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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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swiftcoder ◴[19 Sep 25 17:33 UTC] No.45304285[source]▶
Obviously the solution is to pickup another hobby, and enter the DIY solar game at the same time as your home lab obsession :D
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1. bokohut ◴[22 Sep 25 19:02 UTC] No.45337953[source]▶
Interestingly enough it is often times a foundational change in one's 'normal' that inspires something 'new'.

In this case that 'new' is energy efficient software down to the individual lines of code and what their energy cost is on certain hardware. Academics are publishing about it in niche corners of the web and some entrepreneurs are doing it but of course none of this is cool now so we remain a mockery for our objectives. In time this too will become a real thing as many now are just beginning to feel the ever rising costs of energy which is only just starting to increase from decisions made years ago. The worst is yet to come as seen and heard directly from every single expert that has testified in the last years before the Energy and Commerce committee however only the outside-the-boxers among us watch such educational content to better prepare for tomorrow.

Electricity powers our world and nearly all take it for granted, time too will change this thinking.

:D