This was posted 1 year 2 months 9 days ago, and might be an out-dated deal.

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Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 1GB $58 + Delivery @ Core Electronics

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We've been waiting years for more stock of the most affordable Model B board, the 1GB variant.

It has not only landed, but we've also discounted the price.

Various delivery options (check our website for delivery costs to your location). Free pickup for locals in Newcastle (order must be placed online).

The Raspberry Pi 4 is a leap forward for single-board computing. While the Raspberry Pi 4 is still a fantastic educational tool and maker hardware, it's now a proper PC replacement for many home uses, school projects, and commercial products.

We have a wide range of guides for Raspberry Pi, along with a step-by-step workshop. These guides are made for makers, by makers, and we're here if you need help.

Key features:

  • 1.5GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 CPU
  • VideoCore VI graphics
  • Hardware 4kp@60Hz HEVC decoding
  • True Gigabit Ethernet
  • 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz IEEE 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 5.0, BLE
  • 2 × USB 3.0 and 2 × USB 2.0 ports
  • 2 × Micro-HDMI ports (1 × 4kp@60Hz or 2 × 4kp@30Hz)
  • USB-C for input power, supporting 5.1V 3A operation
  • 3 LPDDR4 RAM options available: 1GB (this listing), 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB
  • Supports the SDXC standard, allowing you to use microSD cards up to 2TB (we recommend 32GB for Raspbian OS)

We also have enough Raspberry Pi Zero W available to purchase them simultaneously as another board variant. Yeee!

And because there is always some curiosity about what you can use these for, here are some project ideas for Raspberry Pi boards. ChatGPT is just as helpful with building all of those types of projects as we are over on our Maker Forum :)

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closed Comments

  • +52

    At this point, by the time you add up everything, I would just buy a refrub SFF PC. Unless power usage is a big concern.

    • need thissss

    • +2

      So trueeee!!
      SFF prices are incredible bang for buck

    • +18

      Or form factor, or lack of fans, or don't need the processing power, or like practically anyone with an interest in tech you already have all the spare parts needed to get it working at zero additional cost.

      Written as someone who has 5 SBCs in active use, and 4 USFF PCs. They are not interchangeable devices.

      • +9

        Don't forget the onboard programmable IO as well. FAR simpler on a Pi than a SFF.

        For me its the size that is the biggest one. I run a bunch of them headless in very small spaces that a SFF or even USFF wouldn't have a chance in.

      • +1

        I literally built my server with parts lying about the shed.

        I was looking heavily into SBC for a front end Jellyfinn (and sports streaming device from "I can't believe it's not Kayo") but the price was just not there. I could get a SFF PC for $150, whereas people wanted $150 for a Pi 4, and then you have to get a case, PSU etc.

        I actually ended up using an old gaming laptop, throwing Debian on it and sending it. Power draw isn't a huge concern, as it is used for a few hours a week, if that.

        SBC's just make to economic sense anymore.

        • +1

          Wait, what is “I can’t believe it’s not Kayo”?

      • What are you doing with those 5 sbcs and 4 sffs in active use, it sounds very strange

        • +12

          Low power fileservers, DNS, 3D printer controllers, routers. PCs for kids. HTPC.

          Not strange to anyone with a vague interest in tech <shrugs>.

          • @rumblytangara: You use an sbc as a router? The file server and dns are two sbcs? Yes that is strange and expensive when all could be done on one pc.

            • +3

              @Budju: So, is there always exactly one way to design a network? Seems to be what you are saying. Do you have many years of experience with systems design, because the whole "run it in a single PC attitude" is typical of of inexperience and… lack of funds.

              Not sure why I'd want to keep a PC turned on 24x7, with associated problems of dust buildup from fans, noise or heat when there are much more elegant ways to passively avoid such problems.

              My routers are multi-port industrial PCs (which means USFF + passive cooling).

              • +2

                @rumblytangara: I guess I wanted to know what he was using 5 sbcs for because the comment was like 'yeah I'm a pro, take it from me'. If it's just an excessive waste of hardware getting five mini pcs to do the job of one nuc, then I'd say yeah not the best use.

                • +1

                  @Budju: SBC for anything low power 24/7 or built into machine control. No reason to have it sitting on a machine that needs fans and higher power draw- I don't like having to dust out machines or replace fans. I have an actual Intel NUC but because it runs a blower fan, it only acts as a desktop PC for a kid. Other usff PC with fans run similar purposes- short use desktops. My 24/7 stuff will run fanless.

                  And my initial comment about running lots of devices was mainly to point out that Mr Toads assertion that sff PCs are the be all and end all of home computing is very blinkered. Different use call for different hardware solutions.

