Building a $3000 Raspberry Pi Cluster: Lessons from a Two-Year Hardware Project
By
speckx
8mo ago· 8 min readenReview
100/100
Golden Brown
Bagelometer↗
Master baker tier. Every paragraph earns its place on the tray.
Score100TypereviewSentimentnegative
Summary
The author shares their experience building a $3,000 Raspberry Pi cluster using 10 Compute Blades with CM5 Lite modules, totaling 160GB of RAM. The project took two years from order to delivery due to delays, and the author expresses regret about the investment given the long wait time and rapid technological advancements in the Raspberry Pi ecosystem during that period. The article compares this cluster to the newer Xerxes Pi blade computer and reflects on the risks of crowdfunded hardware projects.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledI ordered a set of 10 Compute Blades in April 2023 (two years ago), and they just arrived a few weeks ago
This was the biggest Pi cluster I've built, and it set me back around $3,000, shipping included
I'm a sucker for crowdfunded blade
In that time Raspberry Pi upgraded the CM4 to a CM5, so I ordered a set of 10 16GB CM5 Lite modules for my blade cluster
Article URL: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/i-regret-building-3000-pi-ai-cluster
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45302065
Points: 8
# Comments: 0
