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Raspberry Pi is intentionally blocking RAM capacity upgrades (www.notebookcheck.net)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 15 points 1 week ago (16 children)

Are there any companies that make comparable products? I've been thinking of making a simple and small and low power media computer and I'd rather it not be a raspberry pi anymore

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  • [–] 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

    Orange Pi, Banana Pi, plenty of other Chinese SBC makers who products don't necessarilly have names ending in Pi. Tons of those in places like Aliexpress. You can even try a Risk-V architecture if you're daring.

    The problem is that their english language support is inferior, as is the software stack, plus the ecosystem is a lot smaller so there's a lot less info on those from other people out there. That said, as far as I can tell all of them have at least one Linux distro (at the very least ARMbian), some having more distros.

    Still, it would be fine if all you want is a small computer with HDMI to turn it into a media player using Linux and something like Kodi.

    Alternativelly, just get a Mini-PC with a low power intel chip like the N100 - which is actually cheaper than a Raspberri Pi 5 whilst being more powerful and with better peripheral compatibility since it has a PC architecture - and put the Linux with Kodi in it. Sure, it uses more power because it's not ARM, but not actually that much more (15w vs 8w for a Pi, if I remember it correctly).

    Raspberri Pi devices are maybe twice the price of other devices with equivalent hardware, which means that the low-end low-power Mini-PCs are cheaper and yet more powerful and compatible than the high end Pi.

    I have a mini PC just like that at home working as a TV Media Player (which a nice remote control and everything) and I even use it as a home server and home nas (remotelly controlled via web interfaces and SSH) since it's has far more power than needed for just being a media player.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Might be a controversial take, but Raspberry Pi's are pure ass as media servers. They're profoundly i/o limited, which extends to access to external USB devices as well as ethernet, and lack the oomph required to decode hi-res video streams locally. 1080p can be choppy, forget about 4K.

    Pi5 occupies the unhappy spot where it's too expensive for enthusiast and hobby applications, but inadequate as a desktop PC which benefit from a bit more power.

    A mini-PC is a much better fit. An N100 might even be overkill - mine has a Skylake from a decade ago in it, and it crushes 'media' activities while gently sipping at electricity.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago

    For a long time I was using a tegra dev kit as an HTPC. Definitely not the cheapest option but I got it for free so it worked out great. I bet you can get the old TX1 boards pretty cheap these days, and they just run Ubuntu with some Tegra mods, but apparently can also run NIXOS as well.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    Well, I went for an N100 myself (and recommended it) because of its low power consumption (it has a 15W TDR), which makes it a good choice for an always on device which is how I operate my Mini-PC because it's also my home NAS.

    That range of CPUs was design to consumer less power and most x86 CPUs consumer significantly more power than this.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (5 children)

    Also, limited support, both in community size and time. Those Chinese manufacturing companies come and go like docker containers. They spin one up to sell some product for a while, then when they're done they dissolve it. If you want any support, you're on your own.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

    It's hard to imagine exactly what kind of person would want to build their own Linux media server but also actually needs to contact tech support for hardware they own outright.

    Half the fun anyway is getting it to work at all, the other half is tweaking and getting it to work exactly the way you want.

    I'm a $50-$100 "mystery Thinkpad from eBay" kind of guy. From what I gather, there are lots of us. Exactly zero times have I thought "oh but what if I need to contact Lenovo?" LMAO

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    I mean community support, as in the number of people using them and have experience, who know what works and what doesn't.

    Tech support in the sense of stuff like bios updates is important too.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago

    The makers of both Orange Pi and Banana Pi have been around for years, over a decade at least for Orange Pi.

    In fact in my experience SBC makers tend to be quite stable, possibly because those thinks are a lot more technically complex than, say, an electric kettle.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    Asus NUC with Intel N150 is what I’ve been looking at. Up-board.org has a credit card sized dev board with the proc, if form factor is a requirement.

    There is also the N350 with 8 cores for more power.

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