Raspberry Pi 3B

5 Devices

B

This was the first group of Raspberry Pis I bought specifically for myself and for a project. These devices ran my ARM data center, in a custom-designed laser-cut case that held all my Raspberry Pis and a couple other devices. With quad 64-bit cores, gigabit networking, and wireless, this was the first option that could actually run modern workloads (for the time).

These still had the 1 GB RAM limitation, restricting certain workloads, but it was still a capable, stable board. After a lot of tinkering, mostly with the OS, these proved a solid platform. I still run them with Raspberry Pi OS and DietPi, and both work well.

I use the Geekworm Armor Case with this, although I don’t think it was this exact variant.

Raspberry Pi 3B+

6 Devices (+2 Dead)

B

The jump from the 3B to the 3B+ seems small, but the killer feature that made me almost restart my project was the inclusion of a PoE header. Now, a PoE HAT could be put on the board and suddenly you no longer needed a microUSB cable. It was an absolute game changer for me.

These Pis were all over my house, running PoE HATs and a variety of services. I even built one into a screen so I just needed one cable to power the whole thing. It was amazing.

This is one of the only generations of Pi where I had a failure. One of my original units simply stopped working, and I have no idea why. It is mounted in a shadow box on my wall, since it was the original node that got me started.

These are still completely capable of anything I need to throw at them, with the only bottleneck possibly being their lackluster RAM. When these were coming out, 1 GB was starting to not be enough for some workloads, and the 64-bit architecture meant it could be pushed harder.

I use the Geekworm Armor Case with this, and it works great. For PoE, I don’t want to recommend a HAT because they all seem to have different pros and cons, and all of them get ridiculously hot.

Raspberry Pi 4B

4 Devices (4 GB Model)

8 Devices (8 GB Model)

A

To say I liked the Pi 4 might be an understatement. The jump from 1 GB RAM to 8 GB was unbelievable. Suddenly so much was possible; web servers, services that hogged RAM, even things like PLEX and Jellyfin. This was the board I decided to redo my entire project with, from the ground up. USB 3 meant fast SSDs were feasible, and the WiFi and Gigabit Ethernet actually meant something now.

These run whatever they need to. Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD, DietPi, Armbian, OpenWRT, Raspberry Pi OS. Right now all of them are running Raspberry Pi OS, and working well.

I use the Geekworm Armor Case slim variant for these, since I have so many. With a small fan pointing at these, I can cool all of them at once.

Raspberry Pi 5B

1 Device (4 GB Model)

2 Devices (8 GB Model)

A

It’s a Raspberry Pi, so the mantra is pretty similar to the others at this point. One major benefit over the Pi 4 so far has been the dual HDMI monitors, which I was able to use as a travel desktop and Kodi test platform. The power button has also been a nice addition; no more unplugging and plugging USB just to power cycle.

Odroid XU4

2 Devices

B

These might be some of my favorite devices. The Odroid XU4 is still a powerhouse today, and has several derivatives. While it’s starting to get a little old in terms of its ARMv7 CPU, it still packs a punch with its 8 mixed cores.

Simple to use, powerful, and fairly well documented, I still use these to test some deployments. Since they take 5V in a barrel jack, a PoE+ to 5V adapter can be used to make them PoE capable, and I’ve been using them in that configuration for ages. Armbian, DietPi, Ubuntu all support it, and it’s a fairly mainstream device.

PINE 64 Plus

1 Device

A

When this was launcher, it was touted as a competitor to the Raspberry Pi, in a time before 64-bit ARM was common. While there were some issues with the initial launch, and the board was massive by comparison, they did get quite a few things right.

The first was the port arrangement. With power and Ethernet on the same side, it was feasible to mount a bunch of these all right next to each other, which was good because these things were MASSIVE.

I used this as a main node in my project because the CPU absolutely shredded everything. Stability was at a premium back then, and this thing was very stable.

ROCK64

4 Devices

A

A direct competitor to the Raspberry Pi 4B at the time of the chip shortage, this simple device had everything you might want in a server SBC and threw everything else out. No WiFi, no microUSB power, just a barrel connector, Ethernet, a powerful CPU, and a decent amount of RAM. The addition of EMMC module was a great touch, if a little more annoying to reflash than a MicroSD card.

I used these and DietPi to build a GlusterFS cluster, which might be where they stay for a while. The speed is pretty terrible, but these boards definitely aren’t the main problem.

NanoPi Neo

2 Devices

D

The Neo is a tiny device with a tiny CPU and a comically massive Ethernet port by comparison. With a 32-bit CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and 4 cores, it’s not fast, but it’s absolutely tiny.

These don’t really work as SBC servers. Their CPU placement on the bottom makes them impractical for mounting and cooling, their miniature size means they lack almost any features. They’re really meant for integrated projects, not to be worked with and hammered. I have an idea for an ADS-B device with one of these, but that’s just an idea. Right now, they’re just not very usable. They are supported though, with DietPi and Armbian keeping them relatively up-to-date.

NanoPi M1

2 Devices

F

I bought these as media center devices, and they might be one of the biggest flops I’ve ever bought. The M1 was touted as a device with the same hardware capabilities as a Chromecast or other similar device. IR receiver, microphone, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, the works. The only issue was that they had the same Allwinner H3 chip as a lot of other low-end devices.

This board is similar to the Orange Pi One and Udoo Quad in that it’s been almost completely abandoned, and for good reason. It’s not practical, it’s not good, and it barely has enough horsepower to even outperform a Pi 2.

