Oops, we have a few specs corrections for some of the SBCs. - le Potato has 100MBit Fast Ethernet, not GbE. - Renegade has up to 4GB of DDR4 - Orange Pi3 has 2x USB3.0 ports and 1x USB2.0 - N2+ has 4x USB3.0 and 1 micro USB OTG port. Our sincere apologies for the mistakes! We'll get the video fixed as soon as possible! Have you used any of these alternative Pis? If so, for what project? Raspberry Pi 4 Model B: geni.us/RH5vfB Banana PI M5: geni.us/KK6aB Odroid C4: my.geni.us/links#! Libre "Le Potato": geni.us/Qwsr Libre "Renegade": geni.us/qNGet Orange Pi 3 LTS: geni.us/Y1OlDj2 Odroid N2+: geni.us/2M12p Orange Pi 5: geni.us/t9bsNin Rock Pi 4C+: geni.us/iGwi Nano Pi M4B: geni.us/Csx8uW Seeed Mini Router: geni.us/3jAdA Seeed Studio LinkStar-H68K-0232 Router: geni.us/jzad Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.
Btw Linus, have you taken a look at the new RISC-V SBC from Si-Five? They have improved a LOT in the past couple of years to the point their latest SBCs beat the pi at similar price point
I usually clap down hard on gallery suggestions as part of my trollish baiting repertoire, but today I am here to stand with and agree with my bro here. Also loving this spin on a circle A.
Did you know that pie charts have been banned in a multitude of American companies, because it is considered “fat shaming” or at the very least “psychological torture”.
The advantage with Raspberry is their ecosystem and community support and other boards don't really come close to it. Unless other companies start giving proper ootb drivers for their SBCs, Pis are still the only way to go unfortunately
This, was similar comment myself. While alternatives might be objectively better in themselves, there is so much to be said for a big enthusiastic community. Some alternatives are compatible enough that rasp pi community is still valid
Absolutely agree. I did a bunch of research on these 3rd party 'clones' a few months back, and the biggest issue I found was forums that were littered with questions but no answers. Left little confidence that I would get my projects up and running stable without a huge amount of customization and learning of the kernel level stuff due to the lack of support when things go wrong
One of the great things about the Raspberry Pi is how well documented it is. You can find whatever information about it that you need fairly easily. I wonder how easy it would be to find solutions online to any problems you might encounter when working with alternatives.
For folks that want more in-depth reviews of these SBC, Explaining Computers is a great channel. The guy does pretty extensive testing for comparison and has been at it for years.
I wish you talked more about the software aspect of those pi alternatives. Unlike desktop computers, each SBC manufacturer has to provide their own Linux image (often with custom kernel patches), meaning that compared to RasPis there's often fewer OSes available, more compatibilities issues, and much fewer online resources available for troubleshooting. That's the main reason why Pis are still the most popular boards despite not having the best hardware offering.
Not just software aspects, I totally miss testing basic tasks. Synthetic benchmarks tell nothing about choppy TH-cam videos, performance bottlenecks (like a gigabit Ethernet controller put behind a 480 megabit USB 2.0 HUB IC) or overheating in no time. My friend tested a BananaPi router many-many years ago, and while being gigabit, the CPU could only handle 130 megabit WAN traffic because of PPPoE. Also I wouldn't be happy to have Android 9 in 2023. Android 14 beta just launched. Sincerely: an SBC enjoyer with BeagleBones, OragePis and every Raspberry Pi generation.
It's also worth noting that the n2+ is the only one that includes an RTC clock, which is a very useful feature for industrial devices or embedded systems.
I'd love to see you guys try some projects with some of these to see how much or little trouble you run into without the full support of the raspberry pi community. Maybe boost the community around these alternative single board computers
not hard. most projects require your own coding and the rest is simply hardware compatibility. If GPIO is your goal and you know linux and python, then you are set. Also you need a minimum of 2GB of ram to compile python for arm with additional performance flags. In other words only things that are pi specific that unskilled people cant do, can be replicated on other SBCs given that they have USB, GPIO and other similar things. As long as the OS is debian based, drivers/hardware works in it, you are set.
Yeah, a shootout comparing the user-experience of the various RPi alternatives, as opposed to their raw technical specifications would be very interesting.
@@System0Error0Message Well obviously it can be done, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who watches these videos and is only semi-skilled with Linux and Python. Personally, I'm willing to write a few programs, squish a few bugs, and so on, but if at the end of the day I can't figure out what I'm not doing right, then I just flushed my money and time down the toilet. Without someone putting a name to all the problems you face, it gets a lot harder to research solutions. I once had an old used laptop from 2008 or something (I think it was a Gateway m285-e) with a built in drawing tablet. It originally ran windows xp tablet edition, which I tried to install and all, but I couldn't because something about the whole process wasn't SATA compatible, but the motherboard only had a SATA port. I tried modifying the Windows iso with NTLite to integrate SATA drivers directly, but that didn't work. I also kept running into something about needing to install it with a floppy disk (Which is weird, because I know there are windows XP install discs), but somewhere online, someone said I could do it with a USB if I formatted it to FAT16 and limited the size. That didn't work. I installed Linux a couple of times on it, but I couldn't find support for the drawing tablet on any of the distros I tried, so I researched writing my own driver, and I don't remember why I stopped there. Maybe I lost interest, or no longer had time to sink into that project. My point is, some of us like to get our hands dirty, but want to know what we're getting into, and want to see what we'll get out of it, or heck, just think it'd be a fun video.
@@System0Error0Message Lets be real. 99% of linus viewers wouldnt know programming and if they do, they would be the type to wonder why their python script that uses win32api isnt working on their linux computer.
Last i checked many of the things you can do with a Raspberry aren't as straightforward with these other sbc's. The problem was that Pi was so good that businesses started using it for their projects and made demand skyrocket and alongside it, prices.
@@christopher480 yes but companies now are depending on pi's. Official rpi sellers are selling most products to companies and only a little portion to retail customers. Probably because companies pay more with a higher volume.
Perhaps for next comparison, even if you compare only the specs, I'd mention the power consumption. For SBCs it might be important. After all, the whole appeal of ARM processors was computation per Watt. Typically boards with larger RAM have higher power floor.
Those RISC-V's are coming in hard. I am of the opinion that the power draw is mostly because of the addition of usb 3.0-3.1. If you where to take a look at the Orange pi one plus as compared to the orange pi 3 it the same cpu but requires less power.
Having owned multiple Pis and alternatives, I'm of the opinion that for most IoT use cases, an older model Pi 3B is all you need. It works fine and hits that sweet spot of performance and power draw.
Awesome! Of course, the older model Pis are all out of stock/costs hundreds of dollars now, so that conclusion doesn't help. Whereas the alternatives are at least able to be purchased.
@@Nordlicht05 I did something similar with my old PC, but it's a hefty system which sucks up a lot of power. I'm thinking of getting a thin client second hand to serve the same purpose.
@@magnusgreel275 in my case it's not a 24/7 use. Than I would maybe search some low power thin clients. EDIT Not for 24/7 but if energy is a concern. But i underclocked my old Intel for that.
I remember being amazed when I first got a Raspberry Pi Zero running. The setup was effortless but what really shocked me was how capable the system was for a PC that only cost me £10 and could fit in a wallet. For just £10 and a few dongles I had a relatively capable desktop computer. Obviously it's not going to run modern games but you could still use it for word processing, running certain programs, and even using search engines (this one may not be possible now though). There was once a time when computers were the size of a small house and no more powerful than a modern calculator. Back then, the concept of full office contained within a computer the size of a pack of cigarettes would be beyond sci fi, it would be full on fantasy.
@@hiddendrifts I'm wondering how lucky I am or how global is actually the global shortage I'm in Belgium and, if you were patient enough (a few months I would say), you were able to get most of the models from an approved reseller However, I agree that Pis *alone* are hard to get : most pis offered by the seller are part of a pack. Which is good if you want to start from scratch (and bad if you are a scalper and need to store stuff), but less funny if you already have spare cables and simply need an hardware upgrade
The dual 2.5gb router is a steal compared to what is usually out there. I imagined needing such a thing in future applications when 1gb+ becomes affordable 🍻
Have you looked at other SBCs->ITX form factor? I still run FM2+ socket for my media server. I'm looking for options. I don't need much for a LAN distribution with no transcoding.
@@JeffGeerling Yeah, they do that. Whenever you see one of the sexy bots saying something actually relevant to the video, it's copied from an older comment.
Good mention on the Orange Pi about the non standard and hard to get working GPIO pinout and insane power draw for a small board. I had these issues with Orange Pi 2 and SE and seems like years later they still exist. Great boards for the price, but poor software support to back them up. Tinkerboard, MangoPi and NanoPi are also worth looking at. I just looked up some of the boards that I have and realised that they are all going for at least 2-3 times the price than what I bought them for, so it's not just raspberry pi that shot up to astronomical prices.
Just a thing to keep in mind about the N2+: there were some issues reported of all USB ports suddenly failing (mine did too). If I recall correctly it had something to do with a power delivery component that had to be replaced. Quick edit: I still use the N2+ for its Android compatibility and I am currently using it for my own infotainment system in my car. To use any USB devices I opted to use the USB OTG connector (which does still work, thankfully).
I looked at doing the same. Did you find a GPS adapter that worked with the N2+ Android? I have a few Odroid boards and none seem to work with the GPS modules I have.
@@lopezthegreat9121 the Odroid was about €100 and the usb cables and adapters probably around €30, I also made some custom pcbs, ordered some more parts, etc. So I don’t really have an exact total.
Used thin clients or nucs can also be a great alternative and run a bigger variety of software or docker containers because of the 64bit intel plaftorm
That's a nice comparison! It would be even better if it included evaluation of software support. While many companies churn out nice hardware, not all of them care for the software side, which can get users quite frustrated...
The alternatives are missing a thing that makes the Raspberry Pi great for beginners: There are tons of flashable images, guides to follow and thus barely any advanced knowledge necessary. Sure there are boards that have better hardware. But then I have to dive deep to learn how to use it.
Bingo! If you want people to learn to tinker with these boards? You have to have some kind of development community. Just like with old Chrombooks, they are totally capable, but who's doing it?
BTW, refurbished mini PCs like the Dell Optiplex, HP EliteDesk or the Lenovo ThinkCentre devices are fantastic alternatives to SBCs if you want a (relatively) beefy PC to use as a Proxmox box, NAS, pfSense box, etc. Unless you plan to use the GPIO pins or need low power consumption, I'd say refurbished mini PCs are the best Raspberry Pi alternatives available right now (depending on what you intend to do with them)
For anyone that wanted a raspPi as a cheap way to setup a media/NAS/home server, you get way more for the $$$ this way than paying these insane prices for the raspPi.
Exactly. I'm disappointed that this has never been mentioned in the video. I bought a second-hand great condition hp t520 thin client for roughly 20 bucks plus 7 for the power adapter and added a 32 gb ssd for 5 dollars. and this machine is a beast for simple tasks like home assistant. with 6w max tdp, I cannot find a more reasonable deal in my country. I even managed to install and use win10 (roughly). the only downside is the size, t520 is relatively small for a thin client but cannot compete with pie in this regard. there are really powerful and low power mini-pc, thin client, nucs out there that can be harvested for a wide variety of tasks. my home media server is an hp 260 g2 with pentium 4405u+8 GB DDR4 that I bought for 95 dollars.
@@1omerfaruk to be fair, they did a video about these about a year ago but installed Windows on it which I think misses the point of using one of these old cheap machines. I think a sequel is needed featuring Proxmox and one of these old towers or mini PCs. The old video they did about this: th-cam.com/video/zPmqbtKwtgw/w-d-xo.html
@@iamvinku I have a Proxmox cluster on HP T620Plus / 2*T630 running on it: TrueNAS, Zabbix, 4 linux instances, Windows 11 X-Lite (works fine as a virtual machine on T630)
Worth considering... If you don't need the GPIO and power draw / portability isn't as big a concern, old micro PCs are usually sufficient to run most things a Pi could. If you're looking for silent operation and such, look for Atom and Celeron based PCs. You can often find them for like $50, and they already have a case, storage, and power adapters included.
