Memory usage above 80%: time for a new Pi?

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Hi there!

I’ve be running HA on a Raspberry Pi 3 for around 4 years now. No problems so far. However, I added an USB Zigbee adapter and some new integrations.

Memory usage is now always above 80%. Let’s say it’s in between 80-90%. I notice some laggy automations now.

Reading this, I see this recomendation:

In general, we recommend using a board with at least 1 GB of memory and make sure to stay well below 80% memory utilization.

Time to get a Pi with 2 GB of RAM?

Thanks

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Definitely time to upgrade. I had a Pi3 and pretty quickly ran into that same limitation. Personally I think 4GB is the minimum if you’re upgrading anyway.

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In the short term why not increase the swap file size to give more memory.

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Thanks. Definitely, i’m going to upgrade. It’s been many years running HA on a Pi. It’s time to move to something with a little more power and stability (not depending on SD cards). I might go for an Intel NUC with 8 GM of RAM or similar.

I’m just reading and see what suits my needs :slight_smile:

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I’ll try that out while I search for the final solution! Thanks

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I went with an old laptop I had sitting on a shelf collecting dust. Honestly never even checked the specs, but night and day quicker than my Pi 3. Just tossing it out there as a cheap/free upgrade option. I even replaced the battery so I have a built-in UPS and upped the RAM to 8GB for a few bucks.

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RPI3 runs at about 5-6 W. Laptop will run a good bit higher I suspect closer to 20 W. If you want to extend the battery life limit the change and discharge levels to 20-80% capacity. My experience at work is UPS work well until you need them.

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In my case it runs just over 10W, a little more than a Pi but would still take a long time to offset the cost of buying something new. I’ll keep it until it dies or I have something else on-hand that’s better.

Agreed, although in my case I don’t really need it (none of my other network equipment has a UPS). The motherboard also appears to be managing the charge in an intelligent way, so I’m not worried. I honestly only bought it to cover the occasional power-flicker; the laptop doesn’t automatically turn back on when power is restored and it’s off.

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My laptops aren’t fit for much when I’ve finished with them after 6 years. I have salvaged a few 18650’s from them that I use in outdoor solar projects. Currently using a small CPU fan from a desktop I bought back in 2000 to cool my rpi4. The heat sink is on my RTL-SDR. Hate to throw any tech away. Desolder every capacitor I can find.

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Finally, I decided to go for a miniPC with a N100 processor, 16 GB RAM and 512 SSD NVMe (Beelink 12 Pro).

I will install HA over Proxmox. I like this setup because I’m also running a Audiobookshelf and Plex servers, which I can move to Proxmox on that machine :slight_smile:

Thanks for your help!

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Make it easy for yourself and follow this guide. Tteck’s scripts are a godsend!

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12

Looks awesome!! Thanks a million

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I finally moved my HA instance from the Pi 3 to a Beelink miniPC. Installed Proxmox, restored HA from a backup and… everything running way much faster! I should’ve done this before! Impressive performance now :smiley:

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welcome to proxmox :slight_smile:
you are not gonna go back lol
i also moved my routing capabilities to proxmox (a openwrt VM), a dedicated LXC for downloading (in a dmz), jellyfin, openmediavault and nextcloud
you’ll see how fast you are going to consume 16Gb of ram :slight_smile:

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