Is Raspberry Pi 5, Intel N100 and Intel Core 3 similar CPU power?

[Wilson__]

For setting up a Linux file server with CLI command line interface, without desktop GUI and no need for GPU video performance.

Is Raspberry Pi 5, Intel N100 and Intel Core 3 has roughtly similar CPU speed in area of general data processing and disk IO.   

Is Intel core 5 about four time faster than core 3?  Yes, there are many members in core 3 or 5.  I refer to those that is mainstream and medium price

Disk will be NVMe, mainstream PCIe generation 4 and 4 lanes. Samsung 990 PRO or similar.  These are at fair cost and widely available (a bit over 100 USD for 1 TB).

There is no computational intensive looping like ray tracing nor game-image generation.

[Someone]

Is Intel core 5 about four time faster than core 3?

No

Yes, there are many members in core 3 or 5.  I refer to those that is mainstream and medium price

Nonspecific question gets non specific answer.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/what-is-difference-between-i3-i5-i7/msg4210300/#msg4210300

[tunk]

You may also want to consider power consumption.

[John B]

RPi will require some additional cost and creativity in mounting an nvme drive, which will also run in gen 2 mode by default, can run at gen 3 but that will depend on the quality and signal integrity of the flat flex cable and nvme mounting board.

Sounds like you should stick to an x86 option in this case.

[brucehoult]

Is Raspberry Pi 5, Intel N100 and Intel Core 3 has roughtly similar CPU speed in area of general data processing and disk IO.   

Intel Processor N100 and Core i3-N300 are roughly similar as they have exactly the same microarchitecture, with the i3 simply having 8 cores instead of 4 cores, and a slightly higher clock speed. Both are roughly comparable to Skylake, but using less energy.

The Arm A76 is the Raspberry Pi 5 offers far less performance than any of the above, perhaps comparable to something around Intel Nehalem µarch Core i5. (The Core i3 name was first used with the Sandy Bridge µarch)

[Wilson__]

Sounds like you should stick to an x86 option in this case.

Yes, I have done that.  It gives me 40 hardware IO pins.

PC platform, most with PCIe gen 3 or 4, 4 lanes, is faster, easier and cheaper for just linux server.

[Wilson__]

You may also want to consider power consumption.

Yes, I look closely on TDP values and the 'issue chip' list that tend to go with higher TDP

[brucehoult]

You may also want to consider power consumption.

Yes, I look closely on TDP values and the 'issue chip' list that tend to go with higher TDP

For a typical domestic fileserver, idle power is far more important than TDP.

[Wilson__]

For a typical domestic fileserver, idle power is far more important than TDP.

Wonder if/to what extend Linux server OS will put CPU in lower power mode at light loading?

[Wilson__]

I plan to get ASUS Mini ATX motherboard.  How about the motherboard chip set? 

ASUS H610M MATX MB is the lower end, with 6xx chip set.   
Seem next higher (is middle of road) is 7xx chip set. 
Top is 8xx

DIY seller points to below two CPU for non gaming.  seem i5 is safe and more than enough for linux server.

May be a big fin heat sink.  my last original intel fan spring become loosen after time and overheat.  replaced with a no brand big heatsink and ok

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236788/intel-core-i5-processor-14400-20m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz/specifications.html


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236774/intel-core-i3-processor-14100-12m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz/specifications.html

[brucehoult]

Disk will be NVMe, mainstream PCIe generation 4 and 4 lanes. Samsung 990 PRO or similar.  These are at fair cost and widely available (a bit over 100 USD for 1 TB).

You haven't said what kind of network this will be serving over.  That's pretty important.

If you only have gigE or anything up to Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) then you don't need anything like Pi 5 or x86 performance for file sharing.

A Pi 3 level board can easily saturate gigE -- providing only that it actually has a gigE network interface, and an NVMe (in your case -- spinning rust would be fine too)
interface.

That doesn't apply to an actual Pi 3 or as far as I know its main Arm competitors, but lots of cheap RISC-V boards have not only gigE but two of them, and very often an M.2 2280 NVMe slot too, capable of near 400 MB/s (which is far faster than the 125 MB/s or so a gigE can do).

And they typically use around 3 W at idle. And cost less than the N100 or i3.




That's BPI-F3, but a VisionFive 2 should do the same.

Or Milk-V Jupiter if you want Mini-ITX.  Geerling has test results for that one: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/47

And VisionFive 2: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/10

Pi 5 for comparison: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21

They'll all do this job. The Pi 5 has the more powerful CPU, but only has one gigE, has slowish WIFI (Geerling got ~200 Mbps, vs 300+ Mbps on the Jupiter), and needs an additional M.2 HAT to take the NVMe drive.

