Hey guys, I am thinking to build a wireless router from a single board computer, so my requirement is that the chosen board to support Linux to have at least one Gigabit port and also to have a PCIe port to connect an external WiFi card and antennas and eventually attach one or more SSDs. So far I looked on the Internet and I am wondering which is a better board for this project Rockpro64, Banana PI BPI-R2 or the EspressoBin. The advantages of the EspressoBin are:
it has built-in networking switch with one dedicated WAN and two LAN interfaces all 1Gbps
dedicated SATA interface
miniPCIe slot for wireless cards
stable Armbian support
On the other had the RockPRO64 has:
hexa-core CPU consisting dual-core A72@2GHz and quad-core A53@1.5GHz vs. dual-core A53@1.2GHz
dedicated GPU and HDMI and DP supporting 4K@60fps or 4K@30fps HDR
4Gb of RAM vs. 2Gb for the Espressobin not to mention that Espressobin is using DDR3 while Rockpro64 - LPDDR4
Banana Pi BPI-R2 is somewhat in the middle between the RockPro64 and the Espressobin. It has switchboard with 4xGbps LAN ports, dedicated GPU, mPCIe, SATA port, HDMI port. Maybe even Banana Pi W2 might do the job, since it is also having the mPCIe x2 but this one is not even supported by Armbian. Banana Pi BPI-R2 is CSC...
Can I use the PCIe 4 slot on the RockPro64 to connect a WiFi card? And is this board even suitable to be a wireless router? My main worry is that the Linux support for this board isn't so great as far as I can see and people are complaining about bugs and other issues. On the other hand I am really tempted to get it because it is very powerful and I can re-use it as a HTPC/WiFi router and NAS at the same time.