HA Hardware Requirements CPU vs RAM

Hardware
1

Hello fellow HA users,

I’m quite new to the home automation and HA scene and currently trying things out with my old RPi 3b+. Since this is my testing device, I want to buy a proper and future-proof device to start fully.
I’m not planning to do really CPU intensive things like camera stuff, so I probably won’t need a x86 device. My research has brought me to three devices: Odroid N2+ 4gb, Odroid M1 8gb or Khadas VIM3 Pro. The N2+ and VIM3 should be kind of similar in their performance, except the VIM offers an m.2 slot for a SSD, therefore I prefer the VIM over the N2+. What I like about the M1, is the available RAM, which has led me to a general question about Home Assistant. Is it preferable to go for a better CPU or more RAM, for a smooth experience. I know that it really depends on the use case, so I’ll be automating mostly lights and sensors for now. The future probably contains more devices and sensors, but I’m not planning anything with cameras. I want to use addons like NodeRED, AppDaemon and/or PyScipt.

I know that the VIM3 and M1 are not officially supported yet, but I saw dev builds for them. Also, I prefer having an m.2 slot over connecting an SSD over USB.

Thanks in advance!

2

So… there’s no simple answer here, but …

If you want to install many add-ons then RAM matters, but 4 GB is likely to be quite enough for what you list.

Once you’ve got enough RAM then it’s the CPU that matters for a smooth experience (and even if you don’t have enough RAM).

I’d suggest that you get the fastest CPU in your budget, as long as it has at least 4 GB of RAM.

3

Thank you.

As far as I can see, I can go for the devices listed, as they are supported or about to be supported. According to your suggestion that would make the VIM3 the best option for me. To stay in the HA OS compatible zone (which I’d like, because I’m new to it. Although I could probably manage a supervised install as well), I’d have to choose on of these devices or a x86 device, which will probably bump the cost by quite a bit and is probably not necessary for me (again, for now).

What kind of addons/use-cases would require a lot of RAM? ESPHome is likely to be used as well, I have a few of them laying around.

4

I have one concern about the VIM3 which is the available bandwidth at the m.2 slot. The M1 has PCIe 3 x2 whereas the VIM3 has a single PCIe 2 lane. Could that be a bottleneck?

5

well as long as your only installing bare install of home assistant with few addons like z2m and mosquitto, you should be fine with 1gb ram. But once you run something else, you will need to double or triple that capacity, specially with ESPHome (the one you install for addons, the integration is not) since the firmware compilation alone is very CPU and RAM intensive. If your using raspberry pi 4, I actually recommend installing docker desktop for windows and install the container version of ESPHome instead and build your esphome stuff in there and add it later to homeassistant after finish building it.