1) Yes you can force a RPi2 or 3 to run a node but it is going to be a slow miserable time and you will have lots of issues.
Since I am not good in hardware stuff and since I somewhat eyeing a configuration to move my bitcoin node away from my main computer... how bad is this CPU: Intel Pentium G4400T 2.90GHz?
Would I hate myself if I start using a mini PC with that CPU and 4GB RAM?
I wrote a bit about this subject
in here and
here as well.
The hardware is quite low-end stuff, which goes to show that
even a cheap node can run the 'full stack'
- Intel® Core™ i3-2328M -- 2 cores, 4 threads, 2.2GHz
- 8GB RAMI started with 4GB, the additional 4 sped up the IBD a ton
- 2x 500GB HDDsNow 1TB SSD with OS and software & blockchain still on 500GB HDD
- Regular broadband internet connection & LAN, nothing fancy
The CPU in my opinion will be easily powerful enough. Bottleneck are definitely RAM and SSD. You can get away with HDD if you
upgrade the RAM to 8GB (perfect amount for a Bitcoin node in my opinion), however old HDDs tend to die fairly soon. Sadly, an SSD upgrade isn't too cheap even with current bargain prices. You'll be looking at roughly $100 for a 1TB SSD.
IBD was going for around a week and still under 50%. Then I bought a second stick of 4GB RAM, look what happened.
For now, I would like to share my experience with a node that I've setup a few days ago. It is one of my nodes that needed a bit of maintenance; it was quite cluttered and had outdated software so I rebuilt it from scratch. I will also post a guide about it soon (OpenSUSE node walkthrough).
The hardware is a laptop motherboard with 4GB RAM and 2 500GB HDDs.
After it had taken almost a week to achieve ~40% sync, it was going super slow; around 1-2% a day, so I thought it may be a good idea to just plop in a second stick of RAM and see if it does anything. I kind of expected something to happen, but I was astonished at the speed it was going at afterwards! The HDD arm was moving much less now (audible difference); I suspect it was swapping a ton before, and the log was literally flying.
Here's a graph of some measurements I took; I let you guys guess at which point in time I upgraded the node from 4GB to 8GB
Thank you both for the input. My conclusion is that since there's no IBD to take care of, the setup is not that bad, although it could use some more RAM.
The only really worrying part may the consumption.
That's correct!
Don't worry about power; my chip has 35W TDP as well, but it never pulls that much.
Right now, with
Bitcoin Core, Core Lightning, Electrs and Ride The Lightning running, it pulls between 3 and 10-11 Watts peak. If we calculate an average of 5W, that's 44kWh a year, 10€ in expensive European (25ct/kWh) countries. Under 1€ a month. If you have cheap American (or other) electricity, it will be much lower.
sudo powerstat -R -c -z
[...]
Summary:
CPU: 4.62 Watts on average with standard deviation 2.62
[...]
The only really worrying part may the consumption.
Measure it
Here, prices easily go up to 50 cent (euro/dollar, it's the same nowadays) per kWh. That means 30W costs 11 euro/dollar per month. If not for the disk space requirements, a VPS could be cheaper (but also more risky for running a node).
Back to the 11 dollar per month: that's 400 dollar in 3 years, and could very well justify buying a much more energy efficient second hand laptop to use as a node.
[...]
I'm not sure that newer laptops really pull less power. For one, it's hard to get below 5W average package power, and of course in the last few years specifically, computer performance was generally increased by basically increasing power targets. If lowest possible power draw is such a requirement, ARM is the way to go. But ARM SBCs just have so little power. Keep in mind a Pi 4B draws 5-15W as well.
[Also, fyi: that SH system I consider buying, with that Intel G proc, 4GB RAM and 1TB HDD is just a tad over 100 EUR].
You can get a damaged laptop for $50 with maybe slower CPU and no drive. Then get a 4GB stick of RAM and an SSD and you'll have a great node in my opinion. Bonus if it has a (at least semi-)working battery: built-in UPS!
