Cheap home PC based on Raspberry Pi
Spend few hundred dollars to have a cheap PC for leisure or hobby activities
You’ll need
Raspberry Pi 4 with 8 GB RAM - or the latest model with the most RAM available at the moment. Bought from the vendor: 75 USD netto, shipping and resellers add more to price.
Power brick and cord - best of all buy official Pi one, but if you are on low budget you might try using a leftover brick from phone + USB-C cord, however full Pi Desktop usage would require more power than a phone usually needs; so, check power brick and cord’s parameters and compare to official one’s.
Raspberry Pi case that supports cooling. If room where you’ll use Pi is not too hot, most probably passive cooling is enough, but to make it future proof I’d suggest having coolers that can be turned off. My setup below with active cooling temperature is around 50 Celsius, without it (and without cooler noice) it is 60 Celisius, i.e. totally acceptable.
A Keyboard: the cheapest USB keyboard is fine, unless you want to type alot. Pi can be used as a distraction free writing machine, in that case you want to have nice typing experience.
A USB mouse of choice.
A monitor with HDMI output supported. Pi 4 supports 4K output, but unless you have a 4K monitor that you don’t use for other purpose it probably won’t make sense to use 4K.
MicroHDMI to HDMI cord.
Some sound system. If you have embedded sound in the monitor you might not need one; Pi supports sound via HDMI. Quality of sound depends on your actual needs, if you’ll be watching educational YouTube videos, you most probably don’t need an insane sound quality. If you want listening to music with, buy speakers of decent quality. For a “typing machine” you don’t need sound at all.
MicroSD card of class 10 - to install OS to it. Do not use lower class cards, as it affects speed of the system response.
How to use it
You can install your Linux of choice (I am using Kubuntu) and enjoy surfing the internet or doing any side activity that you need. I would not expect it to be a “professional level machine”, however it might surprise you how well this setup performs for the amount of money invested.