Quote from: Bayesian Bitcoiner on November 09, 2023, 11:55:05 AM

And I heard this thing that Raspi isn't a sustainable option for the Bitcoin core node. And here's what he said.

Start9 no longer recommends the use of PI for Bitcoin. Even the 8 GB is beginning to have trouble with IBD due to the increase in the blockchain size when ordinals. Matt Hill addresses that here “The Raspberry Pi, even the 8GB, is rapidly becoming obsolete. The UTXO set has grown tremendously over the last year and is now around 8GB in size. The Pi has very slow disk speeds over USB, which causes disk cache to build up. Once the cache nears 8GB, all operations will be sent to disk and become extremely slow. This is made worse if you are trying to run other services as well. We no longer recommend the Pi for Bitcoin under any configuration”

OP, was that statement comes from https://community.start9.com/t/raspberry-pi-no-longer-recommended-for-use-with-bitcoin-stack/779? Anyway, i mostly agree with what he said although,
1. He's not being clear whether it only applies when you HDD or any kind of storage over USB port.
2. Based on https://start9.com/, it looks like Start9 already include many running application by default.

Quote from: Bayesian Bitcoiner on November 09, 2023, 11:55:05 AM

What are some best "starter packs" out there for node nubies?

On OS/software-level, it depends what exactly you need. If you only want to run Bitcoin full node, install any OS (Linux is recommended) and Bitcoin Core is sufficient.

Quote from: DaveF on November 09, 2023, 04:46:22 PM

Quote from: philipma1957 on November 09, 2023, 02:37:11 PM

never had an intel nuc. always seemed a bit pricy.

Which was why I didn't include them. The NUC both intel branded and other makes always tended to be a lot more money then an equivalent mini PC.
This even follows down to the used market.
Not sure why, it just is one of those things, at least around here.

-Dave

In addition, Intel NUC has been discontinued anyway. See https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23790956/intel-nuc-compact-pc-discontinued. So anyone who buy it will get leftover stock and probably limited support in future.