Which SBC should I buy next? NanoPC T3+?

[NicoD]

Hello all.
I'm looking into enlarging my SBC collection.
I'm mainly looking for a board that is power efficient, has got a fast cpu, and at least 2GB of RAM. This for 1080p video rendering with powerbanks, so power efficiency is very important.
I'm now looking into the NanoPC-T3+ since it's an Octa core with 2GB of ram. (or the BPi M3?)
Does anyone have got experience with this board in LINUX? I see there's an Armbian in testing. How far is this? Is there hardware video acceleration? Does the cpu perform as promised?
What is the power consumption on it?

I bought the Khadas Vim2 Max for this. But it doesn't perform well at all. It should replace my Odroid C2, but it doesn't render faster than my C2. So I would first want to get some info before buying a new one.
Anyone has got some better SBC's in mind?

I've got: Raspberry Pi's 2B, 3B, 3B+, zero, zero w. Orange Pi +2. Odroid C2, XU4. Khadas Vim2 max. Asus Tinker Board.

I'm also thinking of buying the B-pi Zero(just for fun).

Extra question.
I'm also looking into a solution for recording the hdmi output of my SBC's. Does anyone have experience with an HDMI to CSI module? I'm thinking of using it on one of my Raspberry Pi's.
https://auvidea.com/b101-hdmi-to-csi-2-bridge-15-pin-fpc/

Sorry for all the questions. I can better ask now, before I buy another board that doesn't do what I want from it. Thank you.

[NicoD]

Anybody experience with the NanoPC T3+ or the BPi M3 please?
 

The NanoPC T3+ has got a Samsung S5P6818 Cortex-A53 Octa(x8) Core @ 1.4Ghz. It apears that all cores are the same(no big-LITTLE)

http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=210

 

The BPi M3 has got an A83T Cortex-A7 octa-core. On the BPi website it says 1.8Ghz, but other places I read 1.6Ghz. Again all the same cores.
http://www.banana-pi.org/m3.html

 

Both have got 2GB ram and are power with barrel jacks.

I know there want be a lot of support for these. I don't mind too much as long as I can run a descent Linux distro on it. (preferably Armbian) It only has got to run Kdenlive well.
Maybe @tkaiser knows anything about these boards or processors?
I can't find a lot of info about these. It'll make a good Youtube video, whatever the results of it.
Thank you.

[zador.blood.stained]

10 minutes ago, NicoD said:

BPi M3

...

I can't find a lot of info about these.

And also https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort for the A83T mainlining status and progress (we are not touching the BSP for this SoC).

 

[NicoD]

Thank you @zador.blood.stained
I just bought the NanoPC T3+. I'm thinking of also buying the Bpi M3 later. I can't have too many SBC's. I hope it's going to be a good board.
Thanks, cheers.
NicoD

[chwe]

23 hours ago, NicoD said:

I'm also thinking of buying the B-pi Zero(just for fun).

hmm I think spending 16$+~5$ shipping for the bpi 0 is less fun than spending 25$+`~12$ shipping for a pine h64 (keep in mind that Armbian is H6 is far away from 'full support') but I think the pine board has much more potential.

 

23 hours ago, NicoD said:

Sorry for all the questions. I can better ask now, before I buy another board that doesn't do what I want from it. Thank you.

 

1 hour ago, NicoD said:

I just bought the NanoPC T3+. I'm thinking of also buying the Bpi M3 later.

 

I think a follow up video for the tinker could be interesting as soon as @JMCC is ready with the full acceleration (I think encoding is also on it's way and it seems that RK is one of the few SoC makers who can deliver the performance on Linux). Maybe you have a look into the RK3399 boards which will come up soon? They seem all a bit powerhungry (most boards are 12V) but it looks that RK cares more about linux support for their opensource SoCs (rk3288, rk3328 & rk3399) than their competitors. 

[TonyMac32]

49 minutes ago, chwe said:

powerhungry (most boards are 12V)

This is a consequence of the PCIe interface, I see it as a happy side effect, perhaps the boards will all be adequately powered.  I had a brief conversation about this at some point, the rk3399 having only 2 fast and 4 slow cores means it may not pull much more pwer than say a Tinker Board or MiQi with 4 fast cores.

[NicoD]

1 hour ago, chwe said:

Maybe you have a look into the RK3399 boards

I'll buy the Odroid N1 when it's out. Can't wait for it. I hope it'll be more stable than the XU4. Then I'll maybe stop using my Intel powersucking deamon.
 

