Which energy efficient ARM platform to choose?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    RK3399, you say, nice. This is quite a "luxury" area when it comes to price. In case we talk about ordinary Joe at home.

    A rockpro 64 with 2gb of ram is only $60.

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    ROCKPro64 2GB is $59.99 and now I have to add vat/customs and shipping. Because I do not have it locally.
    And we are talking here all the time just about the naked sbc. The average Joe in the house must count the rest of the things when he builds NAS.


    The point of view depends on the point of standing. For someone, something is cheap and expensive for someone else.


    I figured since you were contemplating an odroid hc-1 at $50, that the rockpro64 at $60 was in the same price range. I guess I didn't think $10 was a lot. When it comes to a NAS, saving every cent you can will probably come back to haunt you.

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  • what do you think about Odroid HC1 or something else at this price?


    Nice device. If you order from Korea you need to keep in mind that Hardkernel declares real values (unlike some of those sending from China. They often declare value below 20 bucks so at least in EU you'll neither pay customs nor taxes).

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    So ROCKPro64 instead of Odroid-HC1?

    While I really like the chassis on an HC1, if you can afford a rockpro64, I would say get one.

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  • While I really like the chassis on an HC1, if you can afford a rockpro64, I would say get one

    Well, if it's about costs of the whole solution then you need either to add an USB enclosure or Pine's nice SATA cable or their SATA card + NAS enclosure. And if it's just about a single disk NAS thingy then HC1 and RockPro64 will perform absolutely identical since HDD and Gigabit Ethernet will limit performance.

  • And what about the 32bit CPU in 2018-20xx will not be a problem? Less and less software for 32bit

    Nope.


    32-bit vs. 64-bit on ARM is something entirely different compared to the x86 world. With the 'NAS use case' in mind there's only one advantage wrt 64-bit CPUs: AES crypto stuff if the SoC in question supports 'ARMv8 Crypto Extensions' (almost all do except Raspberry Pi)


    Some more information here: https://github.com/ThomasKaise…ch/blob/master/Results.md


    But for the NAS use case this is not important. The bottlenecks are I/O and Gigabit Ethernet and it really doesn't matter whether the CPU is super fast or not or 32-bit or 64-bit. Debian will support armhf (32-bit) architecture for a long time from now on.


    I'm even promoting using armhf userland on 64-bit CPUs since needing less physical memory.

  • I'm planing to setup a quiet, power-efficient NAS and Plex Media Server combination for my home. I've narrowed my choices down to a Odroid HC1 and a RockPro64 (+ the available NAS case).


    Any suggestions which route would give me more performance in case I'd need to transcode a video stream in Plex? As a NAS both should offer enough power, right?

  • As a NAS both should offer enough power, right?

    For the NAS use case they're both way too powerful ;) Seriously: You get same NAS performance and the bottleneck will always be the HDD used -- something to keep in mind when using 2.5" HDD that are not entirely empty. HDDs use ZBR and once they fill up transfer speeds will slow down below the Gigabit Ethernet network bottleneck)


    If it's about transcoding usually ARM SoCs are too slow to let this happen on the CPU cores. But they all contain a video engine that could serve as a hardware accelerator once drivers are ready and the application that should make use of supports this (read as: choose an Intel box and use QuickSync, to my knowledge you still won't have fun with any ARM solution since while the video engines can do this stuff driver and userspace support is lacking in Linux. No problem in Android of course)

  • tkaiser, could you give an input about a wireless energy efficient storage platform to choose? Like in your post with around 1W (or better) consumption. I've been playing with a ZSUN Wifi card reader running OpenWRT and it's performance is less than desired. Thinking of tuning it to make a storage comparable to TP-link MR-3020 abilities (they share the same platform, the popular AR9331 SoC) but maybe it's a waste of time and there are platforms with same or better energy needs and times better performance (FTP/SMB over Wi-Fi). Main purpose is a battery powered wireless storage for using out in the field. Size matters but power matters most.


    Any thoughts would be welcome.

  • could you give an input about a wireless energy efficient storage platform to choose?


    Nope. No experiences whatsoever since wireless performance depends on so many factors and I never did any consumption measurements so far in this area.


    But 'performance' means 'the more antennas the better' (increases consumption) and modern standards that make use of 5GHz band. So you need at least 2x2 MIMO and 802.11n or 802.11ac on both 'server' and 'client'.


    I would most probably start to play with an RTL8814AU thingy with 4 real antennas connected to one of the ARM boards with native battery support known to provide at least 900mA on the USB port the wireless dongle should be connected to.

  • thanks to @tkaiser and @flmaxey who lead me to here and made me realize that raspi is not the only SBM fitting for OMV. Been using raspberrypi for ages, but recently I had an issue where one of my external hdd attached to it lose a partition, and poof, all the data inside goes with it. Might consider a replacement while at it. I have a pine64 from the crowdfunding day, but I don't see it get mentioned. Instead, rock64, bananapi and nanopi. gonna have a long read of this thread first.


    update:
    ok, after consideration and skimming through the thread, for my need: low power consumption, 24/7 operation, NAS file server (1080p movies and below), torrent downloader, maybe even plex, with 1 external, self-powered HDD, an orangepi zero plus should suffice. Am I right? If I got the budget, sure, a Rock64 might seem a better investment for the long run, but for now, an orangepi is more appealing, budget wise.

