Help choosing the right Pi!

Hi all 👋 I'm looking to get started with Home Assistant! I've done a bit of research and I think I know what I want, but I'm seeing a lot of conflicting posts online around the do's and don'ts, so I was hoping to get some opinions on what to buy to get started 😊 I'd like to take the Raspberry Pi route, as I like the DIY aspect of it, but this is possibly the area that confuses me the most. If I were to purchase a Pi 4 Model B - - Is there a notable performance benefit to the 8GB version over the 4GB version? - Is it actually a bad idea to use an SD card? Or will I be better off purchasing an SSD? - Is it worthwhile adding a fan? - Are kits worth buying, or is it just as good to buy everything individually? Sorry if any of these questions are stupid, just wanting to make sure I get off to the best start!! Thank you!! 😄

- Is there a notable performance benefit to the 8GB version over the 4GB version? Not for your use case - Is it actually a bad idea to use an SD card? Or will I be better off purchasing an SSD? In my opinion YES, A SSD is slightly more expensive but it has advantages like performance and resiliency against power outages, read/write operations. - Is it worthwhile adding a fan? This depends on the surrounding temp and if the Pi case has any ventilation holes, minimum buy a heatsink kit. - Are kits worth buying, or is it just as good to buy everything individually? That is taste and personal preferences.

For 24/7 operation, I would recommend a UPS. ...

depends where you live, i for example had never any outages not even for a split second for the last 10 years

I have had some outages, planned (two) and unplanned (four). And some of the unplanned I was the cause to them (two);-)

🤷🏻‍♀️

Ref. Murphys Law!

Well, you're not at home 24/7, so how do you know if the power was off for a short time... But this short time is enough for the Pi Hart to be switched off.

cuz i have uptime monitoring

Do you already have a server?

yes, multiple

btw

YES, A SSD is slightly more expensive

i looked it up and cheap ssds are about the same as micro sds

cuz Even Dram-less ssds are better than micro sds