Home Assistant has genuinely transformed the smart homes of many of the XDA staff, whether we've got it installed on a NAS or other hardware. I started my journey with it installed on a Raspberry Pi, but I soon ran into issues as my unit had 4GB of RAM and I had too many add-ons running. And that's what led me to migrate my HAOS installation onto a substantially more capable mini PC, with over double the RAM, a faster processor, and plenty of USB ports for dongle use. Having gone that route, I wouldn't recommend anyone start with a Raspberry Pi; the trade-offs aren't worth it, and you could test Home Assistant as a virtual machine if you're not sure you'd use it long term.

A mini PC is a longer-term solution

Raspberry Pi devices are better for learning and short-term projects

I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here because I genuinely love the Raspberry Pi and what it's done for the maker community. I was an early backer of the first iteration during crowdfunding, and I've used several units since then for various projects and to test new services. But the one thing that I've learned in that time is that they are not suitable for long-term installation when you need something robust.

They're great for prototyping and running single services to ensure your code and configuration work. But for everything after that, I much prefer using a mini PC. They're designed for long-term use, with many of them replacing desktop towers in enterprise settings. They come with storage, memory, and adequate cooling, and a power supply. Often, you get a Windows 11 licence thrown in, which is a nice bonus, even if you won't use it once Home Assistant is installed.

Plus, the total cost is around the same

A refurbished mini PC with 250GB SSD and 8GB of RAM is around $130, and you can generally find similar specs on N100 or N150-based mini PCs for a similar price. At least, when pricing is more sane. But for that you get a complete package with power supply, enclosure, storage, and more USB ports than the Raspberry Pi.

And really, when you think about the 8GB Raspberry Pi 5, you need to add a USB-C power supply to the cost of the SBC, an enclosure to keep it safe from harm, a micro SD card for storage, and the active-cooling version of the heatsink to avoid throttling. That's another $40+ on top of the Raspberry Pi 5, bringing the total to almost as much as the mini PC.

Home Assistant benefits from the additional power

Or you can virtualize HAOS on a Proxmox host and get even more utility

While it's true that Home Assistant runs on a Raspberry Pi, once you start adding integrations, the SBC soon gets outmatched. Basic functionality is fine, but multiple cameras feeding into Frigate or other common use cases will strain the low-powered board.

But using a mini PC with a low-powered Intel CPU will handily handle those tasks, and you can add a media server, network services, other containers, and more to the device without worry. My N150-based mini PC runs Proxmox and then virtualized Home Assistant and several other services on top, and it barely makes the cooling fan run.

And even the slowest of SSDs will outperform the microSD cards used by the Raspberry Pi for storage, both in daily performance and longevity. I can count on one hand the number of SSDs that have failed on me over the years, whereas I've lost count of the number of SD cards that have stopped working.

Power consumption will be slightly higher

There's really no comparison between a low-power SBC like the Raspberry Pi 5 and a mini PC in terms of power consumption. The Arm-based Raspberry Pi will consume 12W at full speed, and sips around 3W when idle. That's not much at all, and the Intel Core i5-6500T in the ThinkCenter I found on Amazon has a 35W TDP. Not that it'd be running at full wack all the time for Home Assistant, and if you go the Proxmox route, you can set the CPU governor to powersave to gain a bit more efficiency.

If you find a good deal on an N100 or N150 mini PC, or already have one, it idles at around 10W and uses anywhere from 17W to 28W under load. Either way, the mini PC's power draw is only a few times that of the Raspberry Pi, and it can do so much more.

Mini PCs are the perfect home for Home Assistant

Whether you pick up a used mini PC with an older Intel CPU, or a relatively new N100 or N150-based device, these tiny boxes are capable of much more than you'd think at first glance. Home Assistant isn't the most resource-intensive OS, but once you start piling on add-ons and integrations, it can overwhelm the Raspberry Pi's limited memory. By installing it on a mini PC, you get more headroom for adding devices to your smart home controller, and you can add other features like Frigate that the SBC would struggle with.