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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
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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.

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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.
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Almondsetat ◴[19 Sep 25 15:06 UTC] No.45302469[source]▶
I can get a Xeon E5-2690V4 with 28 threads and 64GB of RAM for about $150. If you need cores and memory to make a lot of VMs you can do it extremely cheaply
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nine_k ◴[19 Sep 25 15:09 UTC] No.45302491[source]▶
It will probably consume $150 worth of electricity in less than a month, even sitting idle :-\
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blobbers ◴[19 Sep 25 15:15 UTC] No.45302573[source]▶
The internet says 100W idle, so maybe more like $40-50 electricity, depending on where you live could be cheaper could be more expensive.

Makes me wonder if I should unplug more stuff when on vacation.

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titanomachy ◴[19 Sep 25 15:44 UTC] No.45302909[source]▶
100W continuous at 12¢/kWh (US average) is only ~$9 / month. Is your electricity 5x more expensive than the US average?
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1. RussianCow ◴[19 Sep 25 15:57 UTC] No.45303121{3}[source]▶
The US average hasn't been that low in a few years; according to [0] it's 17.47¢/kWh, and significantly higher in some parts of the country (40+ in Hawaii). And the US has low energy costs relative to most of the rest of the world, so a 3-5x multiplier over that for other countries isn't unreasonable. Plus, energy prices are currently rising and will likely continue to do so over the next few years.

$50/month for 100W continuous usage isn't totally mad, and that could climb even higher over the rest of the decade.