Cheapest SBC with gigabit ethernet and usb3?

[p0ke]

At the moment I'm running a Raspberry Pi 2 as a sort of NAS, with 2 4TB USB HDD's hooked to it. It works, and I'm able to stream 1080p video to my Android TV from it, but transferring bigger files (backed up VST's etc) to and from it is painstakingly slow. Also, once I get a 4K TV, it won't be able to handle that anymore.
Anyway... I've been looking into upgrading it to a Raspberry Pi 4 or similar that has gigabit ethernet and USB3. Both my HDD's are USB3 and the machine is hooked directly to a mesh AP that has gigabit ethernet, so I imagine the transfer speeds should be much higher.

So my question is, does anyone have any experience of SBC's other than the RPi? There are plenty of options these days, and some of them seem a bit more suited for the job. For example the RPi4 has 2x4k outputs, which I don't need. It sits headless in the basement and just serves files, so I'd rather save on that.

 

[p0ke]

I'm mainly considering the RockPi E - it ticks all the boxes, and costs $19 (or $21 with more RAM)- or the NanoPi Neo3, which is basically the same thing in an even smaller form. The NanoPi costs $21 with a case.
The only issue is that both only have one USB3.0 port, so I would need to use a hub with it to get both HDD's plugged in. But that's probably not a problem.

 

[WarMachine]

I've been keeping an eye on SBC for a little while now. Have you checked out any of the ODROID stuff? They are a little more expensive, but still under $100. They seem to be more supped up versions of Raspberry Pi's and i think they can run Windows as well (if that matters)

EDIT: out of stock on this site, but gives you a good idea of what you'd be getting into:
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2-with-4gbyte-ram/

 

[p0ke]

i think they can run Windows as well (if that matters)

Nope, I most definitely don't want to run Windows But those things look like something to consider in general

At the moment though, the RPi4 pretty much looks like the best bet after all. After shipping it'd end up costing only a couple of euros more than the cheaper Chinese alternatives I looked at, and it'll have better support. But yeah, we'll see what I end up doing once I get some money (my summer holiday has made a significant dent in my account) ...

 

[WarMachine]

Nope, I most definitely don't want to run Windows But those things look like something to consider in general

At the moment though, the RPi4 pretty much looks like the best bet after all. After shipping it'd end up costing only a couple of euros more than the cheaper Chinese alternatives I looked at, and it'll have better support. But yeah, we'll see what I end up doing once I get some money (my summer holiday has made a significant dent in my account) ...

Keep us posted man. I've been interested in picking up an RPi4 to use as a daily driver, i mainly just use Reaper and a handful of VST's as it is. If i didn't recently build a gaming rig as a 2nd computer id have an RPi4 for retrogaming with Batocera/RetroPie lol.

 

[Adieu]

Wth is an SBC?

 

[p0ke]

Wth is an SBC?

Single Board Computer (Raspberry Pi and similar devices)

Keep us posted man. I've been interested in picking up an RPi4 to use as a daily driver, i mainly just use Reaper and a handful of VST's as it is. If i didn't recently build a gaming rig as a 2nd computer id have an RPi4 for retrogaming with Batocera/RetroPie lol.

Sure I don't know how useful my "findings" will be though, as I'm intending to use it only for file sharing in my local network. As for RetroPie, I've given that a go before and I recall it running decently even on the RPi2, and the RPi4 is multiple times that powerful.
I don't know how feasible it would be to run one as a daily driver though... Because even if it had all the power in the world, it's running an ARM processor and therefore won't run Reaper. And even if there is an ARM build of Reaper, it won't run most VST's. It's possible to run x86 code on ARM using Qemu and other technologies, but AFAIK that's slow as hell.

Of course if you're willing to use open source alternatives, it might do the trick

Also with Apple moving to ARM-based processors the situation might change pretty soon and it might even enable creating Hackintoshes out of Raspberry Pi's. That'd be really cool...

 

[p0ke]

I ended up ordering a NanoPI Neo3 - it's tiny, but has usb3 and gigabit ethernet, so it ticks the required boxes. It also doesn't have a video output, so it's saving exactly where I wanted it to. I payed 17€ for it (+5€ shipping).
Now I'm just looking for a case for it, and I guess I'll buy a generic heatsink too while I'm at it. I'll post some kind of review once it arrives

 

[p0ke]

... blah, stupid me should've bought the case bundle for a couple of € extra. Can't find a separate case for it anywhere

Oh well, it would've been too small to fit a fan anyway, and I just read it gets pretty hot, so some makeshift case might be better anyway... I guess I could just dremel some holes into some tupperware container and use that

 

[p0ke]

Received the NanoPI today, and "nano" definitely isn't an exaggeration. It tiny af!