 

1 hour ago, chwe said:

I think spending 16$+~5$ shipping for the bpi 0 is less fun than spending 25$+`~12$ shipping for a pine h64

Indeed I payed 20euro for the bpi M2 Zero. I think it's an interesting board because of the RPi-zero form factor. It will make an interesting video. I'll find a use for it. Maybe for a new fancy robot or so.
The Pine H64 looks interesting too. Faster CPU than the Rock64, but bit a shame that the 3GB version has got 4GB RAM, but only 3GB are useable. Maybe I'll buy it later if I hear good things about it.
My last sbc was a Rock64(forgot to include that one in my list).

I can't wait until they're here. Thanks. If you know of any new interesting sbc's, please let me know. I've got to fulfill my SBC addiction.

[JMCC]

6 hours ago, chwe said:

I think a follow up video for the tinker could be interesting as soon as @JMCC is ready with the full acceleration

Well, yes, as long as @NicoD's Tinkerboard works well. Some posts of his suggested that it has some hardware problem that makes it very unstable, crashing while doing tasks that other units can perform with no problems (e.g.: benchmarking Blender under Armbian).

But I like his videos a lot, if it worked well I would be delighted to see one about the TB multimedia capabilities when everything is ready.

[JMCC]

3 hours ago, NicoD said:

I hope it'll be more stable than the XU4.

Mmmm, my XU4 is pretty stable. You said that you powered your boards with power banks very frequently. Is it possible that those stability problems with the XU4 and the TB may be related to that? I don't know, maybe the batteries cause current peaks way above 5A, or get way below, and it may cause damage to the PMIC or other components.

[TonyMac32]

Powerbanks generally use high frequency boost/buck converters to provide their "5V".  These are not always very good at dynamic power situations (causing dips and surges), and can provide very noisy power in general.  Perhaps I'll be able to afford an inexpensive oscilloscope for some educational material soon, I can't make any excuses for monitoring power banks at work... 

 

[NicoD]

2 hours ago, JMCC said:

I think a follow up video for the tinker could be interesting

I talked with Christopher from ExplainingComputers about this and he's going to make this video. I told him that if he doesn't have the problem that I have with rendering in Armbian. Then Armbian would be his best choice. Also told him to ask on the forum for a version with hardware acceleration.
He also needs kdenlive since he wants to work with it a whole week long to see how well it goes. In Tinker OS Kdenlive doesn't work, Lubuntu bad youtube playback. So Armbian will have all that(Youtube playback on the test version was already very good. The XU4 did it exactly the same. Also sometimes rebuffer at 1080p or 720p60fps).
He's got way more viewers than I do. So hopefully he's using Armbian.
 

2 hours ago, JMCC said:

Mmmm, my XU4 is pretty stable. You said that you powered your boards with power banks very frequently.

I've never powered my XU4 with a power bank. My powerbank can only give 2.4A per port. It's when a game changes the screen settings, or when you fullscreen youtube that it crashes. Only then. I asked Meveric and he told me it's a known bug. It doesn't happen too much, but I watch a lot of youtube.
The Tinker Board I tried with 3 different power supply's, with my powerbanks. And also power with the gpio pins. Always the same problem. Because I couldn't fix this I worked with my XU4 a whole week and made a video about that.

Yesterday I tried Armbian on an sd on my C2. It didn't boot. I downloaded it again and tried another sd card. Only the red light was on, nothing else happened. I also downloaded the minimal, but haven't tried it yet.
I'm still planning to make a video about Armbian, that's why I want to test as many devices as possible. OPi+2 OK. Rock64 OK. Still have to test the XU4 with Armbian.
 

2 hours ago, JMCC said:

But I like his videos a lot

Thank you very much. I appreciate that a lot.

Added
I was also thinking about buying the Tinker Board S. But Christopher (explainingcomputers) told me the problem with micro usb is even worse on that one. Even a 2.5A Raspberry psu doesn't work with it. He had to buy a 3A one. Don't want more of those problems.

Cheers

[tkaiser]

16 hours ago, NicoD said:

I can't find a lot of info about these

 

http://linux-sunxi.org/Banana_Pi_M3 and here in the forum you need to search for 'NanoPi M3' (that's the cheaper variant with same SoC and just 1 GB DRAM now replaced by NanoPi Fire3 which should be the fastest el cheapo SBC around with 8 x A53 clockable at up to 1.6 GHz according to Willy Tarreau -- click on 'reviews' here: http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=206)

 

Fascinating aspect is that all the more powerful SBC except the ODROIDs are prone to underpowering by design by using the most crappy connector possible. And also an awfu lot of them show thermal problems since the 'engineers' forgot to allow to mount an appropriate heatsink/fansink. No idea what those 'engineers' thought...