If you have 2.5 Gbps ethernet then the Radxa X4 N100 will fill that up, but then it idles at 9W. It also has much higher NVMe speeds .. over 1500 MB/sec -- but kind of irrelevant if you're poking it down the network at only 300 M/s (2.4 Gbps). https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/48

[fchk]

I plan to get ASUS Mini ATX motherboard.  How about the motherboard chip set? 

Ok, consumer shit.

My suggestions:
1. Do you plan bare Linux/Samba or something more advanced like OMV or even TrueNAS (which is an excellent solution!) Then you should go for the project websites for hardware suggestions. TrueNAS for example has got relatively high RAM requirements for ZFS.
2. Use 2.5G Ethernet. Cards, systems and switches have become cheap enough for this to be a no-brainer.
3. Get a board that supports bifurcation. This means the 16 lanes of a slot can be divided into two 8 lane or 4 4 lane PCIe ports. This is very useful for M.2 NVMe cards. PCIe carrier boards using bifurcation are cheap (50€), carriers for 4 M.2 slots for standard x16 PCIe are much more expensive (200€) since they need a PCIe bridge chip.
4. If your system is tucked away in the basement you will want to have remote manangement capabilities like IPMI. Only real server gear has this. It's really awesome - think of it as a kind of hardware vnc.

ok, you see, I'm a professional admin managing >>500TB at work.

[fchk]

I plan to get ASUS Mini ATX motherboard.

Suggestion: ASROCKRACK. This is specifically made for server use.
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C256D4I-2T#Specifications
Dual 10G Ethernet
8 SATA or two x4 PCIe on the Oculink connectors
Remote management hardware
Server chipset

[RoGeorge]

For a home use server I'll choose the i3.  Have had an i3 in a desktop once (later upgraded to i7 mostly because the need of running virtual machines).  The i3 worked surprisingly well, and at very low power, the fan was staying off most of the time.  I don't recall any problems with Linux switching the Intel power levels.

For a home use that is on 24/7, you may want to consider the cost of electricity, and the noise from the fans.  A dedicated rack server makes an unbearable noise, and it is way more power hungry than an i3.

RPi is not a good option, it has considerably lower performance in network, disk and memory bandwidth.  For a server, good data throughput is much more important than the CPU speed.  The CPU bottleneck usually happens later, under heavy load with many parallel requests (usually from a swarm of users), while the bandwidth data rates (between various internal parts of a PC) can be reached even with a single user.

So, unless you want to sacrifice performance for a lower power bill, I won't think of RPi as a long term server solution.  Though, if that is what you already have, a RPi can be a file server, as long as you are the only user and don't care much about high speed transfers.

Can't comment about N100, never used one.

[brucehoult]

RPi is not a good option, it has considerably lower performance in network, disk and memory bandwidth.  For a server, good data throughput is much more important than the CPU speed.  The CPU bottleneck usually happens later, under heavy load with many parallel requests (usually from a swarm of users), while the bandwidth data rates (between various internal parts of a PC) can be reached even with a single user.

Unless your network is 2.5G or 10G you're not sacrificing anything with an RPi 5 (or even the lower CPU performance RISC-V boards I mentioned). They will all saturate 1 gig ethernet or WIFI.

The difference between 3 W (typical Arm and RISC-V boards) and 9 W (N100) idle is around 50 kWh/year. No huge deal, but it's $10 - $20 in most places.

[EEVblog]

https://www.the-diy-life.com/raspberry-pi-5-vs-intel-n100-pc-which-is-right-for-you/

https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/04/29/raspberry-pi-5-intel-n100-mini-pc-comparison-features-benchmarks-price/

[pardo-bsso]

3. Get a board that supports bifurcation. This means the 16 lanes of a slot can be divided into two 8 lane or 4 4 lane PCIe ports. This is very useful for M.2 NVMe cards. PCIe carrier boards using bifurcation are cheap (50€), carriers for 4 M.2 slots for standard x16 PCIe are much more expensive (200€) since they need a PCIe bridge chip.

Do you have suggestions for an entry model (or ones that while deprecated might still be a good choice for an amateur setup)?

I'm trying to build something similar here in Argentina on a limited budget.

[Wilson__]

Any experience of ASUS product line CSM

Corporate Stable Model (CSM) program is designed to provide stable motherboards to any scale of businesses with up to 36-month supply, EOL notice & ECN control, and IT management software – ASUS Control Center Express.

https://www.asus.com/hk-en/motherboards-components/motherboards/csm/

[Wilson__]

Is LGA1700 CPU socket fair-price, mainstream for my said Linux server application?

