Raspberry pi 3B, pi 4 or NUC?

Hardware
1

Respect to all.

I am currently using the xiaomi and shelly app for their devices, but I would like to integrate everything into one.
at the moment everything is working phenomenally for me, for more than a year.
Reading the forums, I think the best HomeAssistant is for that.

I have a total of about 20 pieces of devices (shelly, xiaomi, aqara).

I found in my country these devices that suit me in terms of price, I would not like to go in a lot, because I am not a very demanding user of all this. And I would use it exclusively for HA.

I would like you to tell me what is best for me, and whether this will finish my job without any problems.

  1. NUC5CPYH with 4gb ram, 120gb ssd. (60 euros)

  2. Raspberry pi 3, model B, with 32GB sd card. (25 euros) - possibility to buy ssd (120gb, 20 euros)

  3. Raspberry pi 4, model B, 2GB, with 32gb sd card (60 euros)

2

seeing the price comparison I will definitelly go for the NUC.

All of them would do the job fine now.

But as you expand your system, The RPi 3 will be the first, who start to struggle, then the RPi 4 and last the NUC.

I will anyhow avoid to run HA from a SD card.

1 Like
3

Definitely the NUC, but even an i3 will do a fantastic job running Home Assistant.

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4

I initially tried home assistant on a Pi 3. It seemed fine at first, but once I had all my integrations setup and built some dashboards it felt like it was struggling a bit. Personally I would avoid the Pi 3.

I currently have it running on a Pi 4. It runs just fine. I have a lot more devices that you, have built some reasonably complex dashboards, and performance isn’t an issue. Mine is an 8GB Pi4, but I run lots of things on in in addition to home assistant and it is often has < 2GB of RAM in use. so I’d guess a 2GB Pi4 should be OK. I’d be inclined to get a 4GB model just to be safe but you probably don’t need it.

I haven’t tried it on a NUC. I would expect it to be better than the Pi 4 but can’t say for sure.

I’d look into power consumption too. The NUC might well consume a bit (lot?) more power that a Pi 4, and so might cost a non-trivial amount more to run over the long term.

Steve.

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5

An SD card is fine as long as it is a high endurance card. High endurance SDs will outlast many cheap SSDs. People get burned on SD cards because they try to use cheap throw-away SD cards that are designed for storing photos and videos on cameras and phones.

2 Likes
6

thank you all

here’s the thing, I pulled out the information
nuc i3 are over 100 euros, and some do not have wifi and bluetooth
do you think that for HA in this case nuc is stronger, faster and better than rpi 4?

here I have made combinations that suit me in terms of price, so help what is best

nuc5cpyh (60 euros)
Intel celeron N3050 1.6ghz dual core
4gb ddr3 ram (replace this with a total of 8GB, with a surcharge of 15 euros)
Ssd 120gb

Rpi 4 (60 euros)
Cortex A72 1.5Ghz quad core
2gb ddr4 ram
Sd card ( instead of sd card buy and put ssd 120gb, 2.5 inches, insert in 2.5 inch case, surcharge about 20 euros)

Rpi 3 model B (25 euros)
Cortex A53 1.2Ghz quad core
1Gb ddr2 ram
Sd card ( instead of sd card buy and put ssd 120gb, 2.5 inches, insert in 2.5 inch case, surcharge about 20 euros)

again I repeat, the device would be used exclusively for HA, with a detailed description from the first post

7

Can you answer for these combinations that I asked?

8

I still would go with the NUC :wink:

1 Like
9

so NUC will work faster and better than RPi 4.
although NUC is dual core :slight_smile:

10

arm gets little more score on quad core, intel little more on single core.

close fight :wink:

I just like the intel platform more, maybe because of the other components on such motherboard.

But that is personal.

1 Like
11

this model is currently on ads
nuc5i3ryk (95e)
I3 5010u
4gb ram + 1 free slot (max 16gb)
120gb ssd m.2

is this the best offer, without any additional investment?

will this model have problems with insertion and HA operation?

12

It will run smooth as butter :wink:

13

You don’t need more than Rpi3 if nothing fancy is required.
But you will see huge difference if for example need it to stream video ( Wyze docker in my case)