Cluster Hardware

I went with a PicoCluster 10H. I'm well aware that I could've cobbled something together and spent much less money; I have indeed done the thing with a bunch of Raspberry Pis screwed to a board and plugged into an Anker USB charger and a TP-Link switch.

I didn't want to do that again, though. For one, I've experienced problems with USB chargers seeming to lose power over time, and some small switches getting flaky when powered from USB. I liked the power supply of the PicoCluster and its cooling configuration. I liked that it did pretty much exactly what I wanted, and if I had problems I could yell at someone else about it rather than getting derailed by hardware rabbit holes.

I also purchased ten large heatsinks with fans, specifically these. There were others I liked a bit more, and these interfered with the standoffs that were used to build each stack of five Raspberry Pis, but these seemed as though they would likely be the most reliable in the long run.

I purchased SanDisk 128GB Extreme microSDXC cards for local storage. I've been using SanDisk cards for years with no significant issues or complaints.

The individual nodes are Raspberry Pi 4B/8GB. As of the time I'm writing this, Raspberry Pi 5s are out, and they offer very substantial benefits over the 4B. That said, they also have higher energy consumption, lower availability, and so forth. I'm opting for a lower likelihood of surprises because, again, I just don't want to spend much time dealing with hardware and I don't expect performance to hinder me.

Frequently Asked Questions

So, how do you like the PicoCluster so far?

I have no complaints. Putting it together was straightforward; the documentation was great, everything was labeled correctly, etc. Cooling seems very adequate and performance and appearance are perfect.

Have you considered adding SSDs for mass storage?

Yes, and I have some cables and spare SSDs for doing so. I'm not sure if I actually will. We'll see.