NanoPi R5S

2 Devices

A

After a long period of not looking at NanoPi, I chanced on something about the R2S, and decided to look at their product line. Behold, the R5S, a device that I instantly took a liking to as an SBC router. The only problem with that plan was that OpenWRT does not have an internal build for the 5 or 6 series, and the only other option is a build from FriendlyARM themselves, which requires me to have faith in a site that hosts their OS images on Google Drive.

At the end of the day, this is a solid device, if it is missing MAC chips (I didn’t select that option and now wish I did). With onboard EMMC and an M.2 slot, it’s pretty good. The all-metal case dissipates heat and is a very nice addition.

Rock 5B

2 Devices

A+

The Rock 5B was one of the first SBCs with 16 GB RAM, 2.5 Gb Networking, M.2 NVMe, and the RK3588 CPU. This was the device I wanted to be the next generation of ARM SBCs, and in a way, it is. With the latest firmware, it can boot over NVMe, run at full speed, and wipe the floor with the competition. It’s an amazing device.

That being said, this is a RockChip CPU, so there are some oddities with the kernel. I’m sure once the RK35xx elements are mainlined this will be exceptional, but there are some issues, namely in trying to use anything that requires DKMS.

I use my two with DietPi, and they have been amazing. These are the devices I wanted when I started the SBC datacenter project.

ClearFog Pro

1 Device

C

This was a device I bought for my original SBC Datacenter project, and it’s been a solid router since then. It has issues, especially since I have a very early model with bodged wires and a disabled port, but it’s been solid otherwise.

The M.2 booting is a nice feature on such an old device, as is OpenWRT support. The SOC is an older Marvell Armada chip with 1 GB RAM, but the two Mini PCIe slots, switching chip, and SFP port mean it still has utility even as a 32-bit board.

Recently I retired this, not because it’s bad, but because modern offerings have finally caught up and outclassed this. BananaPi has some serious competition on offer, and FriendlyARM has devices that outclass the ClearFog Base.

Orange Pi One

2 Devices

F

This was the first non-Raspberry Pi device I ever bought, and boy did I regret it. Back before Armbian was mainstream, or even popular, this device barely could run the OS it was shipped with.

Now, this is a device that has been almost forgotten. Only a handful of distributions still support it, with a nightly version of Armbian being one of two that I found. The CPU and RAM on this were comparable to a Pi 2B, but with none of the documentation. There were other issues too, like how Orange Pi doesn’t have MAC chips for their Ethernet and WiFi, depending instead on auto-generation in uBoot.

Orange Pi Zero/R1

2 Devices (Zero) (+2 Dead)

2 Devices (R1)

D

Another set of Orange Pi devices I was deeply disappointed by. This was quite a special device at the time I bought it. Nothing else quite fit the form factor of the Zero, and even today the form factor and minimal features are unique. That’s not to say it was good. The WiFi still doesn’t have proper support from the Linux kernel, and the drivers are closed source blobs.

Unlike the One, the Zero and R1 are still fairly well supported from places like DietPi, Armbian, and OpenWRT. I do like these little devices, but they are incredibly fragile. I’ve destroyed the antennae on one, and the MicroSD slot on another.

VisionFive 2

4 Devices

C

This device gives me complicated feelings. On the one hand it’s specs are great; 8 GB RAM, quad RISC-V cores, dual 1 Gb Ethernet, NVMe, and USB 3. On the other hand, getting this thing working has been such a massive pain I almost wish I had returned them all.

Currently I have these working on the Ubuntu 24.04 prebuilt image. It boots properly, and is an LTS, so it’s one of the few times I’m comfortable adding Ubuntu to my almost entirely Debian network. That said, there’s still a lot of issues Ubuntu can’t fix. The Ubuntu image doesn’t have support for HDMI for one.

The entire board also gets ridiculously hot, even while idle. I had to add a fan because the four boards I got were hot enough to start warping the plastic cases I designed for them originally, which I’ve never seen before.

CubieBoard 3

2 Devices

F

The CubieBoard 3 or CubieTruck is both a very interesting device and also a brick. Support for this thing was dropped ages ago. It’s barely worth talking about, but I do want to mention it because it had a very novel feature; a SATA header. Before M.2 and NVMe, this was actually a good idea, even if it wasn’t bootable.

Banana Pi M1

2 Devices

F

Another device that’s basically gone. The Banana Pi was a similar form factor to the original Raspberry Pi, with an Allwinner A20 CPU. It also had a SATA port.

And that’s basically it. It’s not that interesting a device.

CHIP

3 Devices

FF

Do I even need to explain what happened here? If you don’t know, read this. In short, the company behind CHIP, '“the $9 Computer”, folded, leaving most of the devices next to useless, since the documentation seemed to fail with the company. It was a cheap, under-powered, limited device. That’s basically it.

Udoo Quad

2 Devices

FF

This was an interesting device when it was announced, but it has since basically vanished. The last updates on the Udoo website are about Ubuntu 14.04 support and a discontinuation of the Quad model. This board has almost no support, having only rolling support from Armbian and no maintainer.

It’s a bit of a shame because the core idea is interesting. Onboard the Udoo is basically an Arduino One, which makes it a direct integration with the host OS.

BeagleBone Black

1 Device

FF

The BeagleBone is a device I can never really find a reason to use. Its specs are in line with the original Raspberry Pi, so it’s old, slow, and awkward. Its 9V power supply is an awkward voltage, but at least the barrel jack and Ethernet are on the same side.

This is a device for things, not for being a computer.