←back to thread

I regret building this $3000 Pi AI cluster

(www.jeffgeerling.com)
468 points speckx | 1 comments | 19 Sep 25 14:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
Aurornis ◴[19 Sep 25 14:52 UTC] No.45302320[source]▶
I thought the conclusion should have been obvious: A cluster of Raspberry Pi units is an expensive nerd indulgence for fun, not an actual pathway to high performance compute. I don’t know if anyone building a Pi cluster actually goes into it thinking it’s going to be a cost effective endeavor, do they? Maybe this is just YouTube-style headline writing spilling over to the blog for the clicks.

If your goal is to play with or learn on a cluster of Linux machines, the cost effective way to do it is to buy a desktop consumer CPU, install a hypervisor, and create a lot of VMs. It’s not as satisfying as plugging cables into different Raspberry Pi units and connecting them all together if that’s your thing, but once you’re in the terminal the desktop CPU, RAM, and flexibility of the system will be appreciated.

replies(11): >>45302356 #>>45302424 #>>45302433 #>>45302531 #>>45302676 #>>45302770 #>>45303057 #>>45303061 #>>45303424 #>>45304502 #>>45304568 #
bunderbunder ◴[19 Sep 25 14:55 UTC] No.45302356[source]▶
The cost effective way to do it is in the cloud. Because there's a very good chance you'll learn everything you intended to learn and then get bored with it long before your cloud compute bill reaches the price of a desktop with even fairly modest specs for this purpose.
replies(12): >>45302408 #>>45302469 #>>45302503 #>>45302550 #>>45302742 #>>45302824 #>>45303327 #>>45303352 #>>45304169 #>>45304176 #>>45304278 #>>45305010 #
montebicyclelo ◴[19 Sep 25 15:09 UTC] No.45302503[source]▶
Yeah... Looks like can get about $1/hr for 10 small VMs, ($0.10 per VM).

So for $3000, that's 3000 hours, or 125 days, (if just wastefully leave them on all the time, instead of turning them on when needed).

Say you wanted to play around for a couple of hours, that's like.. $3.

(That's assuming there's no bonus for joining / free tier, too.)

replies(3): >>45302520 #>>45303031 #>>45304301 #
1. wongarsu ◴[19 Sep 25 15:52 UTC] No.45303031[source]▶
The VMs quickly get expensive if you leave them running though.

The desktop equivalent of your 10 T3 Micro instances is about $600 if you buy new. For example a Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q Gen 2 Tiny 11JN009QGE has 8x3.2GHz processor with hyperthreading. That's 16 virtual cores compared to the 20 vcpus of the T3 instances, but with much faster cores. And 16GB RAM allows you to match the 1GB per instance.

If you don't have anything and feel generous throw in another $200 for a good monitor and keyboard plus mouse. But you can get a used crap monitor for $20. I'd give you one for free just to be rid of it.

That's a total of $800, or 33 days of forgetting to shut down the 10 VMs. Maybe half that if you buy used.

Granted not everyone has $800 or even $400 to drop on hobby projects, renting VMs often does make sense