no bloatware and boots right to the desktop.

The mini PC has preinstalled bloatware that slows initial boot.

The Raspberry Pi has worse 4K video playback performance than the mini PC.

The Raspberry Pi is more power efficient for light workloads than the mini PC.

The mini PC scores higher on computing benchmarks than the Raspberry Pi.

Scalping has driven up Raspberry Pi prices, but supply is increasing.

The Raspberry Pi and mini PC each have strengths and use cases.

The Raspberry Pi 4 remains an affordable option at $35.

Transcripts

When did Raspberry Pi become the villain?

Was it during the Pi shortage when Eben Upton, the CEO, said they would prioritize shipments

to businesses instead of hobbyists?

Was it when the price of used tiny PCs like this one became less than scalped Raspberry

Pis on eBay?

Or was it when people realized you could buy a brand new N100 mini PC running full Windows

with way more speed and expansion for only a little bit more money than a Raspberry Pi

5 with all the accessories you need to use it - a Pi, a power supply, active cooler,

and some storage?

But is Raspberry Pi really a villain in this story?

And is this thing actually better than a Pi?

And is it a good time to segue to a sponsor?

No, it's not.

Nobody's sponsoring this video.

Everything you see here I bought, thanks to this channel's patrons, members, and sponsors.

So let's test whether this tiny N100 Intel PC is actually a better deal than a Raspberry

Pi 5.

And let's start by looking at the price of everything that you need to get.

On the PC side, it's pretty easy.

I bought this GMKtech mini PC from Amazon for $130 shipped.

It comes with a 256GB SSD, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 2.5Gbps Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and even

Windows 11 Pro.

The box includes the PC all built out in this nice case and a power adapter.

For the Pi, well, things are a little more complicated.

You can buy just the bare Raspberry Pi 5 for 60 bucks or 80 bucks for 8GB of RAM.

It doesn't come with any storage, so you can either buy like a tiny microSD card like this

one for about 15 bucks or an SSD like this one for about 20 bucks.

But if you want to use this SSD, you also need a HAT to plug it into, and that's going

to run you another 15 or 20 bucks.

Then you'll need to buy a power supply, and this one's about 12 bucks.

And for protection, the Pi case is about 10 bucks, or you could splurge for one like this

one that's about 20 bucks.

But there again, some cases are compatible with NVMe hats and some aren't.

So already you can see a major difference.

The Pi is purely DIY—some assembly required.

But adding all this up, let's say I just go with the official Pi case, power supply, and

a HAT and NVMe SSD.

For the Pi, that runs between 120 and 150 bucks.

The mini PC, in total, it was 130 bucks.

So already a win on the tiny PC side.

And if you don't want maximum performance, you can get the Pi under 100 bucks just by

sticking with a microSD card instead of the SSD.

And if you're like me and you run your Pis naked with just a heatsink, you can save a

few more bucks and skip the case.

But once we get everything, how's the experience setting this up the first time?

And first, since this is already all put together, I'll start with the Pi.

If you buy the actual Raspberry Pi case, it comes with this fan.

But if you start putting it together, you'll notice that with this HAT involved, you can't

put the fan on top.

So you have to figure out a different cooling solution.

So there again: a little bit of extra DIY.

I do need this active cooler, even if I use this official case.

So let's get this thing set up.

Get in there.

Ah, there's one.

And there's two.

And there's this little teeny tiny fan plug.

It's just like a regular PC fan plug, but super tiny.

And then I'm going to get this HAT set up.

Now there's actually about 10 or 12 different HATs available.

This is the Pineberry Pi HatDrive! M.2 HAT for Raspberry Pi 5.

But depending on which one you get, there might be different directions.

So ignore this if you have a different HAT for your Pi.

There are also ones that go underneath the Pi, but that is definitely not compatible

with this case, or this case, or most other Pi cases, unless it's made specifically for

that HAT.

So check the instructions with whoever you buy this thing from.

Now I have not actually used this HAT with the official Pi case, so part of this video

is seeing if that's even possible.

I'm not 100% sure... I think it's supposed to work.

One mission in life is to go through one of these projects without dropping a screw on

the ground and having a fish around for it for 10 minutes.

So far, I don't think that's ever happened to me that I have *not* dropped a screw.

A couple little flaws I see right out of the gate with this design for this HAT is it looks

like there's no pass-through if you do have a camera plugged into your Pi, which is something

you can do with a Raspberry Pi that you can't do on there [the little PC].

You can use webcams and things, but you can't use direct DSI/CSI displays and cameras.

If you do that, this HAT doesn't have a pass-through for that, so you'll have to kind of cram that

cable in in a funny way.

You know what?

If I do this, let's see if this fits.

