Whats is the fastest arm computer?

[Pakcjo]

Hi,

 

I’m thinking about going all arm, what’s the fastest arm board that’s currently available and well supported by armbian?

 

I don’t really play games, my main activities are email, web browsing and c++ development.

 

Thanks!

[TRS-80]

I am guessing you mean for "desktop" usage (many of us, including myself, primarily only use Armbian for "server/headless" usage).

 

@NicoD has some great video reviews on his YouTube channel, I want to say (if I am recalling correctly) his favorite right now for desktop usage is... NanoPi M4 V2(?) but check his channel to be sure (and check it anyway, lots of good info on there).

 

@lanefu was reporting really good results with a PineBook (Pro?) the other night in IRC, but that might be WIP/dev stuff, so not sure it's public/available yet or not.  But in general, a lot of work has been done lately on "desktop" branch and should be getting released Soon(TM).

 

Many of these boards are compelling, however the best advice I can probably give you is to do your homework, as there are potentially little gotchas with any particular board.  The more time you spend up front researching, the less hassle down the line.

 

A good starting point is usually always the Supported Devices List, but for "desktop" you are probably looking for one of the RK3399 based boards these days.  Until you know the board families by heart, the home page of forums makes a handy cross reference (note which boards are listed for which family sub-forums). 

 

Good luck, let us know how the search goes / what you pick, and don't be a stranger. 

[Pakcjo]

Thanks a lot!, I’m slowly starting my research. I’m not 100% new to arm, have some rpi’s in use and a genisi efika smartbook before it was discontinued.

 

I just think that for my workflow I could switch to arm and save some watts

[lanefu]

If you dont need usb storage probably odroid n2+

[TRS-80]

You know, I take a lot of notes, but not always.  So I am not 100% sure of following, however if I am recalling correctly, in one of NicoD videos where he goes through all his boards, the Odroid N2+ he says is very powerful (maybe even the most powerful?). but limited on I/O.  And maybe that's what you were hinting to about USB, @lanefu?

 

And this is what I mean by "little gotchas."  Also I want to make the point that there probably is no clear "best" as it depends a lot on your application, etc.

 

Also just now looking up the above video to get URL I came across another video (which I don't think I watched yet) called Comparison NanoPi M4 - RockPi4 - Odroid N2 - Khadas VIM3 which is perhaps even more directly applicable to this conversation.

[Pakcjo]

Thanks @TRS-80
 

I think I’d go with either rock pi4 or the nano pi (just for the nvme support)

[NicoD]

I only now see this post. 
Indeed as @TRS-80 said my favorite for desktop tasks is the NanoPi M4V2 with Armbian Bionic legacy and @JMCC his media script. Now also possible in Buster.
For me watching video, mostly Youtube is very important. And I've got a 4k display, so I rather have a higher display resolution than 1080p.
The RK3399 from the NanoPi M4V2 does 1440p without a problem. And it then plays 1080p video perfect with VPU acceleration. 

Its I/O is just amazing. 2x fast USB3 controllers for each 2 ports, left and right. (every 1 controller is faster/better than the only 1 controller on N2+)
Has PCIe GPIO's what fits an NVMe hat/SATA hat, USB3 hat.
I've got a 256GB NVMe on it. Doing initial boot from eMMC, and full boot from NVMe. I must say that the RockPi4 has a faster NVMe drive(4x PCIe vs 2x PCIe on M4V2), but I like the metal case from the M4V2 a lot more. And not the bandwith is most important using NVMe, but latency. And that's the same.
Also a big swap file of 8GB on NVMe so I never get out of memory. Works great, but does decrease the lifespan of an NVMe drive. I replace it every year just to be safe and then use the used NVMe as external USB3 device.

I also have an sd-card with a Armbian mainline focal image for playing games on it. I just need to push that sd-card in and reboot to get to my 2nd image. 

For a few months google account didn't work on the VPU accelerated Chromium on the RK3399. So then I used Vivaldi browser for watching Youtube. But that could only do 1080p video with 1080p display resolution.
So I switched my M4V2 with the Odroid N2+ for a while. That one is able to play 1080p video at 1440p display resolution. Tho not perfectly as the RK3399. Some dropped frames, some screen tearing.

I do like the extra CPU performance of the N2+. But in desktop tasks I rarely need a lot of CPU power. 
All I do is browsing, answering on this forum and on others, watching youtube, writing textfiles, downloading images and writing them to media, record audio, ...

All tasks that do not need much CPU. So RK3399 is more than powerful enough. 

If not for the media script from JMCC I'd take the Odroid N2+ before my M4V2. But having VPU driver is so nice that my N2+ is playing 2nd fidel.
Future wise the N2+ might become the better one if GPU and VPU drivers are availabe for it. It can do a lot with its CPU alone. 

Only for video editing and rendering I use my PC. And a few games that don't work on my M4V2. But these days even gaming on it is just awesome.
 

3 hours ago, Pakcjo said:

I think I’d go with either rock pi4 or the nano pi (just for the nvme support)

Good choice. Do know that the RockPi4 is a bit fidly to put together with the NVMe hat, and its heatsink is a little less potent. 
The NVMe then can go upwards of 1GB/s vs 750MB/s on the M4V2. 
Greetings.