Hardware Requirements

An older PC makes an excellent platform for running a Bitcoin node. Refurbished business desktops such as the HP EliteDesk, Dell OptiPlex and Lenovo ThinkCentre are all good candidates. They can usually be found at a reasonable price on the second-hand market.

I’ve recently built a node using an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF with an Intel Core i5-6500, a platform that is now around eight or nine years old. It would have been originally sold as a higher-end enterprise desktop. I've also built nodes using the Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny M700 with an Intel Core i5-6400T. The advantage of the Tiny M700 is that it's, well, tiny. It can easily be tucked away in a small space and left to run quietly on its own.

An older Intel based Mac Mini is also an option, although the prices are likely higher than you’d want to pay. Maybe you have one lying around that you no longer use.

Many people recommend using a Raspberry Pi as a node, my experience is that they're underpowered. There’s no cost advantage with the Pi either. I recently paid $150 Australian for a ThinkCentre Tiny M700. A Raspberry Pi will cost you more than that for less power. Plus with the Pi, you’ll likely have an SSD tethered to it by a dangling cable. A refurbished desktop is just a better option all round.

You’ll need an solid state drive (SSD) for storage, a hard disk drive is unsuitable. If you want to run a full node you'll need a 2 TB SSD. You can, as an option, run your node with a pruned version of the blockchain on a smaller drive, but it won’t have full functionality.

Unfortunately, with the AI boom, storage prices have skyrocketed. Buy a drive from a well-known manufacturer. Samsung, Crucial, Western Digital and Kingston all make suitable SSDs. Don’t be tempted to buy a cheap no-name drive. NVMe drives offer higher performance, but a quality SATA SSD also performs well and may be the more economical choice if your hardware supports SATA.

My current node uses a Samsung 870 EVO 2 TB SATA SSD. It’s a premium drive but prices have more than tripled since I bought it.

I've used 8 GB of RAM in all of my nodes without any problems.

For the initial installation of Debian Linux you'll need a monitor and keyboard. You can use a television as a temporary monitor if it has an HDMI input. Once Debian has been installed, the node will run headless and can be administered remotely over your local network.

You'll also need an Ethernet cable to connect the node to your local network.