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Raspberry Pi: Before you buy

2022-08-20

While it could be easy to buy a Raspberry Pi and run it. You should know some tips before buy anything.

Raspberry Pi as a server is very good. In my opinion, you should buy with it a good SD Card and an active cooling solution.

Storage

One of the key part of a Raspberry Pi

SD Cards

SD card are not equals ? Nope. If you don't have the right SD Card, use a Pi can be painful. With the Raspberry Pi software, I reviewed my old SD card. You can see after 3 runs that my SD card is failing at writing enough fast to be usable.

SD Card: Sandisk Ultra 64GB (branded for 1080p photo/video save)*

Raspberry Pi Diagnostics - version 0.10
Tue Aug 16 19:17:18 2022

Test : SD Card Speed Test
Run 1
prepare-file;0;0;12087;23
seq-write;0;0;11467;22
rand-4k-write;0;0;1745;436
rand-4k-read;5136;1284;0;0
Sequential write speed 11467 KB/sec (target 10000) - PASS
Random write speed 436 IOPS (target 500) - FAIL
Random read speed 1284 IOPS (target 1500) - FAIL
Run 2
prepare-file;0;0;12586;24
seq-write;0;0;8927;17
rand-4k-write;0;0;1726;431
rand-4k-read;5122;1280;0;0
Sequential write speed 8927 KB/sec (target 10000) - FAIL
Note that sequential write speed declines over time as a card is used - your card may require reformatting
Random write speed 431 IOPS (target 500) - FAIL
Random read speed 1280 IOPS (target 1500) - FAIL
Run 3
prepare-file;0;0;13843;27
seq-write;0;0;13747;26
rand-4k-write;0;0;1773;443
rand-4k-read;5118;1279;0;0
Sequential write speed 13747 KB/sec (target 10000) - PASS
Random write speed 443 IOPS (target 500) - FAIL
Random read speed 1279 IOPS (target 1500) - FAIL
Test FAIL

Then, I bought a more recent SD Card and all tests passed instantly.

SD Card: Sandisk Extreme 32GB (branded for 4k photo/video save)*

Raspberry Pi Diagnostics - version 0.10
Tue Aug 16 19:28:50 2022

Test : SD Card Speed Test
Run 1
prepare-file;0;0;36817;71
seq-write;0;0;36167;70
rand-4k-write;0;0;5227;1306
rand-4k-read;10729;2682;0;0
Sequential write speed 36167 KB/sec (target 10000) - PASS
Random write speed 1306 IOPS (target 500) - PASS
Random read speed 268And2 IOPS (target 1500) - PASS
Test PASS

USB Stick

Finally I would try to boot on a Kingston DataTraveler 64GB but I can't get it working. The Pi booted but it was terribly slow.

After 20 minutes of booting, it is stuck during OS initialization.

USB to SATA

Missing a free SSD SATA, not tested.

Cooling Solution

The Raspberry Pi 4 can be very hot sometimes. I can only advise you to buy an "ICE Tower Raspberry Pi 4 CPU Cooler". You will never need to buy anything else or maybe a GPIO controlled fan. This active cooler make your Pi running in a range of 36°C to ~56°C during heavy load. You can use it as a passive cooler if your Raspberry Pi is a small server.

I also tested the "Geekworm Heavy-duty Aluminum Passive Cooling Metal Case", a passive cooler which was fine but I wasn't comfortable with heavy load tasks when I was not at home.

This is why I bought the ICE Tower with a GPIO controlled fan. 80% of the time the fan is not active and I don't have a permanent noise in my room. During heavy loads, the fan become active automatically with one of my program.

pifanctl

SD Card Flashing

Use "Raspberry Pi Imager"
Go to the cog icon
Change your default user name (default: pi)

Update EEPROM

After the first boot of your hardware

# update os
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
# ensure you have rpi-eeprom installed
sudo apt install rpi-eeprom
# Automatically install bootloader and USB (VLI) EEPROM updates && Use the default bootloader config (not needed on every installation)
sudo rpi-eeprom-update -da

Tags: linux raspberry pi storage cooling tips

Last-Updated: 2022-09-17