        • +3

          I've got a bunch of RPIs used for things such as a 1541 disk drive emulator for a C64. RGB-Pi which allows you to play reto games via emulation on a CRT. A pistorm in my Amiga 500, which is a replacement CPU powered by an RPi. An MT-32Pi, which emulates a Roland MT-32 that I use on my MiSTerFPGA. So yeah, for me it's mostly tinkering with retro gaming gear. Strange? Yeah probably lol There are many uses for these small, low powered devices though.

      • +1

        HDMI CEC is big one for me.

        A USB to HDMI CEC adapter cost $80.

    • +11

      Yes, this is true, SFF beats Pis for most home server requirements.

      Other than around half the power consumption, the reason to buy a Pi is if you:
      a) want to interface to hardware via GPIO
      b) just deploy an image built for a Pi.

      • +6

        Yes the GPIO is a big reason for getting a Pi (as well as the power consumption and size). I use mine to run the watering system and you can wire the rain sensor to the pins to stop watering when it rains, and wire to solenoids to open and close the water flow to the sprinklers and misters. I just remote in to change watering settings.

        • Where do you buy those solenoid valves, rain sensors,…?
          Thanks

        • +1

          You could use a $8 esp32 for that.

          • @xmail: My partner is looking at a misting system any links on how to setup a esp32?

            • +1

              @B-Man02: Plenty of esp32 tutorials around. The Arduino is the most common, so the guides and tutorials for that will be fine. Otherwise just slap tasmota on a cheap esp32 dev board clone and call it a day.

          • @xmail: Discussion was SFF vs Pi and I had a Pi and a watering program so was an example of GPIO. Wonder if esp32 is easy to learn and program for compared to Pi? Interested now thanks.

            • +1

              @Impecunious: Haven't really tried programming a pi despite owning one, but I don't think it can get much easier than the esp32+arduino IDE. It's just a couple lines of code to read/write IO pins. If you install tasmota you don't even need to write any code for 90% of use cases which are basic switch+relay hooked up via matter to google home.

              • @xmail: Great, thanks I will look into them and Tasmota.

    • +2

      Or heat - gonna have a hot summer coming up, these with a cheap fan and heatsink will deal with that a lot better than an aged SFF.

      • -1

        My M720q doesn't seem aged, and cools well to me, but you do you.

        • +2

          It wasn’t personal advice, just general.

    • These should be $30 including shipping. Not worth $58 + delivery anymore.

      • +4

        R u ok

      • +2

        You mean, $35 USD ? :) thats pretty close to $58 Aud.

    • +1

      Even then, they idle at 10w (SFF PC's). Used to be after a Pi, but just use a SFF now. A lot more flexible, far more powerful and power consumption is what I'm after.

      • +4

        That's around $25 in power consumption right there for idle each year. For me the Pis win for that exact reason.

        • +1

          The Pi's don't have free electricity.

          The difference between them is around $10 per year in electricity, with our current electricity prices.

          • +1

            @NobalaKoba: My Pis run on about 2W on average (I have various versions still running). This particular one comes in at an above average 2.7W. That would be $7 to run for a year. $18 difference. Pays for itself in about 3 years.

            • +1

              @team teri: I guess it depends on where you live, electricity for me is 19.5 cents per kWh, so it's $3.42 per year vs $17 (or if the SFF is mostly idling and doing Pi level processing, $11.96 for 7w) so for my area, the running costs difference is about $8-$13.

    • get USFF, they are more power efficient, I am running couple of these.
      SFF for NAS - ~20W
      USFF for Pihole & Homeassistant on HyperV

  • +4

    What is the point of these things?

    • +9

      They deliver minimum viable processing power at low price, energy consumption and footprint.

      If you don't care about noise, energy or size then don't buy these, they are low powered and can't really be upgraded so they may not be fit for purpose or good value. Get a cheap small form factor PC instead

      If you do care about energy, silence, portability, small footprint, modularity, etc, they are a good option.

      I've got a couple scattered around the house doing things like ZigBee, mosquitto, home assistant, Kodi, fitted with screens to act as dashboards and smart clocks etc. These are all things I could do with small form factor PCs, but the space, noise and energy consumption would be deal breakers.

      • +2

        interesting. which screens are you using for these purposes?

        • You don’t need a screen. They’re regularly deployed as headless devices. You just SSH in.

          I have quite a few Pis controlling various bits of equipment (from cameras to sensors to telescopes), and don’t think I’ve ever attached a screen for anything but recovery after misconfiguration.

      • +1

        minimum viable processing power

        As someone still using a bunch of Pi1's with about 1/10th the processing power of the Pi4, lol.

        It all comes down to your use case.

        • +1

          yup. I still have 3 of the original Model B (not+) from 2012 in use: a vpn server, a mail server (albeit mostly inbound for my spam domain), and an aging Kodi build. Admittedly they don't get a ton of use any more, but when I do need them they are plenty fast enough for my purposes.

