mini-pc-vs-pi.md (1259B)
1 +++ 2 title = "Mini PC vs Raspberry Pi" 3 datePublished = 2026-06-17 4 +++ 5 6 For the last month I've been using a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ as my main computer. Overall I think it's gone quite well, for most things I do (i.e. anything done in a terminal), it works perfectly well. There have been some minor annoyances however, for example not being able to use a modern web browser. I'm in the process of replacing a lot of these tasks with terminal tools, but there are some things which do require the web (for example renewing GitHub keys, or commenting on GitHub issues in other people's repos). 7 8 Becuase of these issues I've decided to "upgrade" to a slightly more powerful setup. The Pi 3B+ will be used for my DIY cyberdeck project, so designing this setup wasn't a waste of time. 9 10 I originally considered buying a more powerful Raspberry Pi, but they are quite expensive for the specs you get. A Raspberry Pi 5 with 4GB RAM for example is £105.60 in the UK, not including power adapter, storage, case etc. For a full setup with an NVME drive, a good case etc it would likely be £150+. 11 12 My new plan is to buy a Mini PC, specifically an old office PC. I already have a PC like this buy it's just a standard "SFF" PC, so it's still quite big and quite power hungry.