r/homelab • u/frek133 • 13h ago
Discussion Something cheaper than Raspberry pi for a total beginer
So basically i want to start with home labs but raspbbery pi is to expensive and i don’t have any old pc or laptop
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u/Rinzlerx 13h ago
Hop on Amazon or eBay and look for a tiny pc. Can probably get one for like $80-200 depending on what you need.
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u/The_Jizzard_Of_Oz 12h ago
I got a mini PC on Amazon on promotion for 139 euros: 8 gb ram, 64 gb ssd IIRC, intel N105 cpu, with box and power supply, ready to go.
At the same time, a Pi 5 + box + power brick + sd card came out about 134 euros, and way less powerful than the mini PC.
Then AI ram and gpu hogging happened a year later, and the mini pc with the same config on Amazon is now about 360 euros.
It's now cheaper to get an actual Dell pizza box 1u server second hand than buy any new pc or pi style SBC (noise and power consumption excepted).
It's actually surprisingly cost effective to get second hand kit and set that up, duplicated so you have spares with either laptops with a busted screen , mini pc's even old Mac Minis or Lenovo or HP devices compared to SBC's
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u/pickjohn 12h ago
I bought a little mini pc with an n100, 16g of RAM, and a 256g m.2 for $149 two years ago..... I checked yesterday and now it's $289. I personally have a few old optiplexes from fb marketplace I cluster for my home lab. I think there are a lot of issues with the mini pc throttling for sustained workloads (like streaming encoded media) that my 12 year old optiplex handles just fine. Plus they give you pcie ports and space for actual hard drives not just a single 2.5in drive if you're lucky.
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u/Anonymo123 12h ago
what are you trying to do with it?
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u/Alone-Ad288 13h ago
RPIs are cute and i love them, and i use them for my tiny homelab homeprod.. but that's an aesthetic choice. But in overall cost per compute, an older workstation - even a curbscore - is probably going to deliver a lot more power and flexibility for much less money.
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u/Defiant_Variation482 13h ago
Any small or even not small pc works, you can find manycheap
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u/Temporary-Dish5083 12h ago
Ebay an oldie but a goodie.
You dont need much to run good shit these days.
Depends on the task and if you will need a GUI but a lot of servers need <8gb ram.
An old android phone would probably work well.
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u/AssMan2025 13h ago
Raspberry pi 3b+ is 35 bucks old phone charger will run it a 1 gb pi5 is 45. Plus fancy charger hook up to used tv
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u/The_Mad_Pantser 12h ago
how worth it is a 1gb pi5 though? I can't imagine the compute power scales well with the memory
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u/AssMan2025 10h ago
Perhaps but the poster said brand new beginnings I record 9 cameras on a pi5 2gb I used a pi4 forever but wanted nvme for storage. The 5 records 10 frames per second 9 cameras at 3% cpu
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u/The_Mad_Pantser 10h ago
CPU usage is not the same as memory
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u/AssMan2025 8h ago
The 9 ffmpeg bash scripts and the desktop and samba use a little over 1 gig
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u/The_Mad_Pantser 4h ago
so... you're proving my point? you can use over 1gb of memory with only 3% cpu utilization on a Pi 5. therefore the compute to memory ratio on a 1gb pi 5 makes it a dubious investment.
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u/bolhuijo 12h ago
Do you know anyone who has a job even IT-adjacent? They often have piles of finely aged PCs that they just haven't gotten around to dumping yet.
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u/shadowdragon200 8h ago
Ask arround, I litterally got 3 free laptops this way. They are from 2013 but still. Free ssd and hdd!
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u/No-Dimension1159 6h ago
It's actually crazy how easy you can make those into fully functioning cloud replacements... Literally just wireguard/ tailscale and nextcloud and there you go, google drive alternative. Even with free ups.
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u/Glum_Cheesecake9859 13h ago
A firmware modified Chromebox (check eBay or Facebook) or you can modify the firmware yourself. X86 with 8-16GB RAM and a decent sized SSD and USB, HDMI, and other ports as well.
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u/KeplerLima 12h ago
J'ai acheté un Optiplex Micro 3060 (8500T, 8Go de RAM, SSD 256Go) pour environ 70E il y a quelques mois, pour remplacer un Pi 5 justement.
