I'm looking around for a SBC too, under 100$. Can't find stock of banana nor orange Pis. So i forgot about those. I like the features of the odroid boards, and the radxa rock boards. I'll probably buy the rock 4; seems like a good option.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Hi SirPyschoMantis,
I'm certainly no expert but just recently started a similar project you are describing. I went with a used HP ProDesk 400 G2 mini. It has a i5-6500t, 8GB and 250GB ssd.
I run Ubuntu server on it with docker. It's compact and capable of running a bit more then a Raspberry Pi I believe.
When searching for a Pi alternative I also came across a similar mini pc from Dell. Thats was a Dell OptiPlex 3040 SFF.
I'm from the Netherlands and used prices here were around 100-150 €.
Second this, but don't go for the dell minis. I have had trouble with them no recognizing 3rd party power supplies that are often shipped with refurb units.
I've had good luck with the lenovo tiny PCs.
I finally got around to using an old PINE64 SBC and that’s worked well for me. Have thought about getting an Orange Pi5 with the RK3588. I’ve seen them on Amazon and AliExpress and I’ve been mostly eyeballing 16GB variants but they’ve come in around $70 to $150ish depending on the amount of RAM (4-16GB). There’s a 32GB variant but that’s overkill for most of my use cases.
There's a new orange pi5 with dual 2.5gb ethernet. Looks pretty nice.
I'm ve been on the hunt for an alternative as well, but because I need a bit more RAM and CPU since it's for a media center a lot of the alternatives are not good enough. The OrangePi seems like it could be one, but both it and the Raspberry are so expensive currently that I don't think either is worth at the moment, I'll just keep running out of my laptop for the time being.
Look for secondhand thin clients such as HP T620. They're usually can be had for $30 or less (or more) depending on the configuration. They also have low power usage, not as low as a pi, but still low enough (<10 W).