[NicoD]

34 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

http://linux-sunxi.org/Banana_Pi_M3 and here in the forum you need to search for 'NanoPi M3'

Thank you. I checked your bpi m3 thread. It was very helpful. I couldn`t find the one with barel jack for a good price and close nou, else I bought them both.

I went for the NanoPC T3+. It`s got what it seems an ok heatsink. If not I`ll find something better for it. Also a barrel jack, so no micro usb sh#t. I checked if there`s recent os. Updated last month. I`ll see how it is. Always a surprice.
It`s probably slower than the bpi m3. But if this performs as it should with Kdenlive then I`ll be very happy with it. (unlike khadas, I think cpu process management is messed up there)
Thanks, have a nice day.
 

 

[JMCC]

On 4/30/2018 at 5:45 PM, NicoD said:

I'm also looking into a solution for recording the hdmi output of my SBC's. Does anyone have experience with an HDMI to CSI module? I'm thinking of using it on one of my Raspberry Pi's.
https://auvidea.com/b101-hdmi-to-csi-2-bridge-15-pin-fpc/

Please post your results with this adapter.  I'm also very interested on it.

[NicoD]

On 5/5/2018 at 5:30 PM, JMCC said:

Please post your results with this adapter

It does cost a bit too much. It's 70euro everywhere. I'd better buy an SBC with HDMI-in like the Bpi-W2. It's only 10euro more.
I'm now doing my tests on the bpi-M2 zero. Nice board, but it's got its issues.
Armbian does run great on it.
Update:
I just red that the Armbian I'm using on my bpi m2 Zero is a fake. I was wondering why I couldn't find threads about it.
How do you guys feel about me using it in my video? It does work well, has got everything any Armbian has. And at least the donate link is still there.
I'll check if there's any other ok os for it.
Why don't you guys support Bpi Zero?
Cheers

[NicoD]

On 5/1/2018 at 5:21 PM, chwe said:

I think a follow up video for the tinker could be interesting as soon as

ExplainingComputers his video about the Tinker Board is online. Too bad he didn't use Armbian. Also not Lubuntu for Kdenlive. But it's still a good video. Here it is.

 

[chwe]

10 hours ago, NicoD said:

HDMI-in like the Bpi-W2. It's only 10euro more.

but you also need software support for HDMI-In (no clue how good the softwaresupport is). For shell only recording I suggest to have a look at https://asciinema.org Maybe you can use it for some part of your recordings. 

Did you ever thought about a USB-HDMI recorder/grabber (no idea how good the linux softwaresupport for those 'thingies' are).  Those might be usable on every board and you don't have to set up one board with HDMI-In every time for your recordings.. @Igor records sometimes for armbians youtube content, maybe he has some suggestions...  

 

[NicoD]

9 minutes ago, chwe said:

but you also need software support for HDMI-In

Indeed is not certain it would work. Seen how bpi is with support.
 

 

22 minutes ago, chwe said:

USB-HDMI recorder/grabber

I looked into that earlier but thought it wouldn't work since I could not see my output. But you've brought me on the idea of using an hdmi splitter with such a cheap hdmi-usb2 720p out, 1080p in dongle. I'll buy that. All together 18euro/20dollhairs. A lot cheaper than those capture boxes.
Thanks for the advice.
Maybe it could also help me with my XU4 that doesn't wants to work on my 1080p 13" monitor.
What's your thought on the fake Armbian on bpi Zero? See here...

11 hours ago, NicoD said:

Update:
I just red that the Armbian I'm using on my bpi m2 Zero is a fake.

Thank you.

[chwe]

3 hours ago, NicoD said:

Thanks for the advice.

It's just an idea, I've no experience in this field.. 

 

3 hours ago, NicoD said:

What's your thought on the fake Armbian on bpi Zero? See here...

14 hours ago, NicoD said:

Update:
I just red that the Armbian I'm using on my bpi m2 Zero is a fake.

Thank you.

 

I wouldn't call it fake. Fact is we don't support it officially (see: https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/config/boards/bananapim2zero.csc). We provide a buildoption as CSC.

I made ~2 months ago what I understand as csc (I didn't follow every patch around H2+/H3 boards but to my knowledge, currently a CSC build will not boot):

Some might agree with this statement, some might disagree and 'often' discussions around BPi products tend to be harsh due to issues happened in the past (and progress is for different people not fast/good enough). Their documentation tends to be 'questionable' (sometimes corrections are made, sometimes not and it's not really clear to me why they don't spend more attention to do it properly - IMO, it would be a good starting point clean up their documentation).  If you have a look at our buildscript we it's marked as (GPL 2.0) which means that they are free to fork it and provide images based on the buildscript (as long as they follow the GPL). If you build (or use their Image) an Image you'll see something like (we don't provide support for user-built images, cause we've no clue what the user changed compared to stock images):

Quote

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.xx user-built ...

