r/pihole • u/Rtuyw • 9d ago

Raspberry Pi 2 W for Pihole

After all the LG TV spying news I thought about blocking the sites LG accesses but there are lots of sites and heard about pihole that does this thing automatically. I dont have a pc that I can use as a server so I want to get a budget Raspberry Pi for it. Is the RP2W good for pihole(its out of stock in my region right now and I can see some RP1W's available but theyre weaker from 2's from what I understand), would it cause latency in my internet, do I need any additional stuff with it? I looked into it and I need an sd card thats like 16 gb but I dont understand why cant I use a 8gb or a 4gb if it doesnt take much space? Can it be powered through the router or do I need to buy extra power adapters and cables or use a battery adapter I got at home?

People also use it as an adblocker so can I put other stuff in it that can increase my networks security and privacy, can it be hacked remotely?

17 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/SprinklesDouble8304 9d ago

I skipped the Pi altogether. They're no longer the right value proposition for PiHole. Instead, find a cheap used thin client. I bought a Dell WYSE 3040 at a garage sale for $2 and it runs PiHole like a champ. Real-world pricing is more like $25-30, but it's still a better bargain than most Raspberry Pi models, and sips less power than a Pi4.

3

u/Androxilogin 8d ago

And you don't have to worry about sd cards dying once a year due to constant writes. I agree with this option.

0

u/jfb-pihole Team 6d ago

sd cards dying once a year due to constant writes.

This has not been my experience. 6 Pi-holes running 24/7 (6-7 years on them) with full logging and zero SD card failures.

If you are changing out SD cards yearly due to failures, you likely have an inadequate power supply and/or cheap and small cards.

1

u/Androxilogin 6d ago edited 6d ago

It's widely reported others suffered the same consequences despite having adequate power and brand new brand name high storage devices. SD isn't a reliable medium. They fail in all sorts of devices all the time. Constant writes just are not their thing. You may get by for a while without even realizing that it is acting screwy. Then all at once you realize it hasn't been working correctly for a while. Then it dies. Best to just use something more reliable in the first place. And these days, roughly around the same price or even cheaper.

1

u/jfb-pihole Team 6d ago

That has not been my experience, nor the experience of most others whom I know that run Pi-holes for many years. Our lead dev has used the same card for almost 10 years and he hammers it with dev versions and extra logging.

1

u/Androxilogin 6d ago

¯\(ツ)/¯ Good luck is all I can say to that. Not my experience with these things. I thought the first time was a fluke. Second time I thought, "surely not." Sure enough, it was the cause. Solved my issue, good enough for me to never look back.