In my googling, I ended up looking at a Pi5 vs Beelink S12 pro and the idle wattage difference is 2-3W vs 10W.
It is 4-5 times the consumption granted, but then equating that into $ works out to be $2-3 a year vs $12-13 a year.
I’m probably not going to cry about spending an extra dollar per month to keep HA running (I say that now…) if I’m planning on spending 100s on the devices to add to HA.
However I’m more interested in longevity and if a MiniPC is arguably the best option to upgrade and add other external attachments, then I’d just go with that. Especially if adding an SSD over microUSB is going to bring the cost of the Pi5 kit to over 200, it just feels smarter to get an Intel machine that can be flashed to run windows or Linux on it if I want to repurpose it later.
That being said, I haven’t bought anything yet but that’ll likely change tonight
@stevemann@NathanCu just wanted to tie a bow on this thread with the last update. I ended up going with a Beelink Mini S12 Pro (N100 Alder Lake) for the price point and because I read that the Alder Lake performed better overall than the Twin Lake version from Beelink.
Price point was good for me and it was new from Amazon so I got it the next day thanks to prime.
Went through getting Ubuntu and then HAOS on it earlier today and now the fun begins! Thanks for your advice and recommendations!
Now the fun begins.
First thing to do is make a full backup. Then restore it.
Personally, I have little confidence in the recently introduced cloud backup in Home Assistant. I use the Samba Backup add-on to an NAS on my network. (It doesn’t have to be fancy; it can be a Raspberry Pi2 with a USB SSD plugged in). Others use the Google Backup add-on. Anyway, do a full backup now then restore it to validate the integrity of your backup process. You can save this backup on a thumb drive as a “Factory reset” option.
Another add-on that I strongly recommend is Samba Share. This add-on shares your config, share, media and a few other folders on your Home Assistant server. You can then access them on your PC File Explorer. It will come in handy in the future.
Thanks for getting back to us. Sounds like a fun project!
I’d be very curious to see what kind of CPU utilization you get running HA.
I’m still on a RPi 3B+ and overdue for an upgrade. But HA sits at single-digit CPU utilization. It’s only memory which is getting tight and forcing me to look at upgrading.
I can’t help but wonder if an N100 would be massive over-kill for just running HAOS.
Much as I’d love a shiny new N100, I can’t help but think I’d be throwing money away.
For the record, mine is a “light” HA install. Very few add-ons, no streaming, no voice, etc.
How long in average do your clients wait to load your dashboard?
This was one of the main/biggest/usability improvements when I moved from a pi 3 to a (over 10 year old) Intel atom stick PC with the same (5V, 1.8A) PSU
I’ve seen other similar comments here about “snappy” page loading on newer hardware. Although I wouldn’t really say that the page is slow to load now, it is noticeable. That’s one of the things I’m looking forward to seeing when I upgrade.