          • +2

            @MikeK: I had to retire a few of my very early (2011) Pi 1s due to them only having 256mb RAM, which was causing a lot of dramas, but the 512mb Pi 1s are still going strong!

    • +57

      Many developers buy them and think about all the amazing things they could do with such a piece of hardware.

      Then they sit in a cupboard on or a shelf.

      • +2

        I am one of those developer :D
        My gripe with the Pi is just while it can do many things pretty good, it's often not great, and there are better hardware that can do better job than the Pi.

      • Who are you to judge me?

      • I thought developers are the ones who try to run enterprise web servers on them ;)

      • I used it once, had hopes and dreams of inventing something and then it sits on my shelf.

    • Always on processing basically

    • +4

      Downloading, serving, and playing various Linux isos.

      Then there's about 3 people in the world that use them as a weather station or DNS / adblock server.

      • +6

        I'm one of the three! using a very old Pi (A model perhaps) as a house-wide ad blocker, works fantastically well -
        https://pi-hole.net

        • +7

          Also want to give a shout out to AdGuard Home, a better Pi Hole in my option: https://adguard.com/en/adguard-home/overview.html

          • @ldd-mn: What are the advantages, in your opinion?

            I'm running dual pi-hole, so could switch one over pretty easily, but figured I'd ask first. Does the GUI (assuming there is one) include a facility for timed blocklists?

            • +1

              @rumblytangara: Built in DoH support is the biggest one for me, it's also easier to update. There's also a section for easily blocking certain services/apps and the GUI just overall seems easier to navigate. Otherwise it does the same stuff as pihole I think. As for the last bit I'm not sure sorry.

              • @ldd-mn: Thanks. Looks like this can run directly on pfSense/OPNSense, which should mean that can scrap a couple extra boxes.

        • Same, got the very first Pi model A as a PiHole Server as well as a Wireguard VPN server so i can remote into the house when away. Amazingly stable. Just set and forget.

    • +4

      increase geek rep

      they were originally designed for students to learn electronics

      • Finally, someone gets it!

    • +1

      3D printing and home assistant being two common uses of these. Streaming server is possible (given that most of us only have gigabit ethernet).

      Generally, you need to be comfortable with linux to use it. If you have standard NBN 50, this could be handy to use to download files when people are sleeping (though the same could be achieve with some of the routers).

      • Where do you download the videos from?
        Thanks

        • +6

          I don't know the answer to that, but you know what I like to do?

          I like to USE the NET. I use it so much I sometimes feel like I should join the words together to save time.

          • +1

            @Jonzay: Thanks :)
            it has been almost 20 years since the last time I used emu-l

    • I had an old RPI3B+ as a permanent twitch/youtube stream hooked up to an old monitor. I tied up all the cables and hung it behind the monitor so it took up no space and controlled it with a wireless mouse+keyboard.

      It would play vids all day, and I say this in past tense because I think the load was too high and it burnt out within a year haha

    • +2

      I'm making a irrigation controller using Open Sprinkler. Connect the Pi to a relay control board which links to solenoids that turn water on and off. Open Sprinkler allows any kind of schedule but can also suspend watering if rain is forecast, allows control from anywhere. I could have done 80% of it with an Arduino but wanted the extra connectivity and control. No more hosing the veggies each day!

      • Opensprinkler are great. I've been running mine for a couple of years now without issues. Very solid and good price as well.

      • Hi AzzaClazza,
        You might be interested in this Raspberry Pico W project. Featured in Aug 2023 Silicon Chip magazine. Weather aware using internet.
        https://geoffg.net/retic.html

  • +1

    to be honest it's nice but like the comment above, you can get one of those tiny lenovo or dells for $50-70 and its ready to go.. i mean yeah 5W of power vs 40W.., but realistically it's peanuts in terms of power consumption

    • +9

      Quick ballpark with Googled energy figures puts that as an extra $110 a year for NSW for a 40W machine, so the lower power device pays for itself inside six months.

      I haven't verified it, but 40W for a SFF PC might be overstating things a bit though.

      • +6

        understand where you're coming from here but your calculations assume the SFF is going full pelt.

        Realistically its probably comparing say around 3-5W vs a more reasonable 10-15W assuming no spinning disks. If spinning disk then add another 5-6W

        Your point still stands, just that it's not as wide a difference as you purport it to be.

        Also worth mentioning the rate rather than the state, i assume you used around 30c/kWh

        • +7

          Yes, hence my last sentence. The 40W figure was what someone else was trying to make a point with. Power costs were pulled from some random site that I googled, for NSW.

          https://www.finder.com.au/average-cost-of-electricity

          It's just annoying that these Pi deal threads always pull in exactly the same arguments from people who seem to be unable to look beyond a very blinkered view of what others might use tech for.