Yeah, the usb ports flaked out on my rPi that was running a print server, so I put debian on an atom netbook (in my parts bin for years due to messed up internal keyboard port) migrated my stuff over from the rPi via wifi before it finally died. The Atom works fine as a print server, although not quite as space efficient.
A pc draws way more power than an ARM does. What i do is i buy a chinese android TV box for 40 bucks and install armbian debian on it. It has local storage, sits already in a box and comes with the power adapter. Runs very task i want and cheaper than these boards..
Typical modern LTT video unfortunately. I feel like their quality has tanked quite noticeably as they crank up production to increase the quantity. It's not that it's done in bad faith, it's just it's almost becoming a regular occurrence. There's SO MANY in this video it's honestly embarrassing. I feel like they should remove the video at this point.
@KameHameHaNurd I don't think it's THAT common but there are definitely a lot of editing errors here. What stood out to me was the Pi 4 specs saying "2.4/2.5" wifi. Confused me a lot until I realised they meant to say 2.4/5
@@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep if you search through the comments, and even their own pinned one, there well over a dozen mistakes that aren't simple editing errors.
One thing I learned after using various rPi's over the years is that the specs often aren't "actual" specs. For instance, "4K 60" doesn't mean you will get to watch a 4K video with 60fps. It will down-throttle and resort to screen tearing if you *actually* try to use 4K. I'd rather them say "4K text only" or something. But that's $120 under the bridge (thanks r-Pi :) ). LTT, I suggest you use your new lab (whenever it's completed) to *actually* verify and rank these mini-pis. Can you run USB3 5gbps on ALL the ports? try it. I dont mean to retaliate against the manufacturer if they dont, but say "hey we found that it has 4x USB 3.0 ports, but you can only use ONE at full sustained 5gbps". Unfortunately specs these days don't really mean much until you spend the $ and find out what the real specifications are (thanks rpi :) ).
My experience with the Pi4 was the USB 3 had serious bandwidth issues if it was connected to a storage device. When the computer was accessing a USB 3 storage device, the keyboard and mouse became unresponsive. So I would agree with your comment. And 720p would sometimes cause the 4 to struggle so I wasn't sure what kind of 4K video it would play
It really does have support for encoding/decoding video at those resolutions and frame rate using the onboard VPU. The catch is you have to install programs that are compiled targeting the onboard VPU. And some applications use different underlying libraries that may kr may not be compiled. Recently I had to manually recompile ffmpeg and underlying libraries on a Libre Renegade board to get it to process my survallence footage at the advertised rate. It was a pain, but it is smooth as butter now.
I believe they are good choices, but it is noteworthy that the Raspberry PI community is very large it is more than a simple PC as it can be used in electronic projects. Having a great community helps a lot, because there are several tools (compatible program libraries, for example) and a lot of content to study.
People keep repeating how amazing that Raspberry Pi community is, but I've found it very closed, toxic, entitled and cultish. I had to wait for a day until my account was approved, then a few hours more after I posted a topic with a short, simple but very specific question, only to receive the answer "use the search function", when I already searched everywhere and didn't find the answer to my question. So much for their "community"...
Would love to see an updated version of "How's it like to work for linus" video, I think the answers are gonna be more diverse(and exciting) due to the new staffing.
When the prices spiked, I actually jumped ship on the entire ARM market and picked up a refurbed Lenovo Thinkcentre. The M600 style systems can be had for around $85 - $150 depending on how high of specs you want. And they come with the original Windows License. Not a true replacement but a valid option depending on your needs.
If you want a 'traditional desktop' computer for productivity, gaming and emulation, then those small form factor PCs are great, along with full sized desktops and many laptops. The Pi was never really designed as a realistic replacement for those. Though it could probably fulfill some people's basic needs, a Pi wouldn't be most people's first choice. The Pi's strengths lie elsewhere.
I appreciate this comment - I poked around and saw a decent Chromebook for a stupidly cheap price, and all my project needs is a laptop as a base for a linux distro - this is perfect and doesn't require me to worry about a display and stuff, thanks! Don't know why I didn't consider refurbished gear
They have some newer fanless units out now that have have more modern x86 processors (celeron, atom, maybe a lower end i3 or Ryzen). Much better comparability and performance than a raspberry pi, but still relatively power efficient - maybe 15-20W when maxed out (which can be tuned up/down in the bios). They're a little more expensive than the old sff mini pc's typically available on e-bay, but that comes with much lower power draw and modern creature comforts like nvme 3.0, 2.5g ethernet, usb-c, etc...
The Fujitsu Futro series (especially S720 and S920) are also a good option. They start at 15,- € used in Europe. Fanless, sturdy, low power consumption. The S920 even has a PCIe x4 half height slot.
This. If are just looking for a very small computer and not building a project that requires use of the HAT, and you can keep it plugged into the wall, then you are much better off buying a used ultra-small form factor PC, or a used i3 NUC. You’ll spend under $100 US, and it will blow any of these ARM SBCs out of the water in performance. Once you shell out for a case and power adapter you’re in for $100 at least with any of these SBC’s anyway.
Frankly, the RPI situation has gotten so bad that for my projects I've switched to using the NUC 11 Essential boxes as my SBC of choice, as they come in at about the same full package price as the ARM based SBC while using x64 CPUs, giving me many more choices in what I can run on them. Those little Celerons even have big boy GPUs that will happily handle UHD H.265 with Dolby Vision or 4K120 via DisplayPort.
I've heard alot about these from Eli the computer guy. Lots of people using these as severs. I see amazon using them a PA stations in the warehouses. They seem to pack a punch. I just got the odroid h2. If the NUC have better performance that the odroids then the SBC marker is about to be taken over.
What you should do when purchasing these RasPI-alternative boards is checking the mainline Linux kernel support. If the chipset runs the mainline Linux kernel well, and if there's a complete device tree file for the board, then the chances are that there would be at least some usable Linux distros for the board. If there isn't, then you can build one by yourself (it's not as hard as it sounds, assuming that you are mostly sticking to the mainline kernel and the vanilla Debian rootfs). A few of them are actually more "open" than the original RasPi in that proprietary blobs are not required for booting. Most of them are not, though.
A lot of people are bringing up the better community support for the pi, which I agree with *if* you're the type to do a lot of hardware tinkering. However so many of the things that come up when you search for "easy raspberry pi projects" are things like retropie, some form of kodi media center, and pihole. All of those things are more than possible with just about any machine that can run a flavor of Linux and I wish more casual users were aware of that before going out and getting a pi 4. Emulators on the real pi aren't even that great. It was a novelty 10 years ago when there weren't many low power devices for that cheap to run mame or nes games, but hardware has come a long way to the point where, for the scalper prices of a pi, you can get a used pre-built desktop that will blow it out of the water. If you want something small like the pi then these alternatives are just as good or better in that regard.
Or broken laptops, or some x86 sbc if the intention is to make it like an arcade where constant electricity is available Heck, even I have too many computers and laptop that can replace Pi purposes. If you want gpio maybe hook it to arduino as well?
One problem I found was obsolete hardware/software. I had a TFT monitor that had hardware and software that was supported, but lost compatibility along the line of upgrades/updates. Which is fixable if one knows matrix transformations and coding... I know neither. :(
I don't understand a lot of the pi hype. It's great if you do a lot of HW tinkering like you say, and make your own IOT devices and things like that, and need a small, low power computer to use in that kinds of projects. But people are actually buying them because they saw a dumb youtuber saying "they are great for learning linux" or something like that..... You can do that on ANYTHING. A virtual machine (both local and cloud based) an old throw away computer (it will be faster than a pi), your phone, ANYTHING. There are a lot of "wasted pi's" because people are just flat out unintelligent. I've seen people buying them to run docker/containers on ... while having them beside a server rack full of servers and maybe a NAS or two that runs VM's allready (I'm looking at you, tech-youtubers). It's so insanely dumb.
@@TechyBen I feel that. I had a project that used a pi zero and had gotten a little spi screen for it that did have pi support at one point but the software for it wouldn't compile because it was missing some stuff. I didn't know what it was missing or how it fix it so I basically abandoned the project.
@@johnkristian I never got that either. If they were still cheap and it was your first one maybe but I learned a lot more about Linux trying it on my old laptop than I ever did using any of the pi's I've had over the years.
Switched to ESP32 for most projects. They are plentifully available and cheap. Bit the bullet and dived into C/C++ which wes hard at first but now feels natural. I am frequently surprised how versatile the ESP32 is!
Yeah C++ is the GOAT but it seems like it's ether javascript or python/micropython that is being taught these days. I was a stunch hater of python for the longest after the "upgrade" of python from 2.7 broke the esp32 libraries for arduino and linux in general but thing seems have been fixed now if you stay away from python2 libraries. It seems if anyone is going to use ML or any automation it will be with python so now I'm going to learn python. (Cries in unpopular languages)
I use an ESP32-s2 for my 3d printer camera & power control as well as controlling my entire escooters lighting/indication system Gotta have a pi too though
@@chisangamumba2961 What do you think a arm processor /risc-v processor is? What do you think is in the esp32 chip? If you think the esp32 is a microcontroller then explian to me how it can be a VNC client?
I remember buying the original Orange Pi 3 months before the Raspberry Pi 4 came out and it blew the Raspberry Pi 3 away with it's much better performance, four USB 3.0 ports (the LTS version removed two of them) and built-in storage (more reliable than micro SD), it was perfect for making a low energy consumption NAS which was the reason I bought it. I'm impressed to see it still has decent performance against the current gen RPi. Also, massive kudos to the Armbian Linux distro developers that do a great job on providing an up to date and well maintained Ubuntu/Debian distro for the vast majority of RPi alternatives. I was hoping to see that project mentioned in the video.
True, however the barrier to entry for pine products is a little higher though. The software support is either bad or non existent. Cool hardware but if you're a beginner with Linux, other boards might be better
The Rock 5B might be a little over the price, but the 16GB version kinda feels like a desktop replacement of sorts, thanks to the RK3588 (almost same as the Orange Pi5). But with 2 PCIe ports, there is no compromise, you can have WiFi 6 and a Nvme drive! Also, the GPU on that chip is awesome. Support is not there fully yet for the RK3588,thats the downside. Also the Khadas products like the Edge 2 and the VIM4, although way over the price, are amazing SBCs. Glad this boards are getting more attention from LTT! Kudos!
I looked at rasp pi prices and said - orange pi better and approx same price. I got Orange Pi 5 with 16GB ram. I bought fast micro sd cards and it is fast/fast/fastr. Yes, it is a desktop replacement. but Like said by Phozends - the sw is not bullet proof. I like linux with KDE, and it took a while to get something I like. - but it works well now. and there is a person who is releasing new versions of ubuntu about every 2 weeks. so it advances.
Excellent video. The SBC category is abused today costing hundreds of dollars for boards that don't even compete with fully designed laptops and desktops. The whole point of SBC popularity was useful tech for low prices. Low-cost emulation or even neat inventions like "super computers" and robots. I have some RPi 3's, 4's and Zero W's. Got them at the time of their lower prices thankfully.
The prices for R Pis will go back down. The Foundation has no control over third part resellers charging extortionate prices, and these scalpers are undoubtedly hurting the Foundation's reputation. The assumption being that the RPF are the ones charging silly prices, which is not the case. You CANNOT compare the Pi market to regular laptop and desktop markets... they're aiming at different audiences.
The issue with the price of the RPi is it's popularitly. Unfortunately, and I not agree with it, but Ebon supported supplying bussinesses before hobbyists...
@@RyTrapp0 You completely missed the point. Good job. The prices of new SBC's are draining the community out. Many are complaining of prices of SBC's (not just RPi) New high priced SBC's are what people are setting as standards for their prices, therefore never going back to MSRP (not that that's the only reason). And the comparison to other devices is a comparison of price for what you get. They are both computing devices that, while not for the same customers, use some of the same resources.