I'll have to pull this fan out of here, because you can't use the case fan with a HAT like

this.

Let's see if this actually fits in here at all.

You know what?

With those screws, it does not fit into this case.

I don't know if you can see, but yeah.

So to get it to fit in this case, I think I'm going to have to screw through these holes

instead of like I just did it.

So let's try that.

Oh, the joys of working on Raspberry Pi projects.

I forgot to plug this in.

This is the PCI Express FFC connection.

So you can see this little connector here.

That little guy has to go into this little port, and that can be a little tricky sometimes.

Will these screws go through?

No.

They're not long enough, but if I had long enough screws, I could probably get them to

go in there.

What I'm going to do is just not screw it in for now, and hopefully that'll work.

We'll see if this case closes.

It's going to be close.

If I squeeze really tight, will it go?

No.

What's going on here?

I think it's...

[click] Oh, there we go.

All right.

As you can see, there's not a lot of clearance here.

I think if they do a second revision of this board, they should cut out some holes to get

a little more airflow, because right now there's airflow through the bottom of the case, but

the top is mostly blocked off.

We'll see if that affects things in performance later.

I also put this GPIO pass-through in here, and the problem with that is I don't know

if that's going to fit with this top.

That kind of just hits on there.

That's fine if you want to experiment like this and leave this off, but if you want to

put that on, you actually are going to have to take these off.

Well, I'm not going to do it, but if I just bent all these pins down or snipped them all,

it would probably fit within here.

Actually, no.

Even without that, this won't fit, because these little clips don't have anywhere to

go around the board.

This particular board and the official Pi case, I'd say no go.

It fits, but it's not a wonderful fit, but you could run it like this.

There's no reason why you can't.

I just realized to put this NVMe SSD in here, I need a standoff, because otherwise it just

kind of flops.

So, I'm going to need to take it back apart, put this back in, and like I said: some assembly

required.

Come on.

Push hard.

That's how you're supposed to do it.

Oh come on.

[click] There we go.

Yay!

We got it.

Raspberry Pi 5 ready for action.

And that's always good to have a few screws left over.

Right now, there's really no database of which HATs are compatible with which types of cases.

And a lot of times you're just going to have to 3D print a case, which– not everybody has

a 3D printer.

So yeah, I don't know how many times I'm going to say this, but the Raspberry Pi is a lot

more of a DIY thing.

You're going to learn a lot about small electronics when you buy one of these things.

Okay, so on the flip side, here is our GMKtech box.

And I pop it open.

We had, the PC was right here.

I pulled it out.

And what else is in here?

There's a, some sort of user manual.

I don't know.

Don't need that.

And then there's two more boxes.

What's in here?

Oh look at that.

It comes with an HDMI cable.

That's something else that if you have a Raspberry Pi 5, it has micro HDMI.

So if you don't already have a cable like that, then you're going to have to buy one.

This one actually comes with one, even though I'm pretty sure most of us probably have an

HDMI cable sitting around somewhere, but that's nice to include.

Oh, there's something else.

Look at that.

That looks like, it looks like a wall mount maybe.

You can mount this thing on a wall, I guess. [or VESA]

Something like that.

That's cool.

Pi doesn't include a wall mount, so...

Score one for this guy.

That's kind of cool.

And we have this strange looking advertisement for GMKtech.

Oh, it's a warranty card, it says.

That's it.

There's no assembly required.

That's, it's out of the box.

So if you're looking for a desktop computer and you don't want to spend all the time putting

one together, this is better.

That's not what everybody's looking for though.

But that's besides the point.

Let's see if I can get this thing open so we can see inside it a little bit.

Yeah, look at that.

So that's it.

There's the guts.

Focus.

There we go.

It has 8 gigs of RAM.

Let's pop that out.

It's a little bit tight in there, but there's one RAM slot.

So you have 8 gigs of RAM included.

There's our NVMe SSD up at the top.

Underneath it looks like there's an A+E key slot for Wi-Fi.

And it looks like there's another M.2 slot.

So you could actually add another M.2 NVMe SSD like this one.

It looks like it's 2242 size.

Everything else is underneath the board.

So the processor on here and all that.

I'm not going to tear it down all the way because I haven't booted it yet.

I want to make sure that I'm booting it fresh and I don't accidentally damage something

when I'm unplugging.

But very, very nice build.

And I like the fact that you just literally pop the top and you're in.

Let's get that back on.

Let's get these things booted up.

First, I'll start with the Raspberry Pi.

An interesting thing is you can actually use a cheaper Raspberry Pi power adapter as long

as it provides at least 3A at 5V.

This one is a 27W adapter that provides 5A at 5V, which is kind of crazy.

It's allowed, but it's not a normal thing in spec for USB-C PD chargers.