          • +7

            @rumblytangara: Come on. If you aren’t using technology the exact same way I do, you must be doing it wrong ;-)

            FWIW, one of the biggest benefits for me is the easy deployability of Pi stuff.
            Sure, I “could” set up retroarch on my SFF pc, and I could set up an ad blocking DNS server, and I could add home automation.

            But burning an image to an SD card takes about 10mins instead of most of an afternoon, and the consistent hardware of a Pi makes it practical to keep a project image up to date.

            • +2

              @mskeggs: ever heard of a thing called docker?

              • @OMGJL: I use docker within the pi, save even more time. 😄

      • I doubt it's actually consuming 40W all the time tho. Surely that's the maximum?

    • supporting 5.1V 3A operation

      how is it 5W?

  • +1

    For somebody like me whose using these for Retropie/Batocera, is there any new systems or any must have games this will run over a Pi3B? My main interest is arcade games.

    • For arcade the Pi is just fine but I'm finding the SFFs these days handle the 32 bit onwards systems better. The scene is always on the move but if you do want to delve into PS3/XB360 emulation in the future I think the Pi is not the way to go. Look into the Pi Zero 2W which in a handled (gameboy like) form factor is pretty awesome for arcade games (Gpiplug case).
      Images for games are now available in 1TB SD card size too if going the Pi 4B route and smaller if going the Pi2ZW route.

      I have several Pis: 3B+, 4B, 400
      And a ton of PCs (laptops + desktops in the Core I7 3rd gen upto Ryzen 5000 G series).

      Use what you feel will be easy for you to set up and use. No point in them collecting dust.

      • I have mine setup mainly for an arcade machine experience (and some old school console games) so I have no desire to run anything past the PlayStation era on these. As you've mentioned, your better looking at PCs of wanting to run more modern systems/games. I like the ease of use of these and the premade images you can download. This is main reason I haven't invested in something beefier and faster to boot. Those 1TB+ images with thousands of games aren't for me and happy to just have a collection of small quality games that I'll play. I was hoping to run some of the more modern arcade fighting/3D games which the 3B struggles with.

        Cheers for the reply.

    • RGB-Pi OS4 requires RPi4. It requires a special cable and an RGB CRT screen as well though :)

    • +1

      Good comments here about emulating later stuff, but if you are focused on arcade stuff, probably look into the FPGA based emulation that precisely, absolutely millisecond perfect, emulates old systems.
      Google MISTER emulation for the most popular options. Once you have that as the engine, no future upgrade will improve it, so it becomes about controllers etc.

      • +1

        Intel is in the process of making a new FPGA that will bring the compute to the PS2/PS3 era levels of console gaming. Right now the current MiSTer is topping out at the newly released N64/PS1 core level of compute. I wouldn't go as far as saying no future upgrade needed ;) As for me I don't mind really, the current MiSTer is great as-is.

  • +3

    SFF PCs are definitely better for a average user (to browse, etc). but a Pi is going to be your first choice for hacking around with hardware and prototyping

  • -3

    Fun for tinkering with, wouldn't use it in a serious application unless a lot of thought has gone into it

    • +4

      They're pretty reliable, a lot of people use these as primary and redundancy pcs. Trivial example but my entire apartment is run off a 4gb model(overkill I know but all that was available at the time). It automates my aircon, lighting, entertainment, blinds etc. as well as pihole running in the background, I don't think it has ever crashed on me, whereas my r7 pc crashes a couple times a month lol.

      • Yeah that's what I mean, if you put thought into the design then they are good to go

  • id hope you plan to use it without a GUI, i have a few 2GB PI4s and that feels like the bare minimum

    • Real user doesn't need to use GUI :)

      • The determined Real Programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language.

  • I don’t know too many use cases that wouldn’t perhaps be better served by a zero/2 W where the memory isn’t a concern but it needs the bigger CPU

    • +2

      Ethernet does make it simpler to set up for reliability

    • +1

      I've found that once you get down to a Pi form factor, the differences in size between a Zero and a 4 just doesn't matter anymore for a random deployment. You're going to be taking up more space simply with the USB cabling.

      The one area I have encountered where a Zero form factor is better is if you've got to embed the board into the case of something else- e.g. a really small 3D printer.

  • +5

    Any chance of zero 2w soon?

    • +3

      They have stock here, intl shipping is 6gbp

      https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2

      • Nice, grabbed one, $39 AUD inc shipping. Not bad at all. Been looking for one for a while.

      • +1

        Grabbed one also. Thanks for that.

        • +1

          and now they're in stock at Core lol

      • Would this be any good running 1080p videos as a media server?

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