Second-hand thin client PCs are an unsexy and readily available Raspberry Pi alternative

Enlarge / This 2019 ThinkCentre M90n-1 Nano, passively cooled with a large heatsink, was $145 when the author last looked on eBay. It's not a Raspberry Pi, and it looks like Batman's receiver system, but it can get the job done. Andrew Cunningham

"Raspberry Pi boards are hard to get, probably also next year," says Andreas Spiess, single board enthusiast and YouTuber, with his distinctive Swiss accent. He's not wrong. Spiess says he and his fellow Pi enthusiasts need a "strategy to survive" without new boards, so he suggests looking into one of the least exciting and overlooked areas of computing: thin client PCs. opportunity for business.

[embedded content] Andreas Spiess' suggestion for "surviving" the Raspberry Pi shortage: cheap thin clients.

Spiess' Pi replacements, suggested and refined by many of its YouTube commentators and Patreon subscribers, are Fujitsu Futros, Lenovo ThinkCentres, and other small systems (some or all of which might semantically be considered " heavy clients" or simply "mini PC", according to your tastes and retro-group sensitivities). These are the kinds of systems you can easily find used on eBay, refurbished on Amazon Renewed, or through other IT and enterprise asset disposal sources. They are generally in good condition, considering their use and environment. And compared to enthusiast single board systems, many more are made and replaced every year.

They've always been there, of course, but it makes more sense to look at them again now. "Back to the future," as Spiess puts it (in an analogy we're not quite sure works).

Spiess's journey to makeshift Pi servers allows it to quickly overtake modern NUCs, as they are too expensive and overpowered for Home Assistant, PiHole, or even a multi-container system. It examines two types of working thin clients. For a single-use Pi replacement, almost any Intel or AMD processor will work, and you'll need 4GB of memory and 8GB of solid-state storage. To run multiple Pi-scale projects from a single box, Spiess suggests looking for a newer processor, 8GB of memory, and a 64GB or 128GB SSD (or separately upgrading one or the other if possible). For his single-use projects, he found a $34 ($35) Futro with an AMD GX-222GC SoC; for multiple containers, he got fourth-generation i5 and i7 ThinkCentres for 79 and 105 euros ($82 and $109 currently).

Then there is the software. Installing Home Assistant or similar Pi-focused images on the lower-powered client requires a USB to mSATA adapter or booting a Debian system from an active USB drive, then flashing the internal SSD with the 'image. For a multi-VM or multi-container machine, Spiess uses Proxmox. It installs Home Assistant on one virtual machine, then IoT Stack on an AMD-64 version of Debian on another.

It's no revelation that a more powerful computer can duplicate the work of a less powerful computer, but the delta in power consumption and processing might surprise some. Compared to a Raspberry Pi, Spiess' c...