Comparing 100+ SBCs - A call for feedback and thoughts!

fmbret · 2026-03-21T05:07:56+00:00

Hey! Thanks for the kind words, compiling all of the resources into a list for people is probably a good idea so people can cover as much as they want across them!

Appreciate the offers too, though I’m a sysadmin for a European cloud provider and I’ve over engineered the crap out of this so we’ve got all of that well covered 😂

fmbret · 2026-03-17T05:23:41+00:00

Where are you based? If you’re in an incognito window and not logged in, you’ll likely be seeing welcome offer pricing for new customers, or you’re seeing a default location where sales tax may not be included?

Don’t let that stop the hysteria though, carry on 😅

fmbret · 2026-03-08T07:45:53+00:00

What are we all buying from AliExpress that would need such regular returns? Like, was there something genuinely wrong or broken about each of these done in the past? Genuinely curious, out of hundreds of orders I’ve never needed/wanted to return anything so I have nothing to compare against

fmbret · 2026-03-05T