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Good Armbian compatible boards


GreyGhostRos

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Hello guys, I'm new to SBCs in general and would like to start tinkering around a bit. But am not able to find a central resource with reviews and such. So have decided to ask the question here (moderators please feel free to move the thread around) 

I am looking for a SBC in the 30 to 35 or upto 40$ price range with a bare minimum of the following :

1. 64bit SoC

2. Atleast 1 GB RAM (pref 2 GB) 

3. Wifi on board (or are wifi dongles a better option?) 

4. 1080p out by hdmi.. Preferably 4k.. 

 

I read enough to understand that manufacturers other than Raspberry are not great with OS support or optimisation.. So I am looking for something that runs Armbian well or will run it well enough in the coming months (Had my eyes on the Orange Pi3 but I read about  a lot of issues with H6 boards with compatibility and heating?).. 

 

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10 minutes ago, guidol said:

a good start - I think - would be the NanoPi K1 Plus

https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=220

 

Wth 1GB of RAM there is also the OrangePi PC2 - but no WiFi

 

I was unable to find many reviews about the K1 plus but I will definitely look into it.. 

 

What is your experience regarding on board wifi on these boards (orange, banana or nano) in general? Reliable? Or better off with a usb dongle? 

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5 minutes ago, GreyGhostRos said:

What is your experience regarding on board wifi on these boards (orange, banana or nano) in general? Reliable? Or better off with a usb dongle? 

mostly its better to use a USB-WiFi Dongle - specially on OrangePi - for me the worst WiFi Chips onboard.

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On 5/24/2019 at 10:46 AM, GreyGhostRos said:

So I am looking for something that runs Armbian well or will run it well enough in the coming months (Had my eyes on the Orange Pi3 but I read about  a lot of issues with H6 boards with compatibility and heating?).. 

The PineH64 model B is a bit better designed than the OPi3. It's got a lot less problems, and a bit better heat characteristics.
The H6 SoC's do need a fan to run maxed out at 1.8Ghz. But you could clock it a bit lower if you'd like to passively cool it.
The software isn't ready yet for it. But I expect this to become a well supported board. Here my review and comparison video of the Pine H64 model B with OPi3
I'm in love with the RK3399 boards from FriendlyElec(NEO4/M4/T4). But now the NEO4 is at $50. It was cheaper when released. It only has got 1GB ram, a bit worse cooling than the NanoPi M4(my favorite). But they've got great VPU support in Armbian and in FriendlyElec images.
But of course those are more expensive.
As they've already said. The Amlogic S905 boards are a good choice since they've got good VPU support. But on higher display resolutions than 1080p my Odroid C2 lags a lot.
There's not that much other choises. The Rock64 has problems with the media script. Allwinner H5 SoC's should be well supported for this. But I don't have any H5 board. So I have not seen this working well. ( @mindee I'd love to review the NanoPi K1 Plus)

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If you can live with hdmi being not working in the mean time, I would recommend OPI One Plus or Lite2. They are just faster H5's and they work with
little heat sinks. I used them to compile the esp32 cross tool chain which took like two hours and they just worked. Before this I also had high hopes
for k1 plus but it crashed like 20 minutes into the compilation - this was using the bigger stock heat sink without fan - my PCs are already making
enough noise for me. Heat is the biggest problem for any serious computing using these boards. Note that CPU throttling worked amazingly well on these
H6 boards, the temperature never got higher than 78C and the CPUs were throttling between 1.5/73 to 1.8/78. They are also cheaper, for the lack of
USB's, I use a $2 hub, SPI lcd works in 4.20, but not 5.1.

h6.jpg

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