That said, it's a user-built and no official built which would look like (example for a nightly - which is actually also not supported officially, but I don't need support for this image ):

Quote

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.43.180426 nightly Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 4.14.37-sunxi
 

 

People often complain, why we don't support it officially. As far as I know, some of the patches which are needed to let it boot can harm other H2+/H3 boards due to a 'questionable' design decision related to the SD-Card. Fact is, there was never a pull-request providing WIP or even sane patches for CSC support for this board, even when we reminded @Nora Lee or @Lion Wang which both work for Sinovopi/Foxconn (I don't know their official title/job description don't pay much attention to that stuff ). @tkaiser showed them a potential starting point to improve the current CSC support (maybe it wouldn't change from csc to wip, but at least csc could be built for their users and it would boot! and it would show they fulfill some of their claims made in public in this forum) but it seems that this isn't a priority at the moment. See here (read the whole thread not only the teaser!):

 

but there was no reaction to it.

They claimed in the past:

Nora Lee:

see here:

Quote

Tks for some Armbian devlopers' feekback and good advice that is real SBC spirit to assist Banana Pi HW and SW progress. We improve HW in order to achieve max. performance by our customers' requirement as well as developers welcome that too.

 

or lion wang:

here:

Quote

Ok, I will arrange the person to spend more time on the document finishing, all the Suggestions are welcome....

 

Things may improve since then or not, I simply have no time to follow their documentation or image quality due to 'other projects' and I have a life besides SBCs  (and it's not my job or 'field of competence' to be their quality control person - IMO it would help them to have a better 'quality control'/ technical writer but it's their decision how they run their company). 

 

In the past facebook had something like this (don't care about FB anymore, so no clue if this is still an option ):

IMO, this describes somehow the relationship between part of the armbian user-base/devs and sinovoip quite good.  Some experienced users/devs avoid to touch any BPi product due to faults made in the past, others simply don't care anymore and some try to improve the situation from time to time but it seems that sinovoip doesn't focus on an improvement at the moment whereas other boardmakers are more willing to improve the support of their boards.  

 

In case you want to make a youtube video about the BPi-M2 Zero I strongly suggest that you read/search through all those threads and 'form your own opinion'.  Posts related to their products are often 'colored' due to own experiences and opinions and might be 'not objective' (including mine). I tried to be 'as objective as possible' but I'm quite sure I'm failed on this goal (but at least, I made a 'disclaimer' here ).. 

 

Personally I think, we shouldn't make this to a new 'BPi' thread. It's just a 'more detailed' answer to 'is it fake ?' I wouldn't say it's a 'fake Armbian' but it is also not a 'official Armbian'. It's a user-built and therefore prone to break during updates since we don't test updates for user-built/csc boards. Freezing kernel before update or a proper patch so that it doesn't affect H2+/H3 boards we officially support would improve the situation. Even if the board doesn't get wip (it's not my decision whenever a board is wip or CSC), I think, a proper patch from a pull request for it would be merged into armbians github.  

[NicoD]

Thank you @chwe.
I've red all the threads. I now have got a clear view of what's going on. Too bad Sinovoip is that sloppy. I hope they'll work on it in the future.

I can inform you that there Ambian Ubuntu Desktop is working.
http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-m2-zero-armbian-5-41-3-4-113-debian-jessie-ubuntu-xenial/5485

It's actually working pretty well. Very snappy, all programs work. Z-Ram is activated. I also added some swap so it doesn't crash all the time.
Only a few things that need work. (I do not ask you guys looking into this, I don't care about this board. I'm just gathering information to make an honest review).
1. HDMI support for more displays
2. 1080p resolution is scrambled and needs to be fixed

3. Throttling needs to be activated more at high temperatures (seems like it's maximum throttle is 816Mhz at 70°C and 1.01Ghz at 65°C, not with stock settings)

4. CPU governor seems not working properly
5. HW acceleration for Chromium

On point 1: I tried my 3.5" hdmi display because I thought to make a handheld of it. Doesn't work, also retropie is not there yet. My 1080p 13.3" display also didn't work.(Could be because of bad mini hdmi cable)
On point 3: It's set to 1.2Ghz at boot-up. The moment is goes over 65°C it seems to be set to 816Mhz. It doesn't always go back to 1.2Ghz when cooled down. So then I need to set it manually.
Even on 816Mhz with full load and a copper heatsink it goes up to +85°C. I didn't go further because I didn't want to brick it. 