I'm pretty sure the reason the pi is such a powerhouse is its ecosystem documentation and knowing that something's going to install and for the most part not be a problem. It's community is very much robust something the competitors are lacking and for the most point price point.
@@20035079 and I completely agree with you I was merely talking before the component shortage begin. I have three of them myself so that's not really a concern. I'm still trying to figure it out when this will end.
Yep! They really are a fantastic option if you can afford it. I have one that is running an Octopi 3D Print server, and I am going to soon add a webcam to it so it can run Spaghetti Detective to detect print failures.
way more expensive now, especially their newer SBCs, worse pricing than their GPUs. Also the jetson nano is still more expensive than the pi for less benefits. Thats why i dont have one.
We need Retropie to work with more of these, it's the main reason I want to use a Pi in the first place. When the other ones start doing this I'll buy them, especially the last few you talked about as the power is definitely there to make Retropie run like the devil.
Ditto, and honestly they might as well launch the Pi 5 at this rate. I’d take any alternative that can run Retropie just as well. Or, you know…just make more Pi 4s 🥲
depending on your usecase you can even buy an old version of those alternatives for even lower prices. I'm using an old BananaPi M1 for Home Assistant + Pi Hole and it runs just fine.
You can also use some of the no-name Android TV boxes (usually useless because no certification/hdr support) with the Amlogic S905 series soc's to boot armbian or similiar distro's over microSD, they come with everything you need out of the box, including stuff like IR and internal storage.
It’s kinda fun figuring out how to get a no name amlogic android box to boot coreelec lol I remember soft bricking my box until I discovered the recovery button was only accessible if you opened the case up. Made the box 10 times more useful as a kodi machine
@@bryangutierrez655 never got gpu accel to work on my s905x "x96" box, otherwise itd be a great gray area/offline media viewer or a browsing machine (4x a53 is on some poverty spec chromebooks) or you can just leave it on with pihole and other stuff like a personal use server with barely any power draw and no noise
Inovato quadra is just that. It's a t95 mini tv box running armbian. It doesn't have gpio available but if all you need is usb it will work fine. Has comparable performance to a rpi3, for $35.
I agree that they are fantastic choice for low end computing devices, but be careful with trying to load Linux on them, sometimes, these boxes gets sabotaged deliberately to avoid people flashing new OS on them. I don't remember which companies did it, but the retro gaming community would probably have better documentation on it.
for mountings most of them are the same form factor as the pi, while some are partially compatible, as for heatsinks only full case ones wont work but the regular heatsink + adhesive pack works as you just need to cover the right chips.
@@LazyJesse if u dont have a 3d printer then why r u buying them sbcs and then complaining not enough casings literally for most ppl doing diy projects, they will 3d print their own designs, these are also hobbyists that likes to customize for other people, why r u even buying it then complaining about not enough variety enclosure? just buy watever option is available, that will already suit u enough if u do diy projects and are a hobbyist, i d bet 3d printer is something u already have or are looking to buy, even if not now
The main advantage of raspberry pi is their small form factor and their power efficiency so they can be attached to a battery or used in some Maker device. If you just want a cheap pc or a pi-hole, a used 2010 HP tower would be cheaper and 15 times faster.
Honestly, a potent, flexible and open Android machine would be pretty neat. All the stuff on the market is either something hilariously outdated from China with zero support, or lightning focussed on pushing you towards a specific media subscription and you have to jump through hoops to jailbreak.
The only SBC I have found to be a viable alternative for the Pi for running Klipper and OctoPrint has been the Le Potato. The documentation and support are definitely nowhere near as good as the Pi but with some searching I found some solutions that would get everything working. There are so many projects I would like to built but I really started getting into the RPi right before prices for all models skyrocketed. It's just completely ridiculous that a RPi Zero 2 W which is supposed to be $12 can't be found anywhere for less than $60 which is the cheapest I found it when I last looked a while back. I am of the same mindset of LTT that even though they said things will improve in 6 months I think backorders, FOMO buyers and scalpers will keep prices high for the rest of 2023.
It's the buyers that are really hurting things. If scalpers didn't have buyers willing to pay the insane prices then scalpers wouldn't be able to sell rPi's at the insane prices. Honestly, there's no reason to pay the outrageous prices either, there are used/refurbished tiny/mini/micro pc's that sell for less and offer way more power, ports, expandability than rPi.
I want to buy a le potato just so i can toss it to the next person who says "you can run that on a potato"... here's one lets see you get it working...
How is it possible that so far nobody mentioned that cool catch Linus made at 6:14, without looking away from camera! No drops for this video (so far). 😄
I ran my Octos on RasPi, but found using old PC and docker easier and faster, not to mention super easy deployment of multiple instances (one for every printer) via web browser.
Linus dont you think it's worth mentioning that although the hardware setup for some of these is comparable, software support for even the best competitor like the Orange Pi 5 is still maturing and in early stages. Things like audio and HDMi sometimes dont work without script patching
@@OlegKorsak Sorry, dumb question and a month later but I've seen references to people building kubernetes clusters with SBCs but never figured out why or what for. Is there a common use case? Thank you!
The LePotato has been a perfect companion to my Ender 3 3D printer. I run Klipper with Fluidd, and even have a webcam connected, it handles everything perfectly.
I was fortunate enough to hit MicroCenter a few times right when the Pi Zero 2 came out and have like, 5 of them. They run Klipper and Fluidd (or Mainsail) perfectly and are small enough to fit in the case with the mainboard.
Great video, thanks!! Its hard to under estimate the impact of making SBCs easily accessible to consumers....from improvised oddities to powering peoples DIY prosthetic limbs? Definition of badass.
I’ve loved these rockchip and and amlogic boards for low level hacking, also RISC-V options coming to market. Should warn that one may become a bit of a collector of these. For the DIY folks, would like to see a video covering the ESPs, arduinos and alternatives.
I’ve had a fair bit of pain getting OrangePi 4 LTS up and running. It’s worth noting that it’s much harder to get alternative builds of Linux or upstream OS installs working than others. Even with a fair bit of experience, you’re often out of luck if you want to install anything other than the images from the manufacturer.
I really love your content, subbed for over 9 years, but i can't help but notice that a number of times what u say for the specs of a board isn't what is written in the pop up next to the board B-roll in the video, i am sure this is a simple mix-up, and i hope to keep watching your videos for the many years to come
While it's a bit outdated now, I have an Odriod Xu4 I use as my nas and it still works great. I'm not sure what it's performance is compared to the newer raspberries, but at the time the raspberries didn't have USB3.0. I still think it's a valid choice in the $50 range. I recently reinstalled the OS and updated to OMV6 and it's just as good as ever.
@@kameljoe21 Facebook is not a reliable way to backup photos, especially full resolution. Also I scan all my personal documents and shred all but the most important ones (birth certificate etc). I do think there is merit to off-site storage if you have a fire or something but for me a NAS works great. I can also attach a USB drive and run Rsync or use USBBackup which will automatically sync whatever shares I configure to the drive when I plug in it, that I can then store off-site. There are no monthly or additional costs unless I buy more hard drives.
@@mushieslushie I just do not have anything that needs to be backed up that I can not recover from other sites. All of my emails and documents are on my gmail. Any sheets and things like that are also on google drives. The only thing on my computer or what I would have on a NAS would be movies and tv shows I have downloaded for better viewing mainly because not all sites have speed watching nor do they have additional volume boosting like VLC does. I no longer watch anything at normal speeds it has to be 1.5x or faster. I am so sick of watching stuff slow, I am able to watch shows far faster and have more time for other things. I have 4 tb of space of which is about 3tb full.
I used to feel this way then I realized my time is worth wayyy too much, pi has by far the best ecosystem, support, really nice imaging tool for their OS, etc
If you don't need the GPIO pins and don't mind higher power consumption you can also run an old thin client pc, they're cheap, upgradable and great for server stuffs. They generally consume less than a 60w light bulb, and sometimes sub 10 or 5 w on idle.
Another benefit is that they're not ARM-based, so software compatibility/support is typically even better than the raspberry pi. There are also some more recent fanless sff pc's (usually intended to be router appliances) that have around half the power draw as those for around the same price...
high power consumption is really only the concern here, and also the size, it just means u need to setup an fixed server somewhere otherwise, for the the gpio part, u could easily use microcontrollers, powerful microcontrollers that can communicate wirelessly with the pc
@@zackkertzman7709 totally agree, i would buy an x86 sbc over arm sbc given the choice at the same price do note that x86 sbc actually exists, i think linus also did a video on lattepanda where he put an rtx on it for some reason, i dont think any x86 sbc was shown in this video, probably because those are way out of the price range
@@urnoob5528 I'll have to look up the LTT video on it. I looked into x86 SBC's at one point, but it seemed like you ended up paying quite a premium over a sff pc/thin client/etc... for that SBC form factor. At least that was true when I looked - relative values might've moved since then.
@@urnoob5528 I have a less than 1L ThinkCenter as a server, I could litteraly shove it in a closet if my peak performance demands weren't so high. As for power consumption, well that's relative, where I live running a 60W lightbulb 24/7 is about less than 3$ per months. And a computer with the same maximum TDP probably consume half of that if I'm conservative in my estimate, but it's probably even lower than that with efficient idling.
There's another alternative similar to the Seeed from Bigtreetech called the PI4B Adapter and the CB1 daughterboard. The two together can be bought for $37.50 USD as of the time of this comment. Performance has been compared to a 3B+. The CB1 by itself works with several of their 3D printer control boards, allowing you to add Pi functionality directly to the control board, eliminating the need for external mounts or power. With the adapter, it works just like a Pi. Note: The adapter also works with the CM4.
Surprised they didn't have the BTT CB1 in as well. Pretty much only used in the enthusiast/tinkerer 3D printer world right now, but it's a direct replacement for a RPi 3B+ for a good price if you buy direct from BTT or their AliExpress store. Amazon has a near 100% markup for some reason.
I hadn't actually realised there was a Pi shortage until recently. I just have a habit of buying the latest Pi when our comes out, then finding a project for it afterwards. So when I built a DIY NAS recently, I didn't even think twice about having to source a Pi. I just cannibalised my emulation station that I hadn't used in a while.
Great video. My understanding of Raspberry Pi alternatives is that whilst they may offer great hardware, the quality of the hardware drivers and OS support is nowhere near as good as that from the Raspberry Pi foundation.
I've bought my Raspberry Pi 4 (4G) for ~80€ with a heatsink, case, fan, powersupply and a 32Gb SD Card when it was new to the market. Still going strong. Now you barely get the Raspberry Pi itself for that price.
Going over Raspi alternatives, can we expect a future video about Mini PC diy and prebuilt options? Sure you've explored budget-mid-high range PCs, prebuilts, and unique mini PCs, but nothing focusing generally on mini PC options, which I would expect would include some Raspis and similar.
One board that was left out is the nvidia jetson nano. It is more expensive than the pi, but is really powerful. It may not technically be in the same class as the pi but I think it’s still worth a mention
Most of the power of the Jetson is for other use cases though...like AI and machine learning. Buying a Jetson and using it as a HTPC would be a massive tragedy. Same applies to the Latte Panda.
Thanks for the good summary of the alternatives. I use the RPi a *lot* for various projects, from the usual home automation, to the less common R2D2 droid! I've managed to get hold of a couple of PI4 recently, and even some Pi Zero 2, but its good to have alternatives. I don't always need the processing power, but the form factor is the key. A lot of people talk about re-using thin clients or old laptops, but if you want something small, the Pi size can't really be beat. I've ordered a couple of Orange Pi3 to try out on some other projects.
One thing I like about the RP4 and RP3b+ is the Power over Ethernet add-on board you can get. This means my pi's are powered by my PoE switch and in the rare case of a hard crash I can remotely power cycle them. I have not been able to find information on PoE support for any of the alternative boards.
