SBC Clusters are a terrible value, but they're fun anyway

Pictured above is the new DeskPi Super4C (https://amzn.to/4w4rUOq) installed in an 8U mini rack. The Super4C is a 4-node Raspberry Pi CM5 cluster board that solves two pain points I had with the older Super6C (https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/6-raspberry-pis-6-ssds-on-mini-itx-motherboard/).

I was testing this board around the same time I helped kick off the SBCC 2026 (https://sbcc.sdsc.edu/main-page.html), the Single Board Cluster Competition for students. A dozen or so university teams squared off to run the best mini HPC cluster with a budget of $6,000, and a couple days to benchmark six HPC workloads (https://single-board-cluster-competition.github.io/sbcc26-competition-site/grading.html).