BarbecueCowboy

A refurbished tiny/mini/micro PC will use more power in terms of sheer numbers, but the cost is still so small on them that it’s really not worth considering for most.

Seconding the request to share your work.

That is an amazing idea you’ve come up with that I never considered, but now I need it.

I can back this up with experience.

I’m actively running two piholes for years now. About 2/3rds of my traffic does go to the primary and some seem to ‘lock on’ to using just one, but most devices will swap between the two at their leisure.

Right there with you on the UI. This would overlap in functionality with a lot of other items in my network, but I’m trying to find a reason to use it just so I can play with the UI.

I think you may have responded to the wrong person.

The Lenovo tiny line isn’t related to Raspberry Pi/etc and I didn’t mention a Raspberry Pi. I have a server running on an M900 tiny with an i7-6700 in it and 32gb of RAM. That is the high spec config from Lenovo, but there are room for upgrades if you were willing to buy parts separately, however the value proposition starts to fall apart rapidly when buying non-standard parts and compatibility is kind of a coin flip. Even the lowest spec ones should almost always outpace a Pi though (usually by a healthy amount) while still being very small compared to a typical computer. Solid chance the tiny will also be cheaper than a Pi. Compared to laptops, they’ll usually also easily outpace those too in terms of performance in terms of money spent, but that’s obviously a lot more variable.

Very similar, but usually dramatically cheaper… Look into the Lenovo Tiny line of PCs, you can get a used model with a surprising amount of power for a lot less than you’d see in a comparable NUC and in my experience, they’re usually hardier machines.