There it is next to a rpi2. I'll take another pic together with the rpi zero once I find it amidst all the cables on my desk

We'll see when I get to try it out...

 

[p0ke]

There. They're basically the same size, but the NanoPi has multiple times higher performance.

 

[Seabeast2000]

I ended up ordering a NanoPI Neo3 - it's tiny, but has usb3 and gigabit ethernet, so it ticks the required boxes. It also doesn't have a video output, so it's saving exactly where I wanted it to. I payed 17€ for it (+5€ shipping).
Now I'm just looking for a case for it, and I guess I'll buy a generic heatsink too while I'm at it. I'll post some kind of review once it arrives

Just drop in a jar of that non conductive cooling oil.

 

[p0ke]

Just drop in a jar of that non conductive cooling oil.

Nah, I ended up ordering a typical plastic junction box (which has some excess space all around) and I'll just drill/dremel holes for the ports and that should do the trick.
I also ordered a 50x50cm heatsink (the board is 48x48) and some raspberry pi heatsinks, so we'll see what I end up actually using. The box I ordered should have enough room for a small fan too if it turns out it needs one. The board has a fan connector and I happen to have a spare mini ITX cpu fan that should do the trick if it indeed needs one. But we'll see.
I'm also waiting for my microsd card shipment, should be here on Monday... Then I can finally test this thing.

 

[p0ke]

Finally got the little beast up and running.
Had some issues getting it to boot at first, as the instructions I had just didn't boot for some reason. So I flashed the stock Ubuntu Core image onto the sd, then wiped the actual ext4 partition and put Arch Linux ARM on there. Then it booted, no problem.

Seems very promising so far, boots super fast even though I'm using a Class 4 SD for now and ssh connections feel pretty much like typing locally on a computer (whereas the RPi2 had a little delay all the time). I've yet to benchmark it though. It's running kinda warm - 62°C on basically idle right now, but then it's sitting right next to our water heater. I also haven't hooked up my fan yet.

 

[p0ke]

Been running the machine for a bit over a week now and no issues so far! Getting Arch Linux ARM to run 100% took a bit of work - I essentially had to also copy all the kernel modules from the Ubuntu Core image to get it to work, because the old bootloader also loads an old kernel that doesn't match the one from the Arch Linux repo. It's not super old still, so I think I can live with this setup for now.

Anyway, quick speed comparison: mounting smb shares from it on my laptop feels almost like using directly connected hard drives, which is really cool. Yeah, sure, large folders can take a few seconds to open, but mostly everything happens right away. Also transfer speeds over smb went from 5-7MB/s on the RPi2 to around 25-30MB/s on the NanoPi, so I'm really happy about that. Watching videos from it on Kodi is also smoother now. Sometimes 1080p movies would have to buffer a bit from the RPi, now everything is instant, including seeking.

Like I said before, booting is now almost instant whereas the RPi would take several minutes. The difference is probably mostly in the bootloaders and stuff, but still.

Heat? Yeah, the machine runs at 60-65°C on idle, and doing video encoding using ffmpeg it goes up to 85°C. No higher than that though, so I suppose it's nothing to worry about. It's sitting caseless on a shelf for now, so I think I'll have to install a fan once I put it in a case. I have installed heatsinks on the RAM and CPU though.

 

[ElRay]

... doesn't have a video output ...

This I can understand as long as it's running well enough to ssh in, but how do you fix a configuration issue if you can't do that?

 

[p0ke]

This I can understand as long as it's running well enough to ssh in, but how do you fix a configuration issue if you can't do that?

Plug the sdcard into a computer already running Linux, fix the configuration and put it back in. That's pretty much the only way. That being said, it's pretty rare that anything would break the system so bad it won't run sshd.
Another alternative would be to connect the machine via some serial port adapter (the NanoPI does have separate debug-headers).

 

[Bandersnatch]

I wonder how the PiNano is going to handle serving 4k video over the network though. I have a full blown blade server (2 x 12 core Xeons, 64GB RAM) running Plex on a virtual instance of FreeNAS and 4k is still an issue for me.

 

[p0ke]

I wonder how the PiNano is going to handle serving 4k video over the network though. I have a full blown blade server (2 x 12 core Xeons, 64GB RAM) running Plex on a virtual instance of FreeNAS and 4k is still an issue for me.

Will give that a try once I get a 4K TV. I'd imagine the processor and ram not being an issue though, it's more about the disk i/o and network speed (unless the video is being transcoded).

 

[Bandersnatch]

Will give that a try once I get a 4K TV. I'd imagine the processor and ram not being an issue though, it's more about the disk i/o and network speed (unless the video is being transcoded).

From what I understand, it's still CPU bound because plex does transcode the video, but while you do need something relatively decent to transcode 4k, what matters more is how many simultaneous streams plex is trying to serve.