ARM or x86 at home. The eternal question. Like choosing between systemd and init (I run Debian, so the answer is already decided for me in one domain). My home lab: three ARM boards (like this: two Raspberry Pi 4s, one Orange Pi 5) and one creaky x86 NUC from 2019. The ARM cluster sips power. The NUC guzzles electrons like I guzzle coffee on release day. Compatibility is the x86 win. I have make it work energy for ARM, but sometimes I just want to apt install without crossing my fingers.
My NUC is from 2018 and still draws 35W idle
Pro tip: Oracle Cloud free tier ARM instances changed my home setup entirely. I run 4x ARM Ampere A1 cores there, zero cost, and keep a local ARM box only for offline tasks.
Heads up: x86 still wins for:
1. Random Windows VM some client demands
2. Proprietary VPN clients
3. That one Docker image with no ARM build
My home hardware: 0 x86 boxes. Oracle handles the rare x86 need.
Verify your restores. I say this weekly. Had an ARM NAS; backup software was x86-only in the free tier. Thought my rsync was fine. It wasn't. Restore test failed 6 months in. Now I run x86 for backup target, ARM for services. Verify your restores. The earthquake won't ask what architecture your data prefers.
Member
Dadlime's power draw | grep ARM | awk '{print $3}' | sed 's/W//' | sort -n
2.1
2.1
3.4
X86 NUC | cat | grep idle | wc -l
12
My pipeline | arm for hosting | x86 for gaming | no middle ground | cat /dev/bias > /dev/null