So you can't just throw any charger at this Raspberry Pi and it'll work.

It has to be one that can supply enough power if you want to do things like overclock or

use SSDs.

But you might be able to get by with the older 3A power supply.

And I don't have... this is as far as my power adapter goes.

Let me get a different plug.

Okay.

I have a Kill-A-Watt here so we can see how much power these things are drawing.

Another fun thing about this is Raspberry Pis are designed for microSD cards, so this

actually has Raspberry Pi OS on it.

And if I insert it, it'll definitely boot off of it.

But I also flashed Raspberry Pi OS to this MakerDisk.

I don't know if that will work out of the box or not.

Some of these HATs it does.

If it's a newer HAT that follows the HAT+ standard, it should work like that.

But it might not.

And if it doesn't, then you do have to boot off a microSD card.

Then change some settings on the Raspberry Pi.

Then move your OS to this disk, and then you can boot off of it.

Some assembly required.

So plug in the Raspberry Pi.

And we have green lights.

That's a good thing.

No sparks.

It is good to not have sparks when you turn on a thing the first time.

I've got my keyboard.

And we'll get this monitor going.

For my recording setup, I'm going a little non-traditional so that you can see the screen

capture.

I have my little Ninja here.

And it actually has this adapter.

It's a micro HDMI to HDMI.

Otherwise you'll need a micro HDMI to HDMI adapter for your computer.

All right.

I'm going to turn on Mr. Pi.

Raspberry Pi desktop.

Will it boot?

It's working.

Okay.

Well, that's good.

And one really good thing about the Raspberry Pi, which boots into Linux as opposed to Windows

10, is it just boots up and you're here.

There's no bloatware.

None of that insanity.

You don't have to go through a setup wizard that wants you to sign your life away to Microsoft

or anything.

And let's pick a really good YouTube channel.

YouTube.com/c/JeffGeerling...

And we'll see if YouTube is working.

Where are the Raspberry Pi 5s?

Well, one of them is right here.

And there's an ad.

It's letting me do 4K now.

Let's see if Raspberry Pi 5 can do 4K.

Ooh, we're getting some dropped frames here.

It's playing.

And if I had a speaker plugged in or if this monitor had speakers, that would work.

But it's definitely not the smoothest experience ever.

The Pi 5 is actually pretty decent.

If I switch down to 1080p, it's probably going to be fine.

_A lot around the floor is AI and coprocessors and views and things._

_And I know the..._

So switch to 1080p and there you go.

Zero dropped frames.

So it is a lot better at 1080p than it is at 4K.

But generally speaking, the Pi 5 is a fairly usable desktop.

It's Linux.

So you're not going to have all the same stuff that you'd have in a modern Windows install.

And since it's not x86, there's a few more hoops you have to jump through, depending

on what types of games and things you want to play.

Again, depending on the HAT that you buy, depending on the storage you have, depending

on your case, all that stuff, some of it works together better, some of it works together

a little worse.

That's the tough thing about Pis.

It's kind of like building your own PC;

you can't just buy the parts and expect it all to go together.

The first time you do it, you're probably going to have the wrong RAM or you're going

to have a setting wrong on your motherboard or you're going to need to flash the BIOS—

and that's not easy to do.

But that's kind of how the Pi is too.

Except for it's small form factor.

This is like the pre-built PC.

It's all put together for you already and you don't have to do anything.

Just buy it, slap it down, and hopefully we turn it on and it just works.

We'll see.

I do really quick want to run Geekbench just to see how the performance compares with a

very generalized benchmark like this.

Geekbench is not the be-all and end-all just like Cinebench and any other kind of benchmark.

While Geekbench is running, I can check the power consumption.

So single core, this is kind of like average use cases.

The typical things you'd do with a Raspberry Pi 5.

It's 4 to 6 watts.

That's pretty average.

It idles down at around 3 watts.

But this is typical performance, like when you're web browsing or doing things like that.

Even if I'm running multi-core tests, it looks like between 9 to 12 watts, something like

that.

So that's when you're doing heavier processing.

If you're rendering a video or you're editing video or doing things that require multiple

cores, having a lot of browser tabs open will do that.

And I can hear inside of there the fan is kicking up every now and then, but it hasn't

throttled so that's a good thing.

Even with this thing covering the top of that case, the Raspberry Pi 5 has not throttled

yet, which I was worried about with that HAT being on top.

And here's the results.

Let's open that up.

And so we got 605 single core, 1626 multi-core.

That's a little lower than I see sometimes.

So I'm going to close this out, shut down the Pi, and let's try it on, let's try the

mini PC, see how that goes.