  • well so far @tkaiser seems to know what he's talking about, with fair comparison too. so you reckon the orange pi zero plus would be sufficient for my need, @tkaiser?


    of course, I wish I could use my pine64 since I have it anyway, or better, had the budget to get a rock64. but custom getting strict here in Indonesia, and orangepi sounds like an upgrade from the pi, while keeping the budget low.

  • I wish I could use my pine64 since I have it anyway

    https://sourceforge.net/projec…ngle%20Board%20Computers/


    There is no difference in "NAS performance" between an Allwinner A64 thing like Pine64 and Allwinner H5 things like OPi Zero Plus or NanoPi NEO2. At least as long as you only connect 2 disks maximum. Main difference between A64 and H5 is count of real USB host ports (H5 has twice as much).


    But Pine64 is a support nightmare since using Micro USB for DC-IN (so with an average phone charger you run into undervoltage situations for sure) and there is no custom led on the board that would signal 'board has booted'. The only led is just a power led and will light even if the board crashed already due to undervoltage.

  • https://sourceforge.net/projec…ngle%20Board%20Computers/
    There is no difference in "NAS performance" between an Allwinner A64 thing like Pine64 and Allwinner H5 things like OPi Zero Plus or NanoPi NEO2. At least as long as you only connect 2 disks maximum. Main difference between A64 and H5 is count of real USB host ports (H5 has twice as much).


    But Pine64 is a support nightmare since using Micro USB for DC-IN (so with an average phone charger you run into undervoltage situations for sure) and there is no custom led on the board that would signal 'board has booted'. The only led is just a power led and will light even if the board crashed already due to undervoltage.

    means NAS performance wise, pine64 will still be better than raspi? even raspi3?


    I think to play it safe I'll just use a single HDD this time, 3TB should be sufficient.


    what do you mean by support nightmare since pine64 using micro usb for dc IN? orange pi zero plus is using micro usb too isn't?

  • means NAS performance wise, pine64 will still be better than raspi? even raspi3?


    If we're talking about Pine64+ (with Gigabit Ethernet) then yes. Unfortunately Pine folks in the beginning also did a small variant called Pine64 (without 'Plus') with just 512MB RAM and only Fast Ethernet. This one of course sucks compared to the Gigabit Ethernet equipped boards since with Fast Ethernet you're always bottlenecked by network (100 Mbits/sec max as on an Raspberry Pi 3)


    Micro USB is a horrible choice to power a board since the majority of Micro USB gear out there is insufficient. You need a 'special' Micro USB PSU (e.g. the 'official PSU' sold by RPi Trading) to provide enough current and avoid voltage drops. On the RPis there is undervoltage detection circuitry that slows down the CPU, GPU and RAM when it detects voltage drops to prevent the board crashing but this does not exist on any of the other Micro USB equipped boards. So especially people who switch from RPi to other ARM boards get the impression the RPi runs stable and other ARM boards crash while in reality the RPi just copes better with insufficient powering and the powering needs to be improved anyway.


    If you look at the beginning of this thread my recommendation is an OPi Zero Plus together with the vendor's NAS Expansion board since this can be combined with a good 3A PSU with barrel plug to reliably power board + one or two 2.5" disks.


    https://forum.armbian.com/topi…on-board-with-sata-msata/
    https://forum.armbian.com/topi…wering-through-micro-usb/

  • oh I thought u said "can be used" so I was assuming it's not a must. so orange pi without the NAS expansion board is prone to under voltage crash as well? Came to think of it my raspi3 DID crashed a few time.


    mine is Pine64+

  • so orange pi without the NAS expansion board is prone to under voltage crash as well?

    You need a 'special' Micro USB PSU (e.g. the 'official PSU' sold by RPi Trading) to provide enough current and avoid voltage drops


    Micro USB to power boards is crap since it encourages users to do it wrongly. If you know about the problems you can avoid insufficient phone chargers and USB cables with power wires too tiny. But average users don't know and then run into troubles with their boards crashing. That's why you need a 'special' Micro USB PSU with thick wires and providing a voltage slightly above 5V to be on the safe side. If you have something like this or buy it you're fine.


    And repeating myself another time: the problem with Pine64/Pine64+ is that they only have a power led. On boards with a custom led we use the led to signal a status. So when you see an Orange Pi Zero Plus booting and the status led goes on and off you know the board is in a crash/boot cycle. With Pine64 you won't realize since the led is just a power led and can not be controlled with software.

  • question, is the rock64 1GB sufficient for home use photos, home videos, and documents backup?

    also, like mentioned by tkaiser above, micro usb power is prone to undervoltage, how can I prevent this with rock64? nvm, just rechecked and rock64 is using barrel type connector power supply so that's a plus already, isnt'?

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