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I regret building this $3000 Pi AI cluster

(www.jeffgeerling.com)
468 points speckx | 3 comments | 19 Sep 25 14:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.633s | 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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rogerrogerr ◴[19 Sep 25 15:42 UTC] No.45302886[source]▶
100W over a month (rule of thumb 730 hours) is 73kWh. Which is $7.30 at my $0.10/kWh rate, or less than $25 at (what Google told me is) Cali’s average $0.30/kWh.
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mercutio2 ◴[19 Sep 25 15:58 UTC] No.45303134[source]▶
Your googling gave results that were likely accurate for California 4-5 years ago. My average cost per kWh is about 60 cents.

Rates have gone up enormously because the cost of wildfires is falling on ratepayers, not the utility owners.

Regulated monopolies are pretty great, aren’t they? Heads I win, tales you lose.

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1. cogman10 ◴[19 Sep 25 16:12 UTC] No.45303324[source]▶
Depends entirely on the utilities board doing the regulation.

That said, I'm of the opinion that power/water/internet should all be state/county/city ran. I don't want my utilities companies to have profit motives.

My water company just got bought up by a huge water company conglomerate and, you guessed it, immediate rate increases.

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2. SoftTalker ◴[19 Sep 25 16:25 UTC] No.45303486[source]▶
Most utilities, even if ostensibly privately-owned, are profit-limited and rates must be approved by a regulatory board. Some are organized as non-profits (rural water and electric co-ops, etc.) This is in exchange for the local monopoly.

If your local regulators approved the merger and higher rates, your complaint is with them as much as the utility company.

Not saying that some regulators are not basically rubber stamps or even corrupt.

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3. cogman10 ◴[19 Sep 25 16:46 UTC] No.45303739[source]▶
I agree. The issue really is that they are 3 layers removed from where I can make a change. They are all appointed and not elected which means I (and my neighbors) don't have any recourse beyond the general election. IIRC, they are appointed by the governor which makes it even harder to fix (might be the county commissioner, not 100% on how they got their position, just know it was an appointment).

I did (as did others), in fact, write in comments and complaints about the rate increases and buyout. That went unheard.