[Music]

I wasn't recording the sound for the past few minutes, but I plugged this in, I used

the cable it came with, and I immediately noticed one thing that's a bit different.

The idle power on this box seems to be...

We'll see once Windows boots up in just a moment.

Who knows if that'll be like 10 minutes or 30 minutes, I don't know.

I think they're trying to scan my body signs and take as much data away from me as possible

to sell to people.

It's using 8 to 12 watts while it's booting.

We'll see what it settles down to once it gets to idle though.

Initial setup process, the Pi is winning.

I booted it up, now if you have a different language or something, yes.

And I did not have to agree to any license agreement for the Pi, I do have to here.

This is...

I'm not going to read all this, but I guess I'll accept it.

I hope it doesn't say like it's going to take all my Raspberry Pis away.

[Saying no to privacy violations] No, no, no, no.

It'd be a lot easier if they would have set these to "no" to begin with.

I don't know why they tried doing it the other way.

That's just silly.

All I did was create an account.

I don't know what it's waiting for here.

I do hear the fan, it's not too loud actually.

It's probably...

It's a tiny bit quieter than the fan on the Pi.

The active cooler is actually a pretty decent fan in terms of noise–

Okay, we're definitely idle at this point, and it looks like it hovers around 10 watts

idle.

This is 2.5 gigs [Ethernet], I should be able to get that straight out of my switch, because it

is...

I think it's plugged into a port that will give me 2.5 or 10 gigs depending on the device.

Properties...

There it is, 2.5 gigabits.

Wow.

All I did was I opened up Edge, and no, I don't want any of this stuff.

I opened up Edge and the fan kicked on, so you know that Edge is a little bit heavyweight.

I'm gonna go dark.

And we'll go to YouTube.

Alrighty, it's a little bit smoother feeling.

Let's see if we can do 4K.

And we'll go full screen.

So yeah, definitely the media playback on here is a bit nicer.

There's one dropped frame instead of hundreds of dropped frames.

And of course if I drop this down to 1080p it's gonna be perfectly fine.

I wonder, like what is installed on here?

It has Spotify, I don't need that.

It has Office, I don't need Office, I don't need Outlook.

So yeah.. ClipChamp, I don't even know what that is, and I would rather not have it.

LinkedIn?

Why is LinkedIn... why is that on here?

That's a Windows thing.

But let me grab Geekbench and we'll get that running.

And I'm gonna grab Geekbench 5, because that's what I ran on the Pi.

These are the single core tests on here.

So we are doing single core, and if I look at the power consumption, so single core is

already up to 18, let's see, 15 to 18 watts.

So it is still, it's going through faster than the Pi does.

You do get some more performance.

And I hear that fan, the fan in here keeps ramping up and down, more so than the Pi.

Okay, now we're on to multi-core tests, and the fan in here is definitely getting a workout.

And during those tests, the power usage goes up to, looks like, almost 30 watts.

So 25, 26, yeah but it definitely chews through a bit more power.

We'll see how that power translates into performance once this test is completed.

844, which is a bit faster, and 2430, which is also a bit faster.

So just doing a little bit of quick math here, it looks like the Pi is getting 135 Geekbenches

per watt, at least multi-core, versus this little box is getting 93 Geekbenches per watt.

So on efficiency, the Pi actually is winning.

That is one case where if you want the most power efficiency, if you don't need all the

performance, if you're not watching 4K videos on your desktop, this isn't a bad option.

So efficiency, win Pi.

So it's not cut and dry.

Assuming you can buy a Pi 5 at retail, which is 60 bucks for a 4 gig model and 80 bucks

for 8 gigs, it's not a terrible deal.

And I wouldn't buy one from a scalper for any reason, unless you absolutely need a Pi

5 right now.

Otherwise just wait.

Raspberry Pi is making almost 100,000 of these a week right now.

They're currently at a production rate of about 70,000 units a week.

The goal is to get by the end of this month, to get to 90,000 units a week.

So that's basically 400,000 units a month.

Scalpers won't be able to keep up.

So if you need a Pi, just use rpilocator[.com].

And if you don't need a Pi, then yeah, something like this little PC is perfect, especially

if you just want a tiny desktop computer.

What's even better is you can find N100 mini ITX boards for just a little more, meaning

you could build a full custom PC just like Explaining Computers did a couple weeks ago.

Still not the same as a Raspberry Pi, but for many people, building their own system

is what got them into computing.

And that's awesome no matter what you buy.

I know that's how I started back when I built my first little 386 PC and ran DOS on it.

I hate to say it, but the answer to which one of these things is better, a Pi or a tiny

PC, it's "why not both?""

They each have their strengths.

And if you really want the cheapest option, the Pi 4 is still around and it's still only

$35.

So yeah... Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling.