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Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek, Joe has been writing about technology since starting his career in 2018 at KnowTechie. He’s covered everything from Apple to apps and crowdfunding and loves getting to the bottom of complicated topics. In that time, he’s also written for SlashGear and numerous corporate clients before finding his home at XDA in the spring of 2023.

He was the kid who took apart every toy to see how it worked, even if it didn’t exactly go back together afterward. That’s given him a solid background for explaining how complex systems work together, and he promises he’s gotten better at the putting things back together stage since then.

Single-board computers (SBCs), such as the Raspberry Pi, are great for home lab experimentation. Still, every time I’ve gotten something working on one, I realize it’s not quite as powerful or helpful as I thought it would be. I know, it’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. They’re not powerful computers, and trying to pretend otherwise is foolish.

I’ve used SBCs for DNS servers, adblocking, and as pocket routers, and they all work well as proof-of-concept devices, but that’s where they end for me. I quickly run into RAM restrictions or SD card issues, or get frustrated by the mini HDMI ports or the 1GbE networking, and I want to launch it across the room.

Plus, there’s no scalability. I could PXE-boot 10 Raspberry Pi’s to make a whole-house music system or as thin clients for workstation use, but they’re not powerful enough for long-term use. With how power-efficient modern mini PCs are, I don’t need to struggle — I can pick up a few matching thin clients and get on with my projects in peace.

I still like to tinker, but my computing needs are different

SBCs aren’t always the solution

I find my home lab is increasingly built on containers and VMs running on Proxmox, which is a problem for 99% of SBCs, as they’re Arm-based and there’s no Proxmox image for them. That alone would make x86-based thin clients my device of choice, but there are plenty of other reasons why they’re my go-to.

Even low-cost mini PCs now come with 2.5GbE networking, and the price isn’t much higher than a Raspberry Pi once you factor in a microSD card, a USB power source, an enclosure, a heatsink or fan for the CPU, and so on. There’s also a wider range of device styles, and I can get multiple LAN ports, or more USB, or more storage space by widening my search a little.

Plus, I don’t have to deal with microSD cards

The Raspberry Pi 4B is barely larger than a credit card.

Okay, this might be a pet peeve, but I think we can all agree that SD cards in any way, shape or form are not suitable for long-term computing use. Ever since smartphones added media card functionality and digital cameras decided SD cards were the main storage format, I’ve hated them.

I’ve lost photos, videos, full projects, and more because of SD cards breaking, and they wear out so quickly when in a SBC that’s writing logs, or updating blocklists, or anything really. And that’s if you get a good card in the first place, because the marketplace is full of fake units, even if you buy from big box stores. I’d much rather handle small M.2 SSDs, which last longer and aren’t much different in price.

Not every SBC has netboot functionality

Thin clients are designed for this

Most modern SBCs can use netboot, but then you’re still using an SBC with the limited processing power and I/O ports that entails. I’ve also found that their networking chips aren’t the best, sometimes dropping off the network or having weird issues. That’s not to say that thin clients or other mini PCs don’t suffer from similar faults, because they do, but often they’re built better, and you can find a network adapter that fits your needs, rather than having to make do.

Thin clients have better hardware

Maybe it’s not fair to compare a general-purpose maker board against a thin client in terms of power and performance, but if they’re being used for the same tasks, we need some comparisons. And even the cheapest mini PCs nowadays come with enough processing power, and they offer better upgrade options.

N100-based mini PCs are cheap and plentiful, and often come with internal PSUs so that I can plug more into the same power strip. They use M.2 SSDs instead of microSD cards (without needing an expensive HAT adapter), and often have more USB ports and better networking adapters.

SBCs have GPIO if you need it

One thing missing from thin clients is GPIO pins for connecting to breadboards for prototyping orfinished projects. But again, that’s for prototyping and development, and isn’t something that I often need in my bag of tech skills at home. Sometimes I like to start an SBC project for the pride that comes from figuring out the steps and tech behind it, but often I want a solid computing platform to work off, and all the project is software-based, and the additional pins don’t come in handy for my needs.

Not every project board is suitable for every project

When SBCs first came out, I was using them for everything. I mean, media servers, mini PCs, NAS, and any cool project I read about online. But that enthusiasm has waned over the years. While I appreciate they’re still a good tool for some needs, I find that most of my home lab is x86-based, and dealing with rebuilding OS or container images for Arm is a pain, when I can get better performance from a similarly priced thin client.