Raspberry Pi fans won’t like hearing this, but some of the coolest Pi projects run noticeably better on cheap mini PCs under $150—and once you see why, it’s hard to unsee. And this is the part most people miss: the problem isn’t that the Raspberry Pi is bad, it’s that certain use cases quietly outgrow what it was ever meant to handle.
Ayush Pande writes about PC hardware and gaming, and when he isn’t working on a new piece, he’s usually buried inside a PC case or experimenting with different server operating systems. He also loves sinking hours into long RPGs, yelling at friends in co‑op lobbies, and squeezing in guitar practice whenever possible.
After falling down the tinkering rabbit hole years ago with a Raspberry Pi Zero, he built dozens of little projects that actually turned out to be very useful. That journey only escalated when the Raspberry Pi 5 arrived a few years later. With its much better hardware compared to earlier boards (except for hardware transcoding, which is a whole separate can of worms), the RPi 5 felt like an open invitation to try all kinds of DIY experiments without constantly hitting performance bottlenecks.
But here’s where it gets controversial: as those experiments became more ambitious, it became obvious that the Raspberry Pi was starting to struggle. Yes, it could moonlight as a Kubernetes node, a FydeOS‑powered Chromebox, or a retro gaming station. Still, once those same ideas were tested on affordable x86 mini PCs, the Pi’s weaker compute power stood out so much that, for certain projects, a budget mini PC simply made more sense.
"General‑purpose" Windows 11 box
Using a Raspberry Pi 5 as a pseudo‑Windows 11 machine sounds clever on paper—but in practice, a cheap mini PC wipes the floor with it.
Even though the Raspberry Pi 5 works great with many mainstream Linux distributions, there are still some high‑profile operating systems it just can’t properly run—most notably, Windows 11. Despite regularly poking fun at Windows 11, there was still a strong temptation to see how usable it might be on the RPi 5, mainly because certain tools remain tied to Windows. Adobe’s creative apps, full‑fat PowerShell, and Visual Studio (not to be confused with VS Code) are heavily Windows‑centric, and the latter two are especially important for more serious scripting and development work.
Since there’s no official Windows 11 support for Raspberry Pi, the only way forward was through a series of hacks and workarounds. A bare‑metal install is technically possible but ends up being painfully unstable, riddled with bugs and compatibility glitches. Running Windows 11 in a container via Runtipi is an improvement, yet still falls short of being truly smooth and reliable. Botspot’s virtual machine solution is surprisingly fun and educational, but at the end of the day, it’s still “just” a VM, which makes it unsuitable for heavier scripting tasks or complex Windows‑native workflows.
Meanwhile, even ultra‑budget mini PCs are designed with Windows in mind and tend to run it with far fewer compromises. Something as modest as an Intel N100 box can handle most desktop applications, nested virtual machines, and WSL environments well enough for day‑to‑day use. That changes the equation completely: a Raspberry Pi remains an excellent entry point into Linux and was the starting point for many people’s distro‑hopping adventures. But if the goal is a compact machine for Adobe’s cloud apps, in‑depth PowerShell scripting, or .NET development, a mini PC quickly becomes the obvious choice.
Home Assistant hub
Here’s the tricky part: a Raspberry Pi can absolutely run Home Assistant—but once your smart home grows up, it starts to hit a wall.
To be fair, an 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 can work very well as a Home Assistant (HASS) hub, at least at the beginning. For several weeks, it handled a modest smart home setup just fine, managing devices and automations without any major complaints. Over time, however, as more smart gadgets were added and the number of automations increased, the system began to feel slower and less responsive.
Things became even more demanding when community blueprints, HACS integrations, and, most importantly, various add‑ons entered the picture. Swapping to an SSD did help: performance improved noticeably, and the system became less fragile in the face of constant logging. Still, there was a clear ceiling. Pushing beyond a certain number of automations and devices meant watching the Raspberry Pi gradually bog down under the load.
By contrast, a modest x86 mini PC that costs only a bit more than a high‑end Raspberry Pi 5 plus SSD bundle can breeze through typical Home Assistant workloads. On such a machine, it’s possible to run dozens of complex automations tying together many different smart home devices without the interface turning into a laggy mess. With self‑hosted add‑ons like ESPHome and Mosquitto Broker, a mini PC can act as the central brain for a large collection of IoT gadgets, while tools like Node‑RED can orchestrate sophisticated automation flows alongside entities pulled in through HACS, all while the Home Assistant UI stays fast and responsive.
