️ Run a Bitcoin Node: Best Hardware for Lightning Network?

Thanks for watching. Let me know - did I miss anything? Is there any better hardware out there for running a Bitcoin node on Lightning Network? I'd love to see links and pics to YOUR favorite node hardware in the comments below.

At this rate you might as well buy a used Thinkpad w/ 2 TB SSD for $250. No need to build, comes with a screen and keyboard and also doesn't expose that you're running a node.

good stuff. helpful

Great video.
I have multiple raspberry PI's in my rack all running with POE HAT powered from my unifi 24 port 500watt switch. on the long run if you have multiple PI's, thats the cleanest way to go.

Hello Jonathan,

Let me give a tip.

You can purchase a HP Prodesk I5 8400T mini with 8Gb ram and a 1Tb M2.ssd, for around €225.
Way more powerfull then a RPI and no need for ssd casing etc.

Some of the recommended hardware come with there own power supply and I was wondering if I still need the original Raspberry 4 power supply?

Why not run it on a normal gamer PC? Did somenone use Bitcoin Core ?

Please note: I ordered the Argon one case and it is Not compatible with the M.2 NVME Storage Drives! you need to order a "Timetec 2TB SSD 3D NAND QLC SATA III" drive instead. This is stated on page 8 of the manual for the Argon one.

Any video on how to migrate from umbrel to citadel or how to install from scrach on pi4 ???? Thank you

Is there a video of how to install the node in a mini pc?

Orange pi?

Thanks for breaking down node operation on Lightening. I’ve felt like mining is out of reach and didn’t realise there were other options to support decentralisation of bitcoin

What happens if my home electricity goes out due to a storm etc.??

Great video. It's 2023 and I think now that with the Ordinals there is no choice than to buy a 2 TB drive.

Thank you Jonathan for the information now I want to run my own node I like the mini PC but I have a question if I buy the mini PC I don’t need more parts? the mini pc is all in one correct thank you for your videos

If I bought a used 2tb SSD laptop from eBay for cheap would that suffice? What other specs should I look at?

ah shit. i should have watched this last week. i have a raspberry pi3 i was getting ready to try for bitcoin full node

I only have WiFi available. Will this work?

Thanks for the video! It was very insightful. Just an FYI, the M.2 that you have linked is an M-key drive while the Argon One only supports B and B+M Keys, so that will not fit into the Argon One M.2 Expansion board.

can i use my old thinkpad which is have 8gb ram with very old cpu

Thanks for sharing.
A question, why a 16GB SSD card? Why not a partition of the 2TB M.2 ?

I mean, to be honest, the hardware is the easy part. Anyone can buy a Dell WYSE N07D 5060 Thin Client for $50 on eBay, a 1TB SSD Team Group T-FORCE for $60 on Newegg, or a 2TB for $100. That thin client is an AMD 2.4Ghz QuadCore with 8GB of RAM and whatever size hard drive you need. If you require more processing power, consider the Lenovo ThinkCentre M93p i5-4570T 2.9GHz with 8GB RAM, which costs around $70 to $80. This thin client has a removable upgradeable CPU, so really, if an I3 doesn't work, grab an I7. They are 4th generation Intel processors, so they are older, but the processors are also cheaper; for less than $110.00 to $160, you could have a straight-up ripper. It's also cheaper than most Pi these days anyway. Bundle kits for the Pi are ridiculously priced right now anyway. They also don't cost any more to run than a laptop, which is just a few bucks a month. Ya pi is more eco-friendly, but nodes grow over time, either in storage or in the power it takes to run them

What old laptop(as my 4 are) can possibly have a 1-2 TB drive? Those didn’t exist then! I've got Ubuntu Linux running well on an "old" Dell laptop, but no Terrabytes there!

I guess the real question is, is where to get a Raspberry Pi that's not being scalped. They're originally like around $75 but they're sold out anywhere with that price. Amazon has them for like $180 is the cheapest I found

I decided to do a pruned bitcoin core and kind of lost on what to do now. A video going over the pros and cons between pruned and full node for lightning would be super cool!

I just quickly skimmed the comments and thought it was already mentioned but it was not. You are recommending NVMe drives with the Argon case. Those will not work with a Raspberry Pi because it doesn't provide enough power. The mixup here is between M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe. I suggest looking up the difference. If you read carefully the description of the Argon it also tells you this. You need to use M.2 SATA drives with RPI4.

Great video!
I am using the Argon One M.2 case for my Raspberry.
The M.2 expansion board is needed to use SSD otherwise it is just a Raspberry case.
Cooling is okay and adjustable but the fan is a bit loud. Just found a SUNON fan to replace it: MF30100V3.

I'd recommend a UPS. Friend of mine had a power outage knocking their node offline. Tough lesson for him was he forgot to keep an up to date channel backup and lost some channels. Make sure you have a channel backup as a minimum people! I'm personally running mine on a home server virtual machine with a UPS! On it's own that would be insane for just the node but I run a bunch of VM's all on the same box.

I'm pretty sure the power supply issue was because of a faulty board problem that was fixed in newer Raspberry Pis, you can see the difference physically on the board if you search up the reference online.

Jonathan, as you had promised, you delivered - THANK YOU!

Hi Jonathan - I have the raspberry pi 4 setup on umbreal. Question - why is my bitcoin wallet on the Lightning node? Should't there be a seperate app for your bitcoin wallet ?

👍

more than 1 year runnung 2 LN (LTC and BTC) node on my pc, a Windows 10, i ruoting in background while working,no ssd, just a dedicate hdd of 2 TB , xeon CPU and memory from aliexpress, 99 % uptime, i reboot 1 time per month for updates, do not waste your money.