Any Experience with Using a Pi as a Desktop OS?

That looks nice, the thing about the SBCs is that now you start paying for how compact they are, so the price gap between these super cheap Atom boxes and the SBCs is very close. If it wasn’t for the ARM compatibility troubles and lack of guaranteed software support for your chosen board, then the performance would also be almost on par. Also don’t be worried about used hardware, take it from someone who is constantly swapping out parts and buying used. Just yesterday I installed a used 1080 Ti and removed my used (by 3 owners) 980 Ti and soon enough I’ll be selling that along with a used (by 2 owners) Vega 56 :stuck_out_tongue: Especially a lot of these old office boxes sold by surplus companies, most of the companies aren’t going to have a problem refunding/replacing if whatever you buy is DOA, since they probably got the hardware for pennies.

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Hehe fair enough :smiley: Yeah, one definitly pays for the compact setup but honestly a compact solution is also what would be preferred to a “tower” like solution.

Surprised to hear that much trouble about ARM given that my first Windows Tablet (3-4 years ago) was an Odys Winpad 10 with 1GB of RAM and Win 8 along with a way slower Intel ATOM Z3735F than the Beelink I linked above has. The tablet never got really slow and I could surf etc without much problems.

Interesting to hear that insight regarding used hardware. Maybe I’ll give it a try then. Just am especially hesitant as this is gonna be a birthday gift and if after a few weeks/months the old hw screws up would leave a bad taste sorta.Although there is more used and less used hw that is sold so maybe I’ll try to get one that is more new-ish. Although in 1 year obviously someone could have used it 24/7 while someone else only used it couple hours per year over 3 years time.

Yeah the biggest issue with arm is not the architecture itself but the fact that the SBCs integrate different pieces of hardware but then don’t implement them properly.

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The biggest issue is that ARM is not a single architecture.

Well that’s being super pedantic, and almost ignoring the literal meaning of the term. There is an over-arching (haha) architecture, there are variations as time goes on, but ultimately all ARM processors implement the ARM architecture.

Anyway, my original point being exactly that, due to the many variations, and then the companies licensing ARM and producing SoCs, and then the companies using those SoCs in their SBCs, you get a lot of parties biting off more than they can chew. In the case of Rock64, having literally one or two maintainers for their kernel, releasing a product that is 1-2 years away from actually supporting the hardware it ships with, and people associate these problems with ARM, that’s what I was referring to when I said “issue with arm”.

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+1 to @FHR’s recommendation. Those SFF off-lease business machines are awesome value. Can get them dirt cheap with an i3 or i5 and 8GB ram, toss in a cheap 250GB SSD for $30-40 and it’ll be 1000x than any Pi experience.

I’ve seen them for <$60 on craigslist for a 3rd or 4th gen i3/4-8GB/500GB HDD. Pricing depends entirely on the supply at the time, they get dumped in waves when some big company has warranties expire and do upgrades every 3-ish years. If you’ve got computer recyclers near you, you can get them even cheaper.

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