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Any affordable RISC-V VPS?
This is purely because I want to play with the architecture, not an emulator, without buying a SBC.
I know Scaleway offers RISC-V machines but they are somewhat pricey, so I was wondering if anyone knew of a provider offering RISC-V machines at LET prices.
Thanked by 1wadhah
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you can buy risc-v devices for like $40-50 one-time.
Edit - I'm sure risc-v low end vps are highly un-profitable, lol
There are not really any datacenter-grade RISC-V server boards yet. At most you can get 8 cores and 16 GB RAM. As such the VPS density per board will be low, and cheap prices are unlikely.
You could try convincing the few Raspberry Pi hosters to add RISC-V boards into their lineup.
Or simply buy your own, for example https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/03/08/orange-pi-rv2-low-cost-risc-v-sbc-ky-x1-octa-core-soc-2-tops-ai-accelerator/
This is the cheapest one per specs so far, but the SoC listed is unknown (or could be a relabeled known one, but why), as well as what is the software support status for it.
I'm also in the same boat and have been thinking of just getting something for the home to tinker with since I can't find any reasonable vpses.
The link @rm_ posted was great so I'll probably go with that (if I find any stock
)
Thanks guys. I've just ordered the board @rm_ linked. And now I wait.
Come back with a review if you can
I have received it actually yesterday from China. I need to find time this weekend. Remind me if I forget...
So I took a few minutes to play with the board.
I burnt the "official" Ubuntu image, the server one, without a GUI, on a sdcard. I also plugged a M2 NVMEs.
I plugged a network cable in one of the NIC, inserted the sdcard and powered the board on with a USB-C cable.
After a while I could ssh into the thing using the default password.
Then I just updated Ubuntu via 'apt'. I wish the default image was Fedora so I could use 'dnf' but it is what it is.
The updating felt snappy, but my experience with SBCs is basically limited to the original Raspberry Pi.
I also removed the partitions on the NVME via 'parted'.
Next step is to install the OS onto the NVME. That's for Sunday.
So far everything was quite straightforward, thanks to the manual.
The device got somewhat hot though.
I will be waiting for the yabs
(hide your network info though)
I'll try, once it boots from the NVME. Not sure if geekbench has be ported to RISC-V though?!
https://www.geekbench.com/preview/
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/22390817?baseline=22380132
It seems possible from a quick search?
I know sysbench isn't ported to riskv because I looked into it a while ago but geekbench seems to be
This morning I was able to run Geekbench 6: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/11377100
I installed the OS on the NVMe without issue, and was also able to configure the Wifi easily.
I haven't used any kind of cooler.
YABS says the architecture is not supported.
Oh that's pretty good considering
Still waiting for my order to arrive and I can't wait
And the Geekbench 5 : https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/23452333
lm_sensors shows pikes above 90°C during the multi-core test. Perhaps I should look for a heat sink...
What results does it get in a browser js benchmark like google octane and mozilla kraken?
Can it play 60 fps 720p videos or 1080p without frame drops?
tbh I have never seen such a long cpu name
No idea sorry, I did not install any graphical environment.
It does seem that the power of these things is just multicore applications, imagine 100s of them chained together for dirt cheap (compared to arm/x64)
Can't wait till they mature more
@fredo1664 do you have any way to monitor the power usage while running cpu benchmarks? They should be really light on power
No sorry, I dont have the means to do this.
I got mine too, and now made a Debian 13 image for it. Thanks