SBC / Low Power boards general - Raspberry Pi and what not

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AmpleApricots said:
All the RISCV SoC vendors seem to go down the road of the ARM vendors putting their chips out there and then not caring if they'll ever be supported by anything but their 3 years out-of-support hacked linux kernel. Pretty disappointing to tell the truth. I guess all they really care about is also cheap TV boxes and crap like that.
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Most of these are stepping stones for closed source IOT (shitty net tvs come to mind) /military/gov use in China. They couldn't give less of a shit to open-source the code unless you're a big player like google. Allwinner is notorious for this.

Other groups (Orangepi does this a lot) give zero shits because lmao what are you going to do for violating the GPL? Sue me in China where the org can counter-sue and you get picked up by the MSS during counter-espionage operation?
 
Darkholme's Dungeon said:
Most of these are stepping stones for closed source IOT (shitty net tvs come to mind) /military/gov use in China. They couldn't give less of a shit to open-source the code unless you're a big player like google. Allwinner is notorious for this.
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The funny thing about Allwinner is that it's probably one of the manufacturers with the most comprehensive mainline support for their lineup of chips (and yes, no thanks to allwinner). The older ones are a schizos dream: No firmware blobs and CPU cores that don't do out-of-order execution (so immune against many of these sidechannel exploits by design). Of course you only get Pentium 3-4 performance, but can't have everything, right?

That said, and it needs to be said for fairness and completeness sake: a lot of the older SoCs are pretty well (or lets say, as well as they're ever gonna be) supported now, no matter the manufacturer. You can roughly say anything that goes up and includes having a big.little design with some dual core A72/A73 probably works with a mainline kernel now without giving you a headache. These, IMO, are the most interesting SoCs because you can get a fully fledged linux running in anything between 2-9W. Past that it gets spotty with the support, and the power consumption goes up dramatically to not be far below the lower end x86. For the enduser there's little point in these ARM systems in my opinion. They're less compatible and a lot more expensive than x86 offerings. For what you can get there you can usually also get an x86 system which often also will be vastly more power- and useful. It will consume more power, but you know, not really dramatically so. Maybe in a reduced battery life sense, but not in a painfully increased power bill sense. The only point in running these ARM boards is the novelty of having an ARM desktop and that's not a very good point.

I don't know if people still claim it but AMD64/x86_64/x86 (however you want to call it) isn't gonna be replaced by either ARM or RISCV. That would need a manufacturer that sets out to make them fully compatible with mainline/Windows, as performant as x86 mid-range while also being competitive price-wise. It's just not gonna happen.
 
AmpleApricots said:
I don't know if people still claim it but AMD64/x86_64/x86 (however you want to call it) isn't gonna be replaced by either ARM or RISCV. That would need a manufacturer that sets out to make them fully compatible with mainline/Windows, as performant as x86 mid-range while also being competitive price-wise. It's just not gonna happen.
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RISCV has uses for national security (at least for China). At that point the it's less about efficiency and more about the "indepdenence" from the US/EU based ISAs (not that RISCV isn't designed by Berkley lmao).
 
Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but what's the best Android-based TV box out there that can at least handle N64 games? I have a FireTV stick 4K (1st gen) and unfortunately it just doesn't have enough horsepower for more demanding N64 titles. I'm also not a fan of being forced to use Amazon's launcher.
I sold my Raspberry Pi 4 and from what I remember it had lackluster Android support, mainly because of no GPU acceleration.
 
MF-690T said:
Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but what's the best Android-based TV box out there that can at least handle N64 games? I have a FireTV stick 4K (1st gen) and unfortunately it just doesn't have enough horsepower for more demanding N64 titles. I'm also not a fan of being forced to use Amazon's launcher.
I sold my Raspberry Pi 4 and from what I remember it had lackluster Android support, mainly because of no GPU acceleration.
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You should ask the emulation thread.

I think S905X3 and RK3566 boxes might work, but I don't know what's "best" or the "good buy" in 2025, I just glanced at some ETA Prime videos:
 
MF-690T said:
Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but what's the best Android-based TV box out there that can at least handle N64 games? I have a FireTV stick 4K (1st gen) and unfortunately it just doesn't have enough horsepower for more demanding N64 titles. I'm also not a fan of being forced to use Amazon's launcher.
I sold my Raspberry Pi 4 and from what I remember it had lackluster Android support, mainly because of no GPU acceleration.
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Odroid N2+. You might have to tinker to get the full android support. It doesn't support hd+ content for streaming. It won't have the necessary drm compliance. But it can play 4k hdr10 content no issues locally. Back on point, it can run n64 games really well.
If you need all the streaming bells and whistles (proper drm widevine stuff), but don't mind a hit in performance, the onn 4K Pro seems good for around $50. its Walmart's streaming box.

If you just want to emulate games, the Odroid N2+ is it. You can put emuELEC on there and its just works. you'll need to supply your own games mind you.
 
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MF-690T said:
handle N64 games
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I'd also go for the S922X (as said, N2+) with it's two four big A73 cores for emulation as it's more likely to cover a much bigger range. The Quad-A53 of the S905X3 can feel a bit cramped sometimes. If price to the last dollar is not an issue, I'd also avoid Rockchip in favor of Amlogic for better mainline support and generally more active support with these kinds of projects, at least last time I checked. If you need anything more powerful than that, I'd give up on ARM and such and just buy a x86 thinclient used. They cost the same or less and are much more powerful and will always be supported by everything. These smaller, older ARM SoCs are still interesting for retrogaming and such as they're pretty much the only Linux-based systems that actually consume less power emulating these systems than the original systems themselves did. My Amiga 600 consumes ~7-9W. While beatable with ARM emulation, you'll consume more power if emulating on x86 which is kinda silly if you think about it.