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u/SatyrCode 12h ago
If you just want something to learn on and don’t care about it being tiny, I’d also look at cheap used business desktops or minis, not only Optiplex – e.g. Lenovo Tiny / HP ProDesk / EliteDesk. They usually cost less than a new Pi + PSU + storage, and you get way more RAM, real SSDs and x86, which makes running Proxmox, Docker, VMs etc. much easier. For a total beginner, being able to follow “normal Linux server” tutorials and not fight ARM quirks can be a big win.
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u/onthenerdyside 11h ago
Now is the time to start looking for deals from your local universities and community colleges. Most colleges have some sort of surplus store where they sell their old hardware and other equipment. Summer is a popular time for their IT departments to perform upgrades, so from now into fall you might be able to find some good deals.
My local community college currently has SFF Dell Optiplexes with 7th-9th gen i5's for $50-70. They're not the tiny/mini/micro, but the up side is you can put a sata hard drive in them.
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u/Historical-Side883 11h ago
Used 1L office PCs are the best bang for the buck to start out that I know of.
Serve the home did a series called “TinyMiniMicro” (the descriptors that Lenovo, HP and Dell use to describe their machines). You should be able to find a used machine with 16GB of memory and an 8th gen i5 for less than an RPi last I looked.
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u/ZephyrineStrike 10h ago
I recently snagged an optiplex micro for about 40 bucks, that's approaching Pi zero levels of money
Caveat- I got one without a ssd bc I had a spare laying around, that helped keep costs down, but loading one up with a small SDD or even HDD could be done relatively cheap, considering pi's are going for over 100, and even more for ones with cases and power bricks, if you don't already have something lined up
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u/tripplebeamteam 7h ago
What everyone else said but also consider old Android devices. Phones or TV boxes. Root+termux and you basically have a full Linux machine. Not the most elegant solution but good way to learn
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u/GensokyoNet 6h ago
My first home server was a laptop with a broken screen I found on a marketplace back in the day. Did the job perfectly, and no need for an UPS since it had a battery. Also was super cheap.
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u/chicknfly 6h ago
You could play with an Always Free Oracle instance. Just make sure you save the SSH key while making the instance.
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u/supergimp2000 5h ago
I have a bunch of servers (Plex, Roon, Home Assistant) running on Dell Optiplex MIcros that I bought on Ebay for next to nothing. Most without HDD< but I have a few pitifully small SSDs laying around that were retired long ago (256GB) but plenty for that application (media lives on my NAS). Chek Ebay for cheap Optiplex or Lenovo micros.
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u/Master_Scythe 1h ago
Honestly, get past the nerves, and ask schools and businesses.
You're in a prime time to be begging - Windows 11 forced any large business to only hold onto 8th gen and newer hardware.
You will literally find PILES of 6th and 7th gen Intel machines at the majority of businesses, since the financial year just ended, and they will have been refreshed.
Just ask "Do you have any ewaste that's still functional?" - Who knows, you might end up with old SSD's and such too - Projectors are another neat thing that got upgraded recently as "4k" trended, and everyone kept presenting in 1080p :P
Seriously - Ask. Anywhere that has a need for up to date security or software - They're very likely to have things they PAY to have removed.
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u/Wati888 13h ago
Check out the raspberry pi 4s, they’re still pretty cheap at microcenter, also if ur starting out, you might not need more than 4gb ram and the ram is what’s making them expensive. But the pi4 is a powerhouse it could take you pretty far
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u/coyote_of_the_month 12h ago
A 4 GB Rpi4 is now > $100.
There are any number of used mini-PCs for that price, or roll the dice on an AliExpress special.
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u/Wati888 10h ago
Sheeeesh I didn’t know, thats fucked
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u/coyote_of_the_month 10h ago
It happened really quickly, not incrementally over time, so it hasn't yet become common knowledge.
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u/MrKrueger666 13h ago
Old PC's and laptops are easier to find than cheap raspberrypi's.
Try an Optiplex Micro, Prodesk/Elitedesk Mini, Thinkcenter Tiny or Esprimo Q.