You should be able to buy PoE splitters that can be used to power anything for about $10. Just be sure to pick the right one (USB C vs Micro vs 12v Barrel Jack), the USB C variation is more expensive but you can buy each of them in packs of 3 for a discount.
For my use-case I don't want another power cord on my rack. I have a POE switch to provide power to various devices. I know some would consider it a little silly, but I like a neat rack.
I'm going to be buying my Raspberry PI for the first time and I'm going to buy it from the original company because they made it open source so I'm going to reward them for their grand gesture!!
In my previous job, we tried to use 'other pi' in one of our projects, but it ended shortly when there was no working kernel source to build usb-otg. They just spin those soc's, but there is no support. That's why Raspberry Pi Rocks!
I recently bought the orange pi 3 lts as a kit with case, cable, and little heat sink for $60. While I use it for primarily ps1 emulation it does that job pretty well via retropie and it also supports wireless offbrand ps3 controllers. It's not perfect but runs as good as the ps1 if not better. I'd assume it'd run older retro systems just as well too
There's some SBCs that make it easier to develop with FPGAs which if it's up your alley for development stuff, is super nice. But my favorite SBC is the BeagleBone Black. However, it's bad for anything media center related. It's best for robotics/electronics stuff. The PRUs can be used to offload most of the tasks you would expect the pi's CPU to handle, which tends to be way faster and higher efficiency when making a machine you're building do complex tasks.
I seen the iceBreaker bitsy and now I got to wonder is everything going to be a super small raspi pico board that get the performance of the raspi0 using risc-v archutecture? I mean the pine 0x64 is already here and the esp32 and raspi pico are basically a microprocessors.
I was looking for an sbc a month ago, decided to get an OrangePi5 as it seemed to be an easy choice and it is. It is fast, I got a cheap 256GB m.2 ssd for it and its been a great device. The only thing I wish it had was a decent case that I could buy from amazon or ali express (don't have a 3d printer), I got an acrylic one that does the job but it doesn't look good.
Another point missed is that a lot of people wanting a pi 4 could very easily get away with lesser pi. Eg pi hole or a webserver would happily run on a rpi 3a+ which had plenty of stock when I bought one last week. Also many people may want a pi for some projects a pico would be more suited for thinking the pi would be better. But something like a remote control car doesn't need an operating system or the power requirements of a rpi 4. RPIs are partly for learning and building. Often the RPI4 isn't the best raspberry pi for either of these goals.
Raspberry Pi was supposedly founded on affordability and open access. I sincerely hope this video opens up a lot of people to alternatives and takes enough support and business away from the Raspberry Pi Foundation to actually get them to address their supply and scalping issues. GPUs managed to come back down since 2020 and there aren't nearly as many brand and price alternatives to as what we saw in this video.
Great info in this vid! But I'd recommend steering clear of using the 3D bar graphs in the future. They unnecessarily harm the ease of legibility, and depending on how it's rendered, the fact that the back corners of the bars don't line up with the "0" harm the perceived (if not literal) veracity of the information as it's displayed.
I really dig this video --- because it's almost like the only content for SBCs are those incredibly deep, deep dives. I like those too, but I forget about the one I just watched as I watch the next one. They just all blur together. ALSO --- Good deal with doing some of the spendier units. Because the other thing with Pi4 was it was often what we used because it was the only game in town and we would have loved to have something more performant but the next step up was a BIG step up into something like a full-on small form factor PC.
After recently speaking with Liz, co-founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation at a small event, I have official-unofficial confirmation that Pi's will be back in stock early Q3 of this year.
I’ve tried a Le Potato. Their software support really isn’t too bad-I’m running their official Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS image-and Amazon reviews to this effect are really old. The 2GB of RAM (vs 1GB for the Pi3) really helps it out, too. I use it mainly as a low-power TP-Link WiFi controller, and while more RAM would be even better, and updates are, uh, slow, for the price it’s alright. It’s the only Linux install I’ve got running right now that is already on kernel 6.0!
@@mskiptr Ubuntu is slow with patches and enable new hardware features. We maintain a separate kernel and some userspace tooling via apt to make it make the experience more consistent and better. Our kernels are updated weekly for security.
@@LibreComputer That sounds pretty reasonable. Nice I guess I'm just too used to seeing vendors doing a hacked-together BSP release of android or debian and leaving any proper maintenance or upstream bring-up to the community.
@@mskiptr We redesign everything for every chip we adopt. We do not want to contribute to e-waste. That is why we are very conservative with our SoC choice.
I got interested in the GPIO and settled with 2 RPi 3B's that wasn't having a super price on eBay. Now I have a building phase and like the rabbit hole and the OS experience is a quality and didn't cause an unsolvable loop.
Software and general development for the Raspberry Pi is unmatched. So I understand and enjoy the alternatives, but for a newcomer wanting to learn the OG can’t be beat.
A lot of these seem pretty cool. I've only had 1 Pi, a Pi 3B+ (I really, really needed Wifi from it) I got like a couple years ago for some retro gamin'. Not used it too much but I do like the thing. :)
The differential of rasp is the giant community. You save a lot of time and have a lot more fun not worrying so much about the bugs you have in any model.
These days im only considering RK3588 and RK3588S SBCs, the features and cpu power is just way over the top of all else, and yeah its a little more expensive. Still the Orange PI5 4GB was $60 at preorder. Its well worth it, its way better than anything else avalible at SBC format. And to be fair Linus, the MSRP of the PI4 4GB is $55, the Orange PI5 4GB at $75 is more expensive yes, but not that much more expensive.
For some use cases, even using x86 Thin clients or tiny PCs like M93P or even those tiny Beelink tiny PCs would be more performant for less money. I wanted to DIY a laptop but even the RK3588 (non-S) can't compete with x86 Alder Lake E Cores for the same price :( That being said, I always wish that there was a way to make old smartphones (not just Samsung ones) into ARM SBCs to reduce ewaste.
Thank you so very much for the detailed comparison and description. I would love to see the whole of the information tabulated for easy consumption if possible.
I am SOOOO grateful for this video, I've been looking for an alternative to the pi for my final year project and could only find the expensive options until I found this. How well will the renegade run Home assistant?
I’m impressed by your benchmarking efforts ! Despite all the perf you can get, I think the reason for choosing any device like pi is to make sure the drivers and tools are available for the io for the use of choice. You want to focus on the task and not waste time on making things work well with your peripherals..
You missed Quartz64 from Pine64 which can be had for about $80. I really like it, plus you'd be supporting them in their endeavor challenging the status quo with their Linux based PinePhone. Seeed Studio has other interesting offerings as well, not just the reRouter. The odyssey, although at almost $300 running a Celeron CPU, is a neat board.
That new raspi pico competetor the 0x64 is going to be a little monster once people fully realize its capabilities. Microdata will be the next big trend.
Kind surprised that you guys didn’t mention the Nvidia Jetson Nano. That thing is pretty cool. I have the 4GB version myself and even though it is a bit dated now it still can kick some butt. Since it runs unbent arm it’s pretty much just like a pi with a ton of docs from nvidia.
NVidia's SBCs are bit pricey. Nano is the only option there, but even it is ~$100 while RPi4's MSRP is like $35. We've used ASUS' Tinkerboards in some projects; they're pretty nice, too, but cost almost $200. May be worth it if you need more processing power, but doesn't quite fill that niche for versatile low-power SBCs.
I personally feel that no other SBC can top the raspberry Pi as it has the community support to back it up, there's literally a raspberry pi community for everything!
Oops, we have a few specs corrections for some of the SBCs.
- le Potato has 100MBit Fast Ethernet, not GbE.
- Renegade has up to 4GB of DDR4
- Orange Pi3 has 2x USB3.0 ports and 1x USB2.0
- N2+ has 4x USB3.0 and 1 micro USB OTG port.
Our sincere apologies for the mistakes! We'll get the video fixed as soon as possible!
Have you used any of these alternative Pis? If so, for what project?
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B: geni.us/RH5vfB
Banana PI M5: geni.us/KK6aB
Odroid C4: my.geni.us/links#!
Libre "Le Potato": geni.us/Qwsr
Libre "Renegade": geni.us/qNGet
Orange Pi 3 LTS: geni.us/Y1OlDj2
Odroid N2+: geni.us/2M12p
Orange Pi 5: geni.us/t9bsNin
Rock Pi 4C+: geni.us/iGwi
Nano Pi M4B: geni.us/Csx8uW
Seeed Mini Router: geni.us/3jAdA
Seeed Studio LinkStar-H68K-0232
Router: geni.us/jzad
Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.
The odroid c4 link is wrong
hi !
Where’s red shirt Jeff when you need him
when you forget to pin your comment
Btw Linus, have you taken a look at the new RISC-V SBC from Si-Five? They have improved a LOT in the past couple of years to the point their latest SBCs beat the pi at similar price point
You guys really should have used a pie chart for all benchmarks. Lost opportunity.
I’ll be back when your comment gets 3,143 likes
I usually clap down hard on gallery suggestions as part of my trollish baiting repertoire, but today I am here to stand with and agree with my bro here. Also loving this spin on a circle A.
I'm with you on this! Plus some actual pie to eat whilst listening to this video would round things out nicely!
Pie chart is not applicable on a benchmark presentation. So that will not make sense. But yeah i get the joke.
Did you know that pie charts have been banned in a multitude of American companies, because it is considered “fat shaming” or at the very least “psychological torture”.
The advantage with Raspberry is their ecosystem and community support and other boards don't really come close to it. Unless other companies start giving proper ootb drivers for their SBCs, Pis are still the only way to go unfortunately
This, was similar comment myself.
While alternatives might be objectively better in themselves, there is so much to be said for a big enthusiastic community.
Some alternatives are compatible enough that rasp pi community is still valid
That sounds like the same argument that people would give for getting a Mac.
Dude it's just Debian wtf
my guy you commented this 1 minute after the video posted
Absolutely agree. I did a bunch of research on these 3rd party 'clones' a few months back, and the biggest issue I found was forums that were littered with questions but no answers. Left little confidence that I would get my projects up and running stable without a huge amount of customization and learning of the kernel level stuff due to the lack of support when things go wrong
One of the great things about the Raspberry Pi is how well documented it is. You can find whatever information about it that you need fairly easily. I wonder how easy it would be to find solutions online to any problems you might encounter when working with alternatives.
RetroPie on the other hand...
Spot on
Yeah that’s a good point
Exactly.....you hit the nail!!
I guess it's well documented because it attracts people who actually read the manual?
For folks that want more in-depth reviews of these SBC, Explaining Computers is a great channel. The guy does pretty extensive testing for comparison and has been at it for years.
He's an absolute legend!
Thank you! Sub'd
Will look him up, thanks!
Absolutely.. Chris always provides quality content
I prefer ETAPrime
I wish you talked more about the software aspect of those pi alternatives. Unlike desktop computers, each SBC manufacturer has to provide their own Linux image (often with custom kernel patches), meaning that compared to RasPis there's often fewer OSes available, more compatibilities issues, and much fewer online resources available for troubleshooting. That's the main reason why Pis are still the most popular boards despite not having the best hardware offering.
Haha or roll your own DTBs
other models can literally use windows because of x86 cpu
Not just software aspects, I totally miss testing basic tasks. Synthetic benchmarks tell nothing about choppy TH-cam videos, performance bottlenecks (like a gigabit Ethernet controller put behind a 480 megabit USB 2.0 HUB IC) or overheating in no time.
My friend tested a BananaPi router many-many years ago, and while being gigabit, the CPU could only handle 130 megabit WAN traffic because of PPPoE.
Also I wouldn't be happy to have Android 9 in 2023. Android 14 beta just launched.
Sincerely: an SBC enjoyer with BeagleBones, OragePis and every Raspberry Pi generation.
A number of these can run regular Linux OSs though, it's not as bad as it used to be.
They are so incompatible with anything recent, and have so little real support that these alternatives are useless unless youre a senior linux dev.
It's also worth noting that the n2+ is the only one that includes an RTC clock, which is a very useful feature for industrial devices or embedded systems.