The N2+ can often be had for 50-60 bucks used. I always want to buy one but then I do that stupid thing where I ask myself what I need another computer for and if I don't have enough computers already and I'll never need that many computers. It's very dumb and self defeating (you can never have too many computers).
 
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Does anyone have recommendations for a lower power consumption monitor to use with an SBC? I like e-ink as a concept and have been interested in the Dasung Paperlike 103, but apparently its power draw isn't that different from a regular flat screen display. I've previously tinkered with paperTTY on a Waveshare e-ink panel, but I'd like an actual monitor, and I am not tech savvy enough to make that possible. I guess you'd need to write a driver or something? I don't know.
 
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I'm probably not on enough hours of sleep to ask and feel like a boomer to even ask, but my parents would like their (non-smart) TV to :
  • Access their streaming services (such as Prime).
  • Be able to play local videos transferred from a PC.
  • Installation can be somewhat complex but use should be very simple.
I know that I did something very similar with a Raspberry Pi 2 + Kodi back in 2015. I'm thinking about getting a new Pi but the only one that is obtainable below 100$ where I live is the RPi 5 4 Gb RAM.

Is Kodi still the most relevant software to do this ? Would be the 4 Gb RPi a good enough hardware platform (1080p max) ?
Am I missing something obvious ?

Still related to SBC, saw the new Odroid-C5 and it looks mighty fine (I have a soft spot for HardKernel since buying the C1, which I'm still dicking around with), I'm definitely adding it to my Christmas wish list.
 
If they're wanting to access legit streaming services, then you'll need a streaming box that has widevine l1. without it, they'll only have streams up to 480p. which ,if they don't care, you can use anyways. idk about using kodi add-ons to stream amazon prime and whatnot.

Kodi is still relevant.

I suggested the onn 4K Pro for $50 above. it has all the streaming bells and whistles. uses android so you can install kodi. And you can buy it at any walmart. since Onn is walmart's in house brand.

The Odroid C5 will most likely be a killer kodi device down the line. Its still early days for it. I don't think it has an official coreelec build yet.

This is pretty good, and up to date, spreadsheet for good kodi sbcs.

Your folks probably don't need all the bells and whistles the top entries have.
 
VisionFive 2 Lite low-cost RISC-V SBC launched for $19.90 and up (Crowdfunding)

Why is SiFive using Kickstarter? Oh wait, it's StarFive.

MorallyGreyFrog said:
I like e-ink as a concept and have been interested in the Dasung Paperlike 103, but apparently its power draw isn't that different from a regular flat screen display.
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I don't know how true that is, but it could become true:

FPGA-based Modos Paper Dev Kit supports a wide range of E-Ink displays, up to 75 Hz refresh rate (Crowdfunding)
 
tehpope said:
Anyway, what can you run on this sbc?
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I’d expect Debian 12/13 and Ubuntu images for the board, as the VisionFive 2 ran Debian 12 beta when I first tested it in February 2023. There was still a lot of software work to do at the time, but since then, two years have passed, so I’m sure great progress has been made on the software front.
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Absolutely nothing.
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
VisionFive 2 Lite low-cost RISC-V SBC launched for $19.90 and up (Crowdfunding)

Why is SiFive using Kickstarter? Oh wait, it's StarFive.
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Rumor mill is the new extentions approved this (last) year will be released in SBCs by Orangepi later this year around Christmas, so it might not be a good proposition. Plus this one's still affected by ghostwrite.
tehpope said:
Anyway, what can you run on this sbc?
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Nothing reasonable with the standard images provided by the hardware dev.
If you use another distro they won't help you for jack shit, not like the regular images aren't broken as fuck in the first place, things like... dual NVME wont work... Lmao get fucked SD card priority boot order can't be changed, missing kernel modules (tun for wireguard/openvpn as example), can't get wifi to work, can't get POE to work, shitty graphics support (no Mesa), etc.

It's only useful if you want to have CI/QA on a native to RISC-V and not via an emulator. There's that Milk V network switch which is an interesting concept but overpriced as fuck.

Also AI tasks with the cluster modules I guess that's supposed to beat the usual large CUDA GPU/AI card at efficency/watt. But at that stage just get a specalized AI NPU device.
 
Darkholme's Dungeon said:
Nothing reasonable with the standard images provided by the hardware dev.
If you use another distro they won't help you for jack shit, not like the regular images aren't broken as fuck in the first place, things like... dual NVME wont work... Lmao get fucked SD card priority boot order can't be changed, missing kernel modules (tun for wireguard/openvpn as example), can't get wifi to work, can't get POE to work, shitty graphics support (no Mesa), etc.

It's only useful if you want to have CI/QA on a native to RISC-V and not via an emulator. There's that Milk V network switch which is an interesting concept but overpriced as fuck.

Also AI tasks with the cluster modules I guess that's supposed to beat the usual large CUDA GPU/AI card at efficency/watt. But at that stage just get a specalized AI NPU device.
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I'll stick with Hardkenel and Raspberry Pi then.
 
tehpope said:
I'll stick with Hardkenel and Raspberry Pi then.
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The only reason to use RISCV was if you were paranoid about the hidden backdoors (but it's not like ghostwrite isn't a vunerability) on chips or if you wanted to dev some new shit to support the ecosystem... I guess just wait a bit and see how the new chips shake out.
Otherwise stick to ARM for low power chips or MIPS like the Avaota-A1.
 
Pi Zero-sized Radxa Cubie A7Z SBC features Allwinner A733 Cortex-A76/A55 SoC, up to 16GB RAM, WiFi 6

Allwinner-A733-Raspberry-Pi-Zero-SBC.webp
 
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