Point 4:
Temp no load 4 cores ondemand = 63°C

Temp no load 2 cores ondemand = 63°C

Temp no load 4 cores performance = 63°C

Temp no load 2 cores performance = 63°C

Does this make sense?

 

I do like the design, but as every sbc it's got it's faults. But I see a few use cases for it. A handheld for example when everything works(and with a big heatsink integraded). On paper it should do better than the rpi0 for emulation. (on paper...)

And it's very compact, but useable as light desktop(unlike rpi zero - too slow...). If you'd make a nice little bag for it. Then travellers can easelly take this with them. That's what I also use my sbc's for. I don't (want to) have a smart phone. So these are great things to have.

Thank you for all the info. Cheers.
p.s.: If @Lion Wang or @Nora Lee would like to give me additional information on this. Please do. I'm still doing a lot of research before I'll make my video. But I don't have weeks to spit out everything. So you're advice would be welcome.
 

[Yuefei Tan]

Hi NicoD

 

We are testing the NanoPC-T3 Plus. So far we feel fine with this board's performance and features.

Are there anything you don't feel comfortable with it or you are not quite sure whether it will meet your application's requirements?

 

 

[NicoD]

8 hours ago, Yuefei Tan said:

We are testing the NanoPC-T3 Plus.

Hello. I`ve ordered the NanoPC T3+. Still waiting for it to arrive.
I would like to use it as a video editor and renderer when traveling. I always used the Odroid C2 for that. That`s great for 720p video, but too slow for 1080p.
So I bought the Khadas vim2 max(+100$) for that. But that`s got troubles with render tasks.

So now I`ll try the NanoPC T3+ for that.

I couldn`t find the information I needed, so I just bought it and I`ll see how well it does. I need a fast cpu, power efficient(around 2A or less), good heat dissapation and as much ram as possible.

So my questions to you? Not that important because I`ll see when it arrives.
Is the full 2GB ram useable, or is it shared with the gpu?
Do you know whats the power useage when all cores are maxed out?

How hot does it get with the stock heatsink and maxed out?
How good are the linux distros for it?

 

I also make youtube videos about most of my sbc`s.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpv7NFr0-9AB5xoklh3Snhg

Thank you for your reaction. Good luck with the board, I hope it`s a good one.

[NicoD]

I've finished my review video about the BPI M2 Zero. Here it is.

Next video will be the NanoPC T3. Cheers.

 

[NicoD]

Hi guys.

I've almost finished my research on the NanoPC T3+.

Again Armbian is the best distro available on it. A lot of problems with the FriendlyArm's Lubuntu.
I'm really in love with this board. Finally a board that scores good in all spots I want it to. Power efficient, good thermals, very fast multicore, good software...
 

I've got some questions I better ask before making my video.
1. Chromium video playback is better in 1080p (30fps) than in 720p. 1080p is about 30% lost frames. 720p is more than 50%. Not a bad thing, but a bit strange. Anyone any idea why this is? It does a lot better than the XU4

2. The built-in microphone doesn't seem to work in Armbian. Any idea? Sorry I haven't done a big investigation on that. Didn't find it too important.

3. The Search function in Synaptic package manager freezes the program. Otherwise it works well. I've had this issue on other SBC's with Armbian. I don't know if it's so on every SBC. It's just a small detail.

4. It doesn't throttle. Max temp is 91°C after 8 minutes full action. Is there any protection?

5. Is there a fix for the restart instead of shutting down?

I haven't tried installing Amrbian on the eMMC yet. Think I'll check that tomorrow.

 

Otherwise ain't got any problems with it. I didn't expect this. This is going into my SBC laptop instead of my Odroid C2.

Thank you for all the great work.

 

 

[Igor]

8 hours ago, NicoD said:

Hi guys.

I've almost finished my research on the NanoPC T3+.

Again Armbian is the best distro available on it. A lot of problems with the FriendlyArm's Lubuntu.

Armbian support is pretty much WIP and there is still a list of things that need to be developed or fixed. But the board is usable with certain limitations.

 

9 hours ago, NicoD said:

Chromium video playback

We don't focus to this function in general. Tweaking Chromium is somehow a too big problem for us.

 

9 hours ago, NicoD said:

The built-in microphone

Honestly, I haven't notice that it is there  

 

9 hours ago, NicoD said:

I haven't tried installing Amrbian on the eMMC yet. Think I'll check that tomorrow.

Don't. It does not work. Somebody needs to fix eMMC support for it in u-boot and that someone apparently does not exists.

 

Bottom line. Perhaps a few hundred hours would need to be invested in this board to get those things operational. Now do the math and consider that nobody is paying for this.