I'd love to see you guys try some projects with some of these to see how much or little trouble you run into without the full support of the raspberry pi community. Maybe boost the community around these alternative single board computers
not hard. most projects require your own coding and the rest is simply hardware compatibility. If GPIO is your goal and you know linux and python, then you are set. Also you need a minimum of 2GB of ram to compile python for arm with additional performance flags. In other words only things that are pi specific that unskilled people cant do, can be replicated on other SBCs given that they have USB, GPIO and other similar things. As long as the OS is debian based, drivers/hardware works in it, you are set.
Yeah, a shootout comparing the user-experience of the various RPi alternatives, as opposed to their raw technical specifications would be very interesting.
@@System0Error0Message Well obviously it can be done, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who watches these videos and is only semi-skilled with Linux and Python. Personally, I'm willing to write a few programs, squish a few bugs, and so on, but if at the end of the day I can't figure out what I'm not doing right, then I just flushed my money and time down the toilet. Without someone putting a name to all the problems you face, it gets a lot harder to research solutions.
I once had an old used laptop from 2008 or something (I think it was a Gateway m285-e) with a built in drawing tablet. It originally ran windows xp tablet edition, which I tried to install and all, but I couldn't because something about the whole process wasn't SATA compatible, but the motherboard only had a SATA port. I tried modifying the Windows iso with NTLite to integrate SATA drivers directly, but that didn't work. I also kept running into something about needing to install it with a floppy disk (Which is weird, because I know there are windows XP install discs), but somewhere online, someone said I could do it with a USB if I formatted it to FAT16 and limited the size. That didn't work. I installed Linux a couple of times on it, but I couldn't find support for the drawing tablet on any of the distros I tried, so I researched writing my own driver, and I don't remember why I stopped there. Maybe I lost interest, or no longer had time to sink into that project. My point is, some of us like to get our hands dirty, but want to know what we're getting into, and want to see what we'll get out of it, or heck, just think it'd be a fun video.
@@System0Error0Message Lets be real. 99% of linus viewers wouldnt know programming and if they do, they would be the type to wonder why their python script that uses win32api isnt working on their linux computer.
Last i checked many of the things you can do with a Raspberry aren't as straightforward with these other sbc's. The problem was that Pi was so good that businesses started using it for their projects and made demand skyrocket and alongside it, prices.
no the prices went up from ppl scalping them at the beginning of covid along with the chip shortage.
@@christopher480 yes but companies now are depending on pi's. Official rpi sellers are selling most products to companies and only a little portion to retail customers. Probably because companies pay more with a higher volume.
Is the foundation making a profit tho or is it just the resellers?
SCBs* no apostrophe
@@John_C_J Just the resellers.
Perhaps for next comparison, even if you compare only the specs, I'd mention the power consumption. For SBCs it might be important. After all, the whole appeal of ARM processors was computation per Watt.
Typically boards with larger RAM have higher power floor.
Those RISC-V's are coming in hard. I am of the opinion that the power draw is mostly because of the addition of usb 3.0-3.1. If you where to take a look at the Orange pi one plus as compared to the orange pi 3 it the same cpu but requires less power.
@@filthyfrankblack4067 yeah anyone who knows anything about framework laptops is that removing usbs saves battery
Having owned multiple Pis and alternatives, I'm of the opinion that for most IoT use cases, an older model Pi 3B is all you need. It works fine and hits that sweet spot of performance and power draw.
Awesome! Of course, the older model Pis are all out of stock/costs hundreds of dollars now, so that conclusion doesn't help. Whereas the alternatives are at least able to be purchased.
@@magnusgreel275 my alternative for my usecase and broken pi was reactivate my very old core to duo pc. Way faster 😜
@@Nordlicht05 I did something similar with my old PC, but it's a hefty system which sucks up a lot of power. I'm thinking of getting a thin client second hand to serve the same purpose.
@@magnusgreel275 in my case it's not a 24/7 use. Than I would maybe search some low power thin clients.
EDIT
Not for 24/7 but if energy is a concern. But i underclocked my old Intel for that.
@@magnusgreel275 so my pi zero and pi 2b from highschool are worth a lot now?
I remember being amazed when I first got a Raspberry Pi Zero running. The setup was effortless but what really shocked me was how capable the system was for a PC that only cost me £10 and could fit in a wallet.
For just £10 and a few dongles I had a relatively capable desktop computer. Obviously it's not going to run modern games but you could still use it for word processing, running certain programs, and even using search engines (this one may not be possible now though).
There was once a time when computers were the size of a small house and no more powerful than a modern calculator. Back then, the concept of full office contained within a computer the size of a pack of cigarettes would be beyond sci fi, it would be full on fantasy.
Yea now there 140 bucks not that cool hmm
@@viperrr6886 pi zero 1.3 is still £5 but it's out of stock [and prolly will be for a while]
>full on fantasy
the future is now, thanks to science
@@hiddendrifts
I'm wondering how lucky I am or how global is actually the global shortage
I'm in Belgium and, if you were patient enough (a few months I would say), you were able to get most of the models from an approved reseller
However, I agree that Pis *alone* are hard to get : most pis offered by the seller are part of a pack. Which is good if you want to start from scratch (and bad if you are a scalper and need to store stuff), but less funny if you already have spare cables and simply need an hardware upgrade
@@laplongejunior >are part of a pack
i mean, spare parts are always nice to have, and you can just sell them if you really don't want them
The dual 2.5gb router is a steal compared to what is usually out there. I imagined needing such a thing in future applications when 1gb+ becomes affordable 🍻
We need more Raspberry Pi content, feel like it's great area that LTT hasn't explored.
Then you might find this channel interesting youtube.com/@JeffGeerling
No, we don’t, we can’t get Pi’s.
Don't increase pi demand please.
Yeah that's content that is going to get millions of views...
@JoeMalovich@@c1ph3rpunk if the demand permanently increases so will the supply, and well get a bigger, more diverse market to choose from
"It has a slight CPU advantage over the 🍌"
Well I should certainly hope so!
There's the Jeff Geerling comment I was expecting on this video... Just need Chris from Explaining Computers to complete the set 😁
Have you looked at other SBCs->ITX form factor? I still run FM2+ socket for my media server. I'm looking for options. I don't need much for a LAN distribution with no transcoding.
Lol some bot with a sexy profile picture literally copied and pasted my comment.
@@JeffGeerling must have been the banana emoji. That obviously was an invite. 🤣
@@JeffGeerling Yeah, they do that. Whenever you see one of the sexy bots saying something actually relevant to the video, it's copied from an older comment.
Good mention on the Orange Pi about the non standard and hard to get working GPIO pinout and insane power draw for a small board. I had these issues with Orange Pi 2 and SE and seems like years later they still exist. Great boards for the price, but poor software support to back them up. Tinkerboard, MangoPi and NanoPi are also worth looking at. I just looked up some of the boards that I have and realised that they are all going for at least 2-3 times the price than what I bought them for, so it's not just raspberry pi that shot up to astronomical prices.
Yeah. It would probably be worthwhile to make a video about mango pi
Just a thing to keep in mind about the N2+: there were some issues reported of all USB ports suddenly failing (mine did too). If I recall correctly it had something to do with a power delivery component that had to be replaced.
Quick edit: I still use the N2+ for its Android compatibility and I am currently using it for my own infotainment system in my car. To use any USB devices I opted to use the USB OTG connector (which does still work, thankfully).
I looked at doing the same. Did you find a GPS adapter that worked with the N2+ Android? I have a few Odroid boards and none seem to work with the GPS modules I have.
@@davidl1813 No I did not because I am using the GPS from my car
How much did it all cost ?
@@lopezthegreat9121 the Odroid was about €100 and the usb cables and adapters probably around €30, I also made some custom pcbs, ordered some more parts, etc. So I don’t really have an exact total.
Used thin clients or nucs can also be a great alternative and run a bigger variety of software or docker containers because of the 64bit intel plaftorm
Yep. Used thin clients and mini desktops are the way to go.
That's a nice comparison! It would be even better if it included evaluation of software support. While many companies churn out nice hardware, not all of them care for the software side, which can get users quite frustrated...
The alternatives are missing a thing that makes the Raspberry Pi great for beginners: There are tons of flashable images, guides to follow and thus barely any advanced knowledge necessary. Sure there are boards that have better hardware. But then I have to dive deep to learn how to use it.
Yes, but paying $129 to a scalper on Amazon is ridiculous and not worth it, the pi was supposed to be a 25£ computer.
@@LostieTrekieTechie It still is. You just don't buy from scalpers.
@@icneo9738 he meant that that was the original plan, not what actually happened.
Bingo! If you want people to learn to tinker with these boards? You have to have some kind of development community. Just like with old Chrombooks, they are totally capable, but who's doing it?
True, but it's a moot point if original Pis are unavailable, or only available at multiple times the list price.
BTW, refurbished mini PCs like the Dell Optiplex, HP EliteDesk or the Lenovo ThinkCentre devices are fantastic alternatives to SBCs if you want a (relatively) beefy PC to use as a Proxmox box, NAS, pfSense box, etc. Unless you plan to use the GPIO pins or need low power consumption, I'd say refurbished mini PCs are the best Raspberry Pi alternatives available right now (depending on what you intend to do with them)
For anyone that wanted a raspPi as a cheap way to setup a media/NAS/home server, you get way more for the $$$ this way than paying these insane prices for the raspPi.
Exactly. I'm disappointed that this has never been mentioned in the video. I bought a second-hand great condition hp t520 thin client for roughly 20 bucks plus 7 for the power adapter and added a 32 gb ssd for 5 dollars. and this machine is a beast for simple tasks like home assistant. with 6w max tdp, I cannot find a more reasonable deal in my country. I even managed to install and use win10 (roughly). the only downside is the size, t520 is relatively small for a thin client but cannot compete with pie in this regard. there are really powerful and low power mini-pc, thin client, nucs out there that can be harvested for a wide variety of tasks. my home media server is an hp 260 g2 with pentium 4405u+8 GB DDR4 that I bought for 95 dollars.
@@1omerfaruk to be fair, they did a video about these about a year ago but installed Windows on it which I think misses the point of using one of these old cheap machines. I think a sequel is needed featuring Proxmox and one of these old towers or mini PCs.
The old video they did about this: th-cam.com/video/zPmqbtKwtgw/w-d-xo.html
@@iamvinku I have a Proxmox cluster on HP T620Plus / 2*T630 running on it: TrueNAS, Zabbix, 4 linux instances, Windows 11 X-Lite (works fine as a virtual machine on T630)
Worth considering... If you don't need the GPIO and power draw / portability isn't as big a concern, old micro PCs are usually sufficient to run most things a Pi could. If you're looking for silent operation and such, look for Atom and Celeron based PCs. You can often find them for like $50, and they already have a case, storage, and power adapters included.
Yeah, the usb ports flaked out on my rPi that was running a print server, so I put debian on an atom netbook (in my parts bin for years due to messed up internal keyboard port) migrated my stuff over from the rPi via wifi before it finally died. The Atom works fine as a print server, although not quite as space efficient.
A pc draws way more power than an ARM does. What i do is i buy a chinese android TV box for 40 bucks and install armbian debian on it. It has local storage, sits already in a box and comes with the power adapter. Runs very task i want and cheaper than these boards..
@@Hollander040 genius lol
Thin clients! Low power, common and used ones are cheap as.
my usb-c laptop still has 4gb ram, but its let down by the fact IT STILL USES CELERON
Small correction: the pi 4 outputs 4k60 on one display, but only 4k30 when two are connected 😊
Typical modern LTT video unfortunately. I feel like their quality has tanked quite noticeably as they crank up production to increase the quantity. It's not that it's done in bad faith, it's just it's almost becoming a regular occurrence. There's SO MANY in this video it's honestly embarrassing. I feel like they should remove the video at this point.
