[HN Gopher] Every single board computer I tested in 2025
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       Every single board computer I tested in 2025
        
       Author : speckx
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2026-03-05 12:24 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bret.dk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bret.dk)
        
       | tripdout wrote:
       | The BPI-R4 is great for use as a 10G WAN router if your ISP uses
       | PPPoE since the network processing engine has hardware
       | acceleration for it.
       | 
       | Unifi released the UCG-Fiber around a year ago that can also
       | apparently finally handle it, but plenty of threads about slow
       | performance with their UDMs since it's entirely done on the CPU
       | [0].
       | 
       | I'm not the biggest fan of OpenWRT and would prefer something
       | like OPNSense, but it's x86 only and good PPPoE performance isn't
       | guaranteed either - need a CPU with good single core performance
       | that costs more than the BPI-R4, or apparently virtualizing
       | OPNSense allows it to process PPPoE with multiple threads.
       | 
       | 0: https://community.ui.com/questions/What-is-the-max-
       | performan...
        
       | heavyset_go wrote:
       | I basically stopped buying SBCs several years ago, are there any
       | SoC platforms that have mainline Linux support these days? Or is
       | x86 still the way to go?
        
         | aarroyoc wrote:
         | RK3588 is well supported right now and is present in many SBCs
        
       | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
       | I really wish these lists would talk about software support. If I
       | buy these, do they have mainline Linux support? Will I have
       | security patches in a year? Is there decent distro support, or am
       | I stuck with the vendor's half broken default image?
        
         | sthlmb wrote:
         | Hey! Author of the post someone linked here. Fair comment,
         | though this wasn't really meant to be a review, or "go buy
         | this!" type of post, it was more to highlight what I tested
         | from the boards released in 2025 and share the results to those
         | benchmarks via sbc.compare
         | 
         | Armbian do a great job of handling support for a whole host of
         | boards (including most I included in this list), so you'll
         | usually have Debian/Ubuntu-based flavours. Vendor kernels and
         | vendor supplied images will be hit and miss. Mainline Linux
         | support is a flag you filter by on the benchmark comparison
         | site linked in the article, but it's a difficult one to keep up
         | to date and define exactly. It could have some kind of support,
         | but miss out on display functionality, or WiFi yada yada. What
         | would we then class as having mainline support? All hardware
         | etc functioning? If so, very, very few will meet that
         | definition.
         | 
         | I get the desire for the information, and perhaps I should have
         | envisioned these types of questions, but all I initially meant
         | for the post to be was a recap for people following me to see
         | which boards I'd tested that were released last year :D
        
           | fn-mote wrote:
           | > All hardware etc functioning?
           | 
           | If your standard is "supports suspend/resume", there's even
           | plenty of laptops that won't meet it.
           | 
           | That gave me a laugh.
        
           | LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
           | In addition to https://armbian.com one could also cross check
           | with Diet-Pi, which got resurrected from dormancy sometime in
           | the last years.
           | 
           | https://dietpi.com
        
         | wojciii wrote:
         | Yes, software support is what kills projects for me. I have
         | been burned on boards with terrible support before. No
         | documentation and some Linux kernel patched by someone on
         | crack. Usually the Chinese comments in the patches are a dead
         | giveaway of where the software originated from.
        
       | plagiarist wrote:
       | I wish comparisons would get into whether or not drivers have
       | been upstreamed far enough where it is possible to run real Linux
       | distros. And whether or not they've made braindead choices about
       | boot device ordering.
        
       | tamimio wrote:
       | It would be better if there was a table summarized it all.
        
         | sthlmb wrote:
         | What kind of summary are you realistically looking
         | for/expecting in an article like this? (Genuine question, no
         | sass!)
        
           | IshKebab wrote:
           | Price, CPU performance, RAM, storage, networking, software
           | support outlook.
           | 
           | I mean really though unless you have a _lot_ of time I don 't
           | think there's anything close to worth leaving the software
           | support of Raspberry Pi for.
        
             | tamimio wrote:
             | We posted that at the same time!!
             | 
             | Rpi and also nvidia jetson I would add.
        
             | sthlmb wrote:
             | For that I'd really point you towards the links in the
             | article, as that was really what it was supposed to do :D
             | As I mentioned to another person in the comments, this was
             | literally supposed to be a recap of the boards I tested,
             | with links to in-depth benchmark results for each of the
             | boards, with the ability to then filter and compare against
             | around 100 other SBCs that I own and have tested in a
             | controlled manner. Software support is a very tricky one
             | though, sadly. I have a few ideas for little things like
             | being able to search for Armbian support, but others would
             | need a long hard think!
        
           | tamimio wrote:
           | A table or similar where it lists the maker, cost, board
           | name, ram, soc, arch, and maybe other columns like high
           | end/low/budget friendly, and size form factor.
           | 
           | That would be helpful before you dive into the details, for
           | example, I build drones, and seeing nvidia Xavier specs I
           | would be thrilled about it until I see its size and power
           | consumption. Great article btw!
        
             | sthlmb wrote:
             | Thanks! See my reply below to the other user on this, I
             | think the links to sbc.compare in the article have a lot of
             | the data that you're looking for. I didn't really want to
             | duplicate all of the data I have on the other site, I was
             | more giving a quick recap, with links to the mass of data
             | if people wanted to go that far. Some you mentioned like
             | the dimensions are in the database, but I've not yet
             | exposed them to the frontend.. Ever growing to-do list of
             | life!
        
       | jeden wrote:
       | please make llm.cpp benchmark on this same model
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-08 23:00 UTC)