New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
This was just discussed in another thread. Look at this:
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/new-arrivals/1553371.html
What about the Odroid XU4? Its much more powerful than the Pi.
http://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-xu4Adding the power supply and SD storage should still keep it under $100 although hardkernel recommends the eMMC modules. Are you looking for any specific hardware with the board?
The main question is - what do you want to use it for? Start from there.
Home media center
Honestly, a cheap board with an externally powered hard drive would probably do the trick. Samba will handle sharing with Windows clients.
@sonic, generally there's plenty of boards from $17 to $40 but if you don't mind spending $100, then it's probably best to buy the best.
I wouldn't stick my neck out for one of those.
Banana Pro has an eSata port. Might be helpful for your case.
But for 100 you can even buy small pc"s which run Windows and run better than these .
For $100, and with ARM, get a Parallella. Or if you want something else with an Intel CPU (4 cores), perhaps the MeeGoPad T01? Or with a screen, the Chuwi Vi8.
You could buy a used/older Windows tower for less than $100 with better specs than these little things. Though I must say, these things are quite powerful!
If its for a media PC why not just buy a cheap android TV box and keep the rest and buy some more VPS?
$34.99 w/ free shipping. About as cheap as a pi (before accessories), but actually runs x86. DVI output only though, no HDMI.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Thin-Client-t5630-Windows-XPe-Eden-1GF-1GT-TC-US-1GB-FLASH-1GB-RAM-w-PSU-/191632098891
According to the following page, allegedly capable of output up to 1920x1200 (so hopefully 1080p is comprehended). Some support for hardware video decode is available on VIAChrome9 HC3, not sure if enough to play high-quality files though.
http://icecat.us/en/p/hp/fq801at-aba1071/m-y-kh-ch-c-u-h-nh-t-i-thi-u-blade-pc-t5630+Thin+Client-3233259.html
Note that you'd probably want to keep the windows install on it, as I'm entirely unsure that Linux even supports video decode acceleration on that graphics, and the CPU on that couldn't cut soft cheese.
I recently bought a gigabyte brix j1900 to replace my pi. Not really a lot more since I had a spare hard drive and ram stick. So maybe try that if you're willing to go a little higher.
ZOTAC ZBOX BI320
The best cheap x86 mini PCs on the market today are the Braswell-based Intel NUC Kit NUC5PPYH (based on Pentium N3700) and NUC5CPYH (Celeron N3050). They have offical manufacturer support for Linux and the 4K resolution (@30Hz). The CPU is fast. It is a real PC, it may be also used as general purpose computer and home server. The CPU does support virtualization. EDIT: forgot to mention that the Braswell GPU does support HEVC decoding at 4k, this is almost unique for a cheap system today.
A cheaper alternative are the Intel Z37xx boxes (basically tablet PCs). I bought the Pipo X7 a few months ago. Not so bad as media center and Internet browsing machine, but storage speed is horrible, both the internal SSD and the USB 2.0 external disks are too slow for any demanding Windows application. The RJ45 port is internally connected to a USB hub. I was unable to get the 4K resolution on my TV after the Windows 10 upgrade.
ARM-based devices are even slower. I tried several of them and I enjoy most the Raspberry Pi 2: almost perfect Debian 7 porting with drivers for many common peripherals; lots of expansion cards (I bought a Hi-Fi audio card); pre-built SD card images means that the system is ready to use in 30 minutes. Not the fastest CPU on the market, but fast enough for media center use and light web browsing. The storage bottleneck is the same as PIPO X7. It does support 4K resolution (@15Hz), not fast enough for movies but still enough to use the Debian desktop.
I looked at the braswell but it's 50 pounds more from amazon for the N3700 vs the J1900 for 90 pounds. So it's not good value if you aren't doing much graphically as the cpu performance is not a lot different.
You are correct: Braswell is better suited towards graphics applications, also due to the AES new instructions support and the GPU offload of video codecs. The OP asked for a home media center, so I believe that Braswell is better for this application.
A self build is cheaper than the NUC: according to Newegg the Asrock N3150B-ITX mainboard plus the Kingston 4 Gb module KVR16LS11/4 are about $100. This board is compatible with the old 20 pin ATX connector and also has legacy connectors (PS/2, RS232 and even a Centronics parallel port, unbelievable!), a perfect match to any free old PC case and peripherals.
What kind of media are you looking to serve, and what interface do you use? I've found my original Raspberry Pi to be quite serviceable for streaming media with XBMC+icefilms+1channel+local mkv 720p media.