Secondary Proxmox node
If you care about high availability in Proxmox, using a Raspberry Pi as a node sounds clever—but it’s mostly a dead end.
Among different server and virtualization platforms, Proxmox stands out as a favorite for many homelab enthusiasts. One of its biggest strengths is support for high‑availability (HA) clusters, which help keep critical services running even if a primary machine crashes or needs to be taken down for experiments. That way, a lab can stay online despite frequent tinkering on the main workstation.
The problem is that Proxmox’s usual containers and VM images are built for x86, which immediately clashes with the Raspberry Pi’s Arm architecture. On top of that, there’s no official Arm image of Proxmox VE for the Raspberry Pi, which means the board cannot be used as a straightforward, supported PVE node. Even attempts to run unofficial Arm builds of Proxmox hit a wall: a mix of compatibility issues and limited CPU performance makes the Pi an unreliable choice for realistic Proxmox workloads.
A low‑cost mini PC, on the other hand, can shine as a Proxmox node precisely because PVE’s base requirements aren’t very high. With even modest x86 hardware, it becomes feasible to host multiple LXC containers, lightweight virtual machines, and key infrastructure services. In one setup, the extra nodes in a high‑availability Proxmox cluster can be powered by devices like an N100 NAS‑style mini PC and an N150‑based x86 single‑board computer, both of which are capable of keeping an essential self‑hosted stack alive around the clock.
Self‑hosted router
Running your own router on a Raspberry Pi is an awesome learning project—but for serious routing, VPNs, and security, an x86 box with dual NICs changes everything.
Over time, it’s easy to end up hopping between different custom router operating systems, especially when you enjoy experimenting. A Raspberry Pi‑based OpenWRT firewall might be the very first homemade router setup many people try, and it works well as a playground for exploring networking concepts and basic cybersecurity. For that early learning stage, the Pi’s simplicity and low cost are huge advantages.
However, once requirements grow to include more advanced routing, heavy VPN encryption, demanding NAT handling, and similar network‑intensive tasks, the Raspberry Pi’s limitations start to show. Performance can struggle, and then there’s the hardware constraint: using an external USB‑to‑Ethernet adapter for the WAN interface. That arrangement works, but it’s not ideal in terms of reliability or throughput.
Switching to an x86‑based system for routing is a noticeable upgrade. It opens the door to more powerful firewall distributions like OPNsense, which can make full use of stronger CPUs and more memory. On the Raspberry Pi, OpenWRT is essentially the only realistic router OS option unless various complex workarounds are used—workarounds that often create more problems than they solve. Mini PCs also tend to handle extra services enabled on OPNsense better than Arm‑based boards do, whether that means running intrusion detection, DNS filtering, or other add‑ons. A nice bonus is that many mini PCs under $200 (and sometimes under $150) ship with two Ethernet ports, so dedicated WAN and LAN interfaces are ready to go without relying on external adapters.
Where the Raspberry Pi still shines
Here’s the twist that keeps this debate interesting: for some projects, a mini PC isn’t a replacement at all—the Raspberry Pi is still the better tool.
So far, the focus has been on scenarios where mini PCs clearly outperform the Raspberry Pi family, but Arm‑based boards still have their own sweet spots. Any project that needs access to GPIO pins is an immediate win for the Pi, because those pins are built in and extensively supported. That includes anything involving basic electronics, sensors, physical buttons, relays, IoT modules, and HATs designed to stack right onto the board.
Raspberry Pi boards also make a lot of sense for lightweight, always‑on services where power efficiency matters. A small monitoring stack, a handful of simple containers, or a low‑impact network service fits perfectly within what a Pi can do without generating much heat or consuming much electricity. For example, self‑hosting tools like Uptime Kuma on a Raspberry Pi is a great way to keep an eye on a home lab or set of services, while still benefiting from the board’s tiny footprint and low energy use.
So where does that leave things?
For some people, it might feel almost like heresy to say that a $120 mini PC is a better Home Assistant host or Proxmox node than a beloved Raspberry Pi. Others will argue that the Pi’s charm lies exactly in its constraints and the creativity they inspire. Should every demanding project be shifted to x86 mini PCs, or is there still value in squeezing every drop of performance out of a Raspberry Pi just for the challenge?
What do you think: is moving these projects from Raspberry Pi to mini PCs a smart, practical evolution—or does it undermine the original spirit of tinkering with low‑power boards? Do you agree, disagree, or have your own hybrid approach? Share your thoughts, hot takes, and counter‑arguments in the comments—especially if you think there’s a killer Raspberry Pi use case that cheap mini PCs still can’t touch.