@KameHameHaNurd I don't think it's THAT common but there are definitely a lot of editing errors here. What stood out to me was the Pi 4 specs saying "2.4/2.5" wifi. Confused me a lot until I realised they meant to say 2.4/5
And let's be real, most apps aren't going to work at 60fps at 4k. You'd be lucky to move your mouse around at 60fps
@@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep if you search through the comments, and even their own pinned one, there well over a dozen mistakes that aren't simple editing errors.
@@Ryan_Carder I'm talking about in general not in this particular video
One thing I learned after using various rPi's over the years is that the specs often aren't "actual" specs. For instance, "4K 60" doesn't mean you will get to watch a 4K video with 60fps. It will down-throttle and resort to screen tearing if you *actually* try to use 4K. I'd rather them say "4K text only" or something. But that's $120 under the bridge (thanks r-Pi :) ). LTT, I suggest you use your new lab (whenever it's completed) to *actually* verify and rank these mini-pis. Can you run USB3 5gbps on ALL the ports? try it. I dont mean to retaliate against the manufacturer if they dont, but say "hey we found that it has 4x USB 3.0 ports, but you can only use ONE at full sustained 5gbps". Unfortunately specs these days don't really mean much until you spend the $ and find out what the real specifications are (thanks rpi :) ).
My experience with the Pi4 was the USB 3 had serious bandwidth issues if it was connected to a storage device. When the computer was accessing a USB 3 storage device, the keyboard and mouse became unresponsive. So I would agree with your comment. And 720p would sometimes cause the 4 to struggle so I wasn't sure what kind of 4K video it would play
It really does have support for encoding/decoding video at those resolutions and frame rate using the onboard VPU. The catch is you have to install programs that are compiled targeting the onboard VPU. And some applications use different underlying libraries that may kr may not be compiled. Recently I had to manually recompile ffmpeg and underlying libraries on a Libre Renegade board to get it to process my survallence footage at the advertised rate. It was a pain, but it is smooth as butter now.
I believe they are good choices, but it is noteworthy that the Raspberry PI community is very large it is more than a simple PC as it can be used in electronic projects. Having a great community helps a lot, because there are several tools (compatible program libraries, for example) and a lot of content to study.
People keep repeating how amazing that Raspberry Pi community is, but I've found it very closed, toxic, entitled and cultish.
I had to wait for a day until my account was approved, then a few hours more after I posted a topic with a short, simple but very specific question, only to receive the answer "use the search function", when I already searched everywhere and didn't find the answer to my question.
So much for their "community"...
It’s not worthy no one in the community can get boards so where is the community?
Would love to see an updated version of "How's it like to work for linus" video, I think the answers are gonna be more diverse(and exciting) due to the new staffing.
Now it's more "what is it like to work for LTT?" Linus hasn't even met all the staff that work for him now.
@@Jimmy_Jones Oh yeah, I meant to reference that video but now that the company is so much bigger, that definitely makes sense
When the prices spiked, I actually jumped ship on the entire ARM market and picked up a refurbed Lenovo Thinkcentre. The M600 style systems can be had for around $85 - $150 depending on how high of specs you want. And they come with the original Windows License. Not a true replacement but a valid option depending on your needs.
If you want a 'traditional desktop' computer for productivity, gaming and emulation, then those small form factor PCs are great, along with full sized desktops and many laptops. The Pi was never really designed as a realistic replacement for those. Though it could probably fulfill some people's basic needs, a Pi wouldn't be most people's first choice. The Pi's strengths lie elsewhere.
I appreciate this comment - I poked around and saw a decent Chromebook for a stupidly cheap price, and all my project needs is a laptop as a base for a linux distro - this is perfect and doesn't require me to worry about a display and stuff, thanks! Don't know why I didn't consider refurbished gear
They have some newer fanless units out now that have have more modern x86 processors (celeron, atom, maybe a lower end i3 or Ryzen). Much better comparability and performance than a raspberry pi, but still relatively power efficient - maybe 15-20W when maxed out (which can be tuned up/down in the bios).
They're a little more expensive than the old sff mini pc's typically available on e-bay, but that comes with much lower power draw and modern creature comforts like nvme 3.0, 2.5g ethernet, usb-c, etc...
The Fujitsu Futro series (especially S720 and S920) are also a good option. They start at 15,- € used in Europe. Fanless, sturdy, low power consumption. The S920 even has a PCIe x4 half height slot.
This. If are just looking for a very small computer and not building a project that requires use of the HAT, and you can keep it plugged into the wall, then you are much better off buying a used ultra-small form factor PC, or a used i3 NUC. You’ll spend under $100 US, and it will blow any of these ARM SBCs out of the water in performance. Once you shell out for a case and power adapter you’re in for $100 at least with any of these SBC’s anyway.
Frankly, the RPI situation has gotten so bad that for my projects I've switched to using the NUC 11 Essential boxes as my SBC of choice, as they come in at about the same full package price as the ARM based SBC while using x64 CPUs, giving me many more choices in what I can run on them. Those little Celerons even have big boy GPUs that will happily handle UHD H.265 with Dolby Vision or 4K120 via DisplayPort.
I've heard alot about these from Eli the computer guy. Lots of people using these as severs. I see amazon using them a PA stations in the warehouses. They seem to pack a punch. I just got the odroid h2. If the NUC have better performance that the odroids then the SBC marker is about to be taken over.
What you should do when purchasing these RasPI-alternative boards is checking the mainline Linux kernel support. If the chipset runs the mainline Linux kernel well, and if there's a complete device tree file for the board, then the chances are that there would be at least some usable Linux distros for the board. If there isn't, then you can build one by yourself (it's not as hard as it sounds, assuming that you are mostly sticking to the mainline kernel and the vanilla Debian rootfs).
A few of them are actually more "open" than the original RasPi in that proprietary blobs are not required for booting. Most of them are not, though.
A lot of people are bringing up the better community support for the pi, which I agree with *if* you're the type to do a lot of hardware tinkering. However so many of the things that come up when you search for "easy raspberry pi projects" are things like retropie, some form of kodi media center, and pihole. All of those things are more than possible with just about any machine that can run a flavor of Linux and I wish more casual users were aware of that before going out and getting a pi 4. Emulators on the real pi aren't even that great. It was a novelty 10 years ago when there weren't many low power devices for that cheap to run mame or nes games, but hardware has come a long way to the point where, for the scalper prices of a pi, you can get a used pre-built desktop that will blow it out of the water. If you want something small like the pi then these alternatives are just as good or better in that regard.
Or broken laptops, or some x86 sbc if the intention is to make it like an arcade where constant electricity is available
Heck, even I have too many computers and laptop that can replace Pi purposes. If you want gpio maybe hook it to arduino as well?
One problem I found was obsolete hardware/software. I had a TFT monitor that had hardware and software that was supported, but lost compatibility along the line of upgrades/updates. Which is fixable if one knows matrix transformations and coding... I know neither. :(
I don't understand a lot of the pi hype. It's great if you do a lot of HW tinkering like you say, and make your own IOT devices and things like that, and need a small, low power computer to use in that kinds of projects. But people are actually buying them because they saw a dumb youtuber saying "they are great for learning linux" or something like that..... You can do that on ANYTHING. A virtual machine (both local and cloud based) an old throw away computer (it will be faster than a pi), your phone, ANYTHING.
There are a lot of "wasted pi's" because people are just flat out unintelligent.
I've seen people buying them to run docker/containers on ... while having them beside a server rack full of servers and maybe a NAS or two that runs VM's allready (I'm looking at you, tech-youtubers). It's so insanely dumb.
@@TechyBen I feel that. I had a project that used a pi zero and had gotten a little spi screen for it that did have pi support at one point but the software for it wouldn't compile because it was missing some stuff. I didn't know what it was missing or how it fix it so I basically abandoned the project.
@@johnkristian I never got that either. If they were still cheap and it was your first one maybe but I learned a lot more about Linux trying it on my old laptop than I ever did using any of the pi's I've had over the years.
Switched to ESP32 for most projects. They are plentifully available and cheap. Bit the bullet and dived into C/C++ which wes hard at first but now feels natural. I am frequently surprised how versatile the ESP32 is!
ESP32 is a different thing from a RPi Pi.
Yeah C++ is the GOAT but it seems like it's ether javascript or python/micropython that is being taught these days. I was a stunch hater of python for the longest after the "upgrade" of python from 2.7 broke the esp32 libraries for arduino and linux in general but thing seems have been fixed now if you stay away from python2 libraries. It seems if anyone is going to use ML or any automation it will be with python so now I'm going to learn python. (Cries in unpopular languages)
I use an ESP32-s2 for my 3d printer camera & power control as well as controlling my entire escooters lighting/indication system
Gotta have a pi too though
ESP32 is a microcontroller. It is NOT a Single Board Computer! 🤦♂️
@@chisangamumba2961 What do you think a arm processor /risc-v processor is? What do you think is in the esp32 chip? If you think the esp32 is a microcontroller then explian to me how it can be a VNC client?
I remember buying the original Orange Pi 3 months before the Raspberry Pi 4 came out and it blew the Raspberry Pi 3 away with it's much better performance, four USB 3.0 ports (the LTS version removed two of them) and built-in storage (more reliable than micro SD), it was perfect for making a low energy consumption NAS which was the reason I bought it. I'm impressed to see it still has decent performance against the current gen RPi.
Also, massive kudos to the Armbian Linux distro developers that do a great job on providing an up to date and well maintained Ubuntu/Debian distro for the vast majority of RPi alternatives. I was hoping to see that project mentioned in the video.
I would have loved to see pine64 offerings in this video. They have a huge assortment of sbc-s available, with a lot of ongoing development as well.
True, however the barrier to entry for pine products is a little higher though. The software support is either bad or non existent. Cool hardware but if you're a beginner with Linux, other boards might be better
Those are even less available than a Raspberry Pi in most of the world.
@@jonahbranch5625 They have a few mature ones as well, if you don't go with the latest / bleeding edge ones, they're pretty ok afaik.
@@jonahbranch5625 Armbian runs fine on most if not all of them.
that same OS is also a good Linux for most other pi alternatives.
@@soul_maestro that's good to know
The Rock 5B might be a little over the price, but the 16GB version kinda feels like a desktop replacement of sorts, thanks to the RK3588 (almost same as the Orange Pi5). But with 2 PCIe ports, there is no compromise, you can have WiFi 6 and a Nvme drive! Also, the GPU on that chip is awesome. Support is not there fully yet for the RK3588,thats the downside. Also the Khadas products like the Edge 2 and the VIM4, although way over the price, are amazing SBCs. Glad this boards are getting more attention from LTT! Kudos!
Khadas oowow firmware is the kind of innovation this market segment needs. They are a bit steep on price though.
Get an an Intel NUC if you want real power.
I looked at rasp pi prices and said - orange pi better and approx same price. I got Orange Pi 5 with 16GB ram. I bought fast micro sd cards and it is fast/fast/fastr. Yes, it is a desktop replacement. but Like said by Phozends - the sw is not bullet proof. I like linux with KDE, and it took a while to get something I like. - but it works well now. and there is a person who is releasing new versions of ubuntu about every 2 weeks. so it advances.
Excellent video. The SBC category is abused today costing hundreds of dollars for boards that don't even compete with fully designed laptops and desktops. The whole point of SBC popularity was useful tech for low prices. Low-cost emulation or even neat inventions like "super computers" and robots. I have some RPi 3's, 4's and Zero W's. Got them at the time of their lower prices thankfully.
The prices for R Pis will go back down. The Foundation has no control over third part resellers charging extortionate prices, and these scalpers are undoubtedly hurting the Foundation's reputation. The assumption being that the RPF are the ones charging silly prices, which is not the case. You CANNOT compare the Pi market to regular laptop and desktop markets... they're aiming at different audiences.
@@another3997 Did I say RPi prices in the hundreds? No. There are other SBC's costing insane prices.
The issue with the price of the RPi is it's popularitly. Unfortunately, and I not agree with it, but Ebon supported supplying bussinesses before hobbyists...