May be intel-core-i5-14400 is faster than needed, to have feel-safe margin.  Although the I3-14100 may be enough.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236788/intel-core-i5-processor-14400-20m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz/specifications.html


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236774/intel-core-i3-processor-14100-12m-cache-up-to-4-70-ghz/specifications.html

[RoGeorge]

Any experience of ASUS product line CSM

Corporate Stable Model (CSM) program is designed to provide stable motherboards to any scale of businesses with up to 36-month supply, EOL notice & ECN control, and IT management software – ASUS Control Center Express.

https://www.asus.com/hk-en/motherboards-components/motherboards/csm/

That will make sense only if you have a whole floor of cubicles for 50-100 PC operators, and one IT guy to manage them all remotely in case one of the workstations has a problem.  For a single board at home it's worthless, and only comes with yet another possible security issue (in case some bad actor finds a vulnerability in the ASUS Control Center software).

The rest of the words is marketing bloatware, it doesn't mean that is "more stable" than other boards.  If it were to be "more stable" you will see some numbers, by how much "more stable".  The rest of the "features" are not of much use, not even for a corporate user.  As for a single user and home use, it is absolutely useless if you get notified or not in advance for when they'll stop produce such boards, and so on.

In general, the solutions destined for office-like desktops are the worst in terms of speed and performance.  Casual office worker does spreadsheet work all day long, reading emails and text editing.  Heavy lifting is done by servers.  Such corporate/office workstations are made for low cost (because a corporation need to buy a hundred boards at once), they wouldn't be optimized for performance.

[fchk]

Is LGA1700 CPU socket fair-price, mainstream for my said Linux server application?

You start with the wrong things. CPU is not that important.

You want a server. Ok, get server hardware:
1. Suitable number and speed of network interfaces (2.5G, 10G)
2. Enough PCIe lanes for all devices. Especially consumer systems tend to have not enough of them.
3. RAM: Enough in case of capacity and bandwidth. Memory bandwidth is nowadays as important as raw computing power.
4. Storage.
5. Managebility.

For your needs 10 year old server equipment is better than a new reporposed gaming rig.

[SiliconWizard]

You may also want to consider power consumption.

Yes, I look closely on TDP values and the 'issue chip' list that tend to go with higher TDP

For a typical domestic fileserver, idle power is far more important than TDP.

That's for sure. And if it's only used locally, it will most likely spend most of its time doing absolutely nothing. I recommend choosing a motherboard that supports Wake-on-lan, and putting the server into standby when not in use. That's what I've been doing for years.

[brucehoult]

Is LGA1700 CPU socket fair-price, mainstream for my said Linux server application?

You start with the wrong things. CPU is not that important.

You want a server. Ok, get server hardware:
1. Suitable number and speed of network interfaces (2.5G, 10G)
2. Enough PCIe lanes for all devices. Especially consumer systems tend to have not enough of them.
3. RAM: Enough in case of capacity and bandwidth. Memory bandwidth is nowadays as important as raw computing power.
4. Storage.
5. Managebility.

For your needs 10 year old server equipment is better than a new reporposed gaming rig.

This is simply terrible advice for a home server, with probably 1 to 5 very much intermittent clients.

There is no reason to use hardware that is any "better" than the clients, and if it is only doing file serving then probably considerably cheaper is fine as the main thing driving clients is GUI, web browsing, video decoding none of which are relevant to a file server.

Absent a specific demonstrated need, 2.5G and 10G are a waste of time and money and 1G will do the job absolutely fine. Even 200-300 Mbps WIFI is probably fast enough, and 100 Mbps ethernet might well be too, but it's pretty much gone from new equipment now and 1000 is cheap.

A 10 year old server is going to be large, heavy, noisy, and use several hundred dollars a year of electricity.

A gaming rig is equally unnecessary, and the OPs original thoughts of a Pi5 or N100 are far more appropriate, overkill even with a 1 Gbps network.

[tszaboo]

A PI5 is so expensive that you can buy a second hand office PC and run it for years to break even with electricity. Because it's the Pi, a SSD hat, a housing, a power supply, heatsink, an SSD, and you are suddenly at 200 EUR.

[John B]

Sounds like you should stick to an x86 option in this case.

Yes, I have done that.  It gives me 40 hardware IO pins.

PC platform, most with PCIe gen 3 or 4, 4 lanes, is faster, easier and cheaper for just linux server.

Which board are you using / looking at? Generally if you need GPIO pins for serial, i2c, spi, interrupts etc, I would recommend RPi as the GPIO libraries are well supported and maintained in multiple programming languages.

But in your case it just sounds like you need a PC with the usual inbuilt capabilities like USB, ethernet etc. Just low power consumption.