@@RyTrapp0 You completely missed the point. Good job. The prices of new SBC's are draining the community out. Many are complaining of prices of SBC's (not just RPi) New high priced SBC's are what people are setting as standards for their prices, therefore never going back to MSRP (not that that's the only reason). And the comparison to other devices is a comparison of price for what you get. They are both computing devices that, while not for the same customers, use some of the same resources.
I'm pretty sure the reason the pi is such a powerhouse is its ecosystem documentation and knowing that something's going to install and for the most part not be a problem. It's community is very much robust something the competitors are lacking and for the most point price point.
Precisely this ^^
That still does not justify pricing the boards at $150 each
@@20035079 and I completely agree with you I was merely talking before the component shortage begin. I have three of them myself so that's not really a concern. I'm still trying to figure it out when this will end.
@@20035079 It does actually justify that! I see you are new to the ways of capitalism.
Aaaaand they're all twice as expensive now
The Jetson nano from NVIDIA is also a great option with a decent amount of support and a relatively active community
Yep! They really are a fantastic option if you can afford it. I have one that is running an Octopi 3D Print server, and I am going to soon add a webcam to it so it can run Spaghetti Detective to detect print failures.
way more expensive now, especially their newer SBCs, worse pricing than their GPUs. Also the jetson nano is still more expensive than the pi for less benefits. Thats why i dont have one.
We need Retropie to work with more of these, it's the main reason I want to use a Pi in the first place. When the other ones start doing this I'll buy them, especially the last few you talked about as the power is definitely there to make Retropie run like the devil.
Ditto, and honestly they might as well launch the Pi 5 at this rate. I’d take any alternative that can run Retropie just as well. Or, you know…just make more Pi 4s 🥲
Or try an alternative OS like Batocera which I personally prefer over RetroPie anyways
OrangePi does have a fork of RetroPie
Its called RetrOrangePi
@@ayoitsaya Didn't know about this, will give it a go, thanks!
@@BryanCantDance Second vote for Batocera. It runs on just about anything.
depending on your usecase you can even buy an old version of those alternatives for even lower prices. I'm using an old BananaPi M1 for Home Assistant + Pi Hole and it runs just fine.
You can also use some of the no-name Android TV boxes (usually useless because no certification/hdr support) with the Amlogic S905 series soc's to boot armbian or similiar distro's over microSD, they come with everything you need out of the box, including stuff like IR and internal storage.
It’s kinda fun figuring out how to get a no name amlogic android box to boot coreelec lol
I remember soft bricking my box until I discovered the recovery button was only accessible if you opened the case up. Made the box 10 times more useful as a kodi machine
@@bryangutierrez655 never got gpu accel to work on my s905x "x96" box, otherwise itd be a great gray area/offline media viewer or a browsing machine (4x a53 is on some poverty spec chromebooks) or you can just leave it on with pihole and other stuff like a personal use server with barely any power draw and no noise
Inovato quadra is just that. It's a t95 mini tv box running armbian. It doesn't have gpio available but if all you need is usb it will work fine. Has comparable performance to a rpi3, for $35.
I agree that they are fantastic choice for low end computing devices, but be careful with trying to load Linux on them, sometimes, these boxes gets sabotaged deliberately to avoid people flashing new OS on them. I don't remember which companies did it, but the retro gaming community would probably have better documentation on it.
SoCs* distros* no need for apostrophes here
Another thing that's kinda hard to deal with when you choose other than a raspberry pi, is the variety of choice for enclosures and large heatsinks.
Well there are plenty of 3d printing options for each of the listed boards. But yea, gotchur point
for mountings most of them are the same form factor as the pi, while some are partially compatible, as for heatsinks only full case ones wont work but the regular heatsink + adhesive pack works as you just need to cover the right chips.
@@emkay1182 cause everybody has a (good) 3D printer, lol
@@LazyJesse There are very cheep printing services online (even on ebay) ;) Shouldnt cost more then a midclass pi case
@@LazyJesse if u dont have a 3d printer
then why r u buying them sbcs and then complaining not enough casings
literally for most ppl doing diy projects, they will 3d print their own designs, these are also hobbyists that likes to customize
for other people, why r u even buying it then complaining about not enough variety enclosure? just buy watever option is available, that will already suit u enough
if u do diy projects and are a hobbyist, i d bet 3d printer is something u already have or are looking to buy, even if not now
The main advantage of raspberry pi is their small form factor and their power efficiency so they can be attached to a battery or used in some Maker device. If you just want a cheap pc or a pi-hole, a used 2010 HP tower would be cheaper and 15 times faster.
Electricity costs money tho, but that aside yeah
Honestly, a potent, flexible and open Android machine would be pretty neat. All the stuff on the market is either something hilariously outdated from China with zero support, or lightning focussed on pushing you towards a specific media subscription and you have to jump through hoops to jailbreak.
The only SBC I have found to be a viable alternative for the Pi for running Klipper and OctoPrint has been the Le Potato. The documentation and support are definitely nowhere near as good as the Pi but with some searching I found some solutions that would get everything working.
There are so many projects I would like to built but I really started getting into the RPi right before prices for all models skyrocketed. It's just completely ridiculous that a RPi Zero 2 W which is supposed to be $12 can't be found anywhere for less than $60 which is the cheapest I found it when I last looked a while back. I am of the same mindset of LTT that even though they said things will improve in 6 months I think backorders, FOMO buyers and scalpers will keep prices high for the rest of 2023.
It's the buyers that are really hurting things. If scalpers didn't have buyers willing to pay the insane prices then scalpers wouldn't be able to sell rPi's at the insane prices. Honestly, there's no reason to pay the outrageous prices either, there are used/refurbished tiny/mini/micro pc's that sell for less and offer way more power, ports, expandability than rPi.
I want to buy a le potato just so i can toss it to the next person who says "you can run that on a potato"... here's one lets see you get it working...
How is it possible that so far nobody mentioned that cool catch Linus made at 6:14, without looking away from camera! No drops for this video (so far). 😄
Not gonna lie, I was actually expecting Anthony to cover this video considering his interest in Raspberry Pi & Linux as a whole.
He has been fired…
@@user-yk1cw8im4h what ?
@@strickos91 They’re lying, Anthony is still at LMG.
@@user-yk1cw8im4h Not true
Using Le Potato for Octoprint instance and have been very happy with the performance and availability.
I ran my Octos on RasPi, but found using old PC and docker easier and faster, not to mention super easy deployment of multiple instances (one for every printer) via web browser.
@@TheSanpletext thought about using an old computer but power consumption was always 3x or more even on an older low voltage intel mobile system
My guy, do you have any guides for getting octoprint setup on Le Potato? I've been trying and I just cant seem to get it running properly
Linus dont you think it's worth mentioning that although the hardware setup for some of these is comparable, software support for even the best competitor like the Orange Pi 5 is still maturing and in early stages. Things like audio and HDMi sometimes dont work without script patching
nobody cares, we use it mostly for kubernetes cluster. Would prefer SBC without all that desktop rubbish on the board
@@OlegKorsak Sorry, dumb question and a month later but I've seen references to people building kubernetes clusters with SBCs but never figured out why or what for. Is there a common use case? Thank you!
Orange Pi 5 is extremely good for emulating PS2 games if you flash Android on it. Absolute cheapest possible way to emulate PS2
I wish Linus would have baked some pie puns into this episode! Loved it, thank you guys 💙🍰
Well, it would have better if he released this video in March on the 14th. Aka. Pi Day.
He did put 3.1… in the intro
@@Qardo 😆👍
The LePotato has been a perfect companion to my Ender 3 3D printer. I run Klipper with Fluidd, and even have a webcam connected, it handles everything perfectly.
I was fortunate enough to hit MicroCenter a few times right when the Pi Zero 2 came out and have like, 5 of them. They run Klipper and Fluidd (or Mainsail) perfectly and are small enough to fit in the case with the mainboard.
Linus saying "3 usb ports" whilst holding 4 fingers up made my day!
great content, keep SBC content coming!
I WAS JUST LOOKING FOR SOME YESTERDAY!! Perfect timing!
Great video, thanks!! Its hard to under estimate the impact of making SBCs easily accessible to consumers....from improvised oddities to powering peoples DIY prosthetic limbs? Definition of badass.
I’ve loved these rockchip and and amlogic boards for low level hacking, also RISC-V options coming to market. Should warn that one may become a bit of a collector of these.
For the DIY folks, would like to see a video covering the ESPs, arduinos and alternatives.
I’ve had a fair bit of pain getting OrangePi 4 LTS up and running. It’s worth noting that it’s much harder to get alternative builds of Linux or upstream OS installs working than others. Even with a fair bit of experience, you’re often out of luck if you want to install anything other than the images from the manufacturer.
I really love your content, subbed for over 9 years, but i can't help but notice that a number of times what u say for the specs of a board isn't what is written in the pop up next to the board B-roll in the video, i am sure this is a simple mix-up, and i hope to keep watching your videos for the many years to come
While it's a bit outdated now, I have an Odriod Xu4 I use as my nas and it still works great. I'm not sure what it's performance is compared to the newer raspberries, but at the time the raspberries didn't have USB3.0. I still think it's a valid choice in the $50 range. I recently reinstalled the OS and updated to OMV6 and it's just as good as ever.
Nas are great for some people. I just use free services, photos go on fb and videos go on TH-cam. Anything else i have can be lost for all I care.
@@kameljoe21 Facebook is not a reliable way to backup photos, especially full resolution. Also I scan all my personal documents and shred all but the most important ones (birth certificate etc). I do think there is merit to off-site storage if you have a fire or something but for me a NAS works great. I can also attach a USB drive and run Rsync or use USBBackup which will automatically sync whatever shares I configure to the drive when I plug in it, that I can then store off-site. There are no monthly or additional costs unless I buy more hard drives.
@@mushieslushie I just do not have anything that needs to be backed up that I can not recover from other sites. All of my emails and documents are on my gmail. Any sheets and things like that are also on google drives. The only thing on my computer or what I would have on a NAS would be movies and tv shows I have downloaded for better viewing mainly because not all sites have speed watching nor do they have additional volume boosting like VLC does. I no longer watch anything at normal speeds it has to be 1.5x or faster. I am so sick of watching stuff slow, I am able to watch shows far faster and have more time for other things. I have 4 tb of space of which is about 3tb full.
I used to feel this way then I realized my time is worth wayyy too much, pi has by far the best ecosystem, support, really nice imaging tool for their OS, etc
Just constantly sold out tho. Why don't they ramp up their production? It's ridiculous
If you don't need the GPIO pins and don't mind higher power consumption you can also run an old thin client pc, they're cheap, upgradable and great for server stuffs. They generally consume less than a 60w light bulb, and sometimes sub 10 or 5 w on idle.
Another benefit is that they're not ARM-based, so software compatibility/support is typically even better than the raspberry pi.
There are also some more recent fanless sff pc's (usually intended to be router appliances) that have around half the power draw as those for around the same price...
high power consumption is really only the concern here, and also the size, it just means u need to setup an fixed server somewhere
otherwise, for the the gpio part, u could easily use microcontrollers, powerful microcontrollers that can communicate wirelessly with the pc
@@zackkertzman7709 totally agree, i would buy an x86 sbc over arm sbc given the choice at the same price
do note that x86 sbc actually exists, i think linus also did a video on lattepanda where he put an rtx on it
for some reason, i dont think any x86 sbc was shown in this video, probably because those are way out of the price range
@@urnoob5528 I'll have to look up the LTT video on it.
I looked into x86 SBC's at one point, but it seemed like you ended up paying quite a premium over a sff pc/thin client/etc... for that SBC form factor. At least that was true when I looked - relative values might've moved since then.
@@urnoob5528 I have a less than 1L ThinkCenter as a server, I could litteraly shove it in a closet if my peak performance demands weren't so high. As for power consumption, well that's relative, where I live running a 60W lightbulb 24/7 is about less than 3$ per months. And a computer with the same maximum TDP probably consume half of that if I'm conservative in my estimate, but it's probably even lower than that with efficient idling.
There's another alternative similar to the Seeed from Bigtreetech called the PI4B Adapter and the CB1 daughterboard. The two together can be bought for $37.50 USD as of the time of this comment. Performance has been compared to a 3B+. The CB1 by itself works with several of their 3D printer control boards, allowing you to add Pi functionality directly to the control board, eliminating the need for external mounts or power. With the adapter, it works just like a Pi. Note: The adapter also works with the CM4.
Surprised they didn't have the BTT CB1 in as well. Pretty much only used in the enthusiast/tinkerer 3D printer world right now, but it's a direct replacement for a RPi 3B+ for a good price if you buy direct from BTT or their AliExpress store. Amazon has a near 100% markup for some reason.
I hadn't actually realised there was a Pi shortage until recently. I just have a habit of buying the latest Pi when our comes out, then finding a project for it afterwards. So when I built a DIY NAS recently, I didn't even think twice about having to source a Pi. I just cannibalised my emulation station that I hadn't used in a while.
i have never seen a ltt video with 4 views in 10 yearsxD
Great video. My understanding of Raspberry Pi alternatives is that whilst they may offer great hardware, the quality of the hardware drivers and OS support is nowhere near as good as that from the Raspberry Pi foundation.
One cool alternative to use as a NAS, is the Zima, it's a singleboard computer as well, butt with x86 architecture, 2x SATA and 1 PCIE slot
ZimaBoard
I've bought my Raspberry Pi 4 (4G) for ~80€ with a heatsink, case, fan, powersupply and a 32Gb SD Card when it was new to the market. Still going strong.
Now you barely get the Raspberry Pi itself for that price.
This bloke is still alive.... Nice to see.
Going over Raspi alternatives, can we expect a future video about Mini PC diy and prebuilt options? Sure you've explored budget-mid-high range PCs, prebuilts, and unique mini PCs, but nothing focusing generally on mini PC options, which I would expect would include some Raspis and similar.
One board that was left out is the nvidia jetson nano. It is more expensive than the pi, but is really powerful. It may not technically be in the same class as the pi but I think it’s still worth a mention
Most of the power of the Jetson is for other use cases though...like AI and machine learning. Buying a Jetson and using it as a HTPC would be a massive tragedy. Same applies to the Latte Panda.
Also the availability is pretty similar to the pi as it is pretty impossible to find in stock, at least where I live
Orange Pi 5 and 4 LTS here. Go for the 5, as it's the only one to run Plex well with software decoding/encoding.
Thanks for the good summary of the alternatives. I use the RPi a *lot* for various projects, from the usual home automation, to the less common R2D2 droid! I've managed to get hold of a couple of PI4 recently, and even some Pi Zero 2, but its good to have alternatives. I don't always need the processing power, but the form factor is the key. A lot of people talk about re-using thin clients or old laptops, but if you want something small, the Pi size can't really be beat.
I've ordered a couple of Orange Pi3 to try out on some other projects.
One thing I like about the RP4 and RP3b+ is the Power over Ethernet add-on board you can get. This means my pi's are powered by my PoE switch and in the rare case of a hard crash I can remotely power cycle them.
I have not been able to find information on PoE support for any of the alternative boards.
You should be able to buy PoE splitters that can be used to power anything for about $10. Just be sure to pick the right one (USB C vs Micro vs 12v Barrel Jack), the USB C variation is more expensive but you can buy each of them in packs of 3 for a discount.
For my use-case I don't want another power cord on my rack. I have a POE switch to provide power to various devices. I know some would consider it a little silly, but I like a neat rack.
I'm going to be buying my Raspberry PI for the first time and I'm going to buy it from the original company because they made it open source so I'm going to reward them for their grand gesture!!
In my previous job, we tried to use 'other pi' in one of our projects, but it ended shortly when there was no working kernel source to build usb-otg. They just spin those soc's, but there is no support. That's why Raspberry Pi Rocks!
I recently bought the orange pi 3 lts as a kit with case, cable, and little heat sink for $60. While I use it for primarily ps1 emulation it does that job pretty well via retropie and it also supports wireless offbrand ps3 controllers. It's not perfect but runs as good as the ps1 if not better. I'd assume it'd run older retro systems just as well too
Hey man, where are you from, as I cant seem to find any from the official site for less then 60$? Where did you purchase this from as well?
Just bought an Orange Pi. Didn’t even know alternatives existed! Thank you for making this video!
There's some SBCs that make it easier to develop with FPGAs which if it's up your alley for development stuff, is super nice.
But my favorite SBC is the BeagleBone Black. However, it's bad for anything media center related. It's best for robotics/electronics stuff. The PRUs can be used to offload most of the tasks you would expect the pi's CPU to handle, which tends to be way faster and higher efficiency when making a machine you're building do complex tasks.
I seen the iceBreaker bitsy and now I got to wonder is everything going to be a super small raspi pico board that get the performance of the raspi0 using risc-v archutecture? I mean the pine 0x64 is already here and the esp32 and raspi pico are basically a microprocessors.
I was looking for an sbc a month ago, decided to get an OrangePi5 as it seemed to be an easy choice and it is. It is fast, I got a cheap 256GB m.2 ssd for it and its been a great device. The only thing I wish it had was a decent case that I could buy from amazon or ali express (don't have a 3d printer), I got an acrylic one that does the job but it doesn't look good.
Another point missed is that a lot of people wanting a pi 4 could very easily get away with lesser pi. Eg pi hole or a webserver would happily run on a rpi 3a+ which had plenty of stock when I bought one last week. Also many people may want a pi for some projects a pico would be more suited for thinking the pi would be better. But something like a remote control car doesn't need an operating system or the power requirements of a rpi 4. RPIs are partly for learning and building. Often the RPI4 isn't the best raspberry pi for either of these goals.
Raspberry Pi was supposedly founded on affordability and open access. I sincerely hope this video opens up a lot of people to alternatives and takes enough support and business away from the Raspberry Pi Foundation to actually get them to address their supply and scalping issues. GPUs managed to come back down since 2020 and there aren't nearly as many brand and price alternatives to as what we saw in this video.
You really think if the Pi foundation could meet demand they wouldn't?
Great info in this vid! But I'd recommend steering clear of using the 3D bar graphs in the future. They unnecessarily harm the ease of legibility, and depending on how it's rendered, the fact that the back corners of the bars don't line up with the "0" harm the perceived (if not literal) veracity of the information as it's displayed.
I really dig this video --- because it's almost like the only content for SBCs are those incredibly deep, deep dives. I like those too, but I forget about the one I just watched as I watch the next one. They just all blur together. ALSO --- Good deal with doing some of the spendier units. Because the other thing with Pi4 was it was often what we used because it was the only game in town and we would have loved to have something more performant but the next step up was a BIG step up into something like a full-on small form factor PC.
After recently speaking with Liz, co-founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation at a small event, I have official-unofficial confirmation that Pi's will be back in stock early Q3 of this year.
The posted an official blog post not long ago saying the same thing.
So..... the Pi 5 is going to be released in Q4 then????😄
I’ve tried a Le Potato. Their software support really isn’t too bad-I’m running their official Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS image-and Amazon reviews to this effect are really old. The 2GB of RAM (vs 1GB for the Pi3) really helps it out, too. I use it mainly as a low-power TP-Link WiFi controller, and while more RAM would be even better, and updates are, uh, slow, for the price it’s alright. It’s the only Linux install I’ve got running right now that is already on kernel 6.0!
> their
> official
It really doesn't work like that. If it's theirs then it's not official
@@mskiptr Ubuntu is slow with patches and enable new hardware features. We maintain a separate kernel and some userspace tooling via apt to make it make the experience more consistent and better. Our kernels are updated weekly for security.
@@LibreComputer That sounds pretty reasonable. Nice
I guess I'm just too used to seeing vendors doing a hacked-together BSP release of android or debian and leaving any proper maintenance or upstream bring-up to the community.
@@mskiptr We redesign everything for every chip we adopt. We do not want to contribute to e-waste. That is why we are very conservative with our SoC choice.
I got interested in the GPIO and settled with 2 RPi 3B's that wasn't having a super price on eBay. Now I have a building phase and like the rabbit hole and the OS experience is a quality and didn't cause an unsolvable loop.
Software and general development for the Raspberry Pi is unmatched. So I understand and enjoy the alternatives, but for a newcomer wanting to learn the OG can’t be beat.
Thanks, Linus and team! Glad to see people are still interested in SBCs.
A lot of these seem pretty cool. I've only had 1 Pi, a Pi 3B+ (I really, really needed Wifi from it) I got like a couple years ago for some retro gamin'. Not used it too much but I do like the thing. :)
The differential of rasp is the giant community. You save a lot of time and have a lot more fun not worrying so much about the bugs you have in any model.
These days im only considering RK3588 and RK3588S SBCs, the features and cpu power is just way over the top of all else, and yeah its a little more expensive. Still the Orange PI5 4GB was $60 at preorder. Its well worth it, its way better than anything else avalible at SBC format. And to be fair Linus, the MSRP of the PI4 4GB is $55, the Orange PI5 4GB at $75 is more expensive yes, but not that much more expensive.
0:08 no joke sounds like a apple keynote
Someone didn't proofread the spelling of Raspberry @ 1:56 lol but a great video with great alternatives! Thanks!
For some use cases, even using x86 Thin clients or tiny PCs like M93P or even those tiny Beelink tiny PCs would be more performant for less money. I wanted to DIY a laptop but even the RK3588 (non-S) can't compete with x86 Alder Lake E Cores for the same price :(
That being said, I always wish that there was a way to make old smartphones (not just Samsung ones) into ARM SBCs to reduce ewaste.
I personally use a Ryzen thinclient as an Ubuntu server. Slapped on some more RAM and nvme storage, and it became a decent Minecraft/media machine.
Very informative video Linus, I'd love to see more of such videos on SBCs
Thank you so very much for the detailed comparison and description.
I would love to see the whole of the information tabulated for easy consumption if possible.
I am SOOOO grateful for this video, I've been looking for an alternative to the pi for my final year project and could only find the expensive options until I found this. How well will the renegade run Home assistant?
Half of these are better than my "gaming" laptop that barely runs 2 tabs of Chrome
I’m impressed by your benchmarking efforts !
Despite all the perf you can get, I think the reason for choosing any device like pi is to make sure the drivers and tools are available for the io for the use of choice.
You want to focus on the task and not waste time on making things work well with your peripherals..
You missed Quartz64 from Pine64 which can be had for about $80. I really like it, plus you'd be supporting them in their endeavor challenging the status quo with their Linux based PinePhone. Seeed Studio has other interesting offerings as well, not just the reRouter. The odyssey, although at almost $300 running a Celeron CPU, is a neat board.
That new raspi pico competetor the 0x64 is going to be a little monster once people fully realize its capabilities. Microdata will be the next big trend.
Kind surprised that you guys didn’t mention the Nvidia Jetson Nano. That thing is pretty cool. I have the 4GB version myself and even though it is a bit dated now it still can kick some butt. Since it runs unbent arm it’s pretty much just like a pi with a ton of docs from nvidia.
Honestly, as a windows user I'm confused seeing that Raspberry Pi is a physical thing and not just an OS.
NVidia's SBCs are bit pricey. Nano is the only option there, but even it is ~$100 while RPi4's MSRP is like $35. We've used ASUS' Tinkerboards in some projects; they're pretty nice, too, but cost almost $200. May be worth it if you need more processing power, but doesn't quite fill that niche for versatile low-power SBCs.
@@Lodinn the nvidia boards are definitely pricey but they do come with a lot of compute power.
True, they have power but on GPU side. RP4s CPU is quite a bit faster than the Jetson's.
@@leagueaddict8357 what is there to be confused about?
The most stunning thing about this video was the catch @ 6:13
I personally feel that no other SBC can top the raspberry Pi as it has the community support to back it up, there's literally a raspberry pi community for everything!
Rpi re-invented Linux in many way, while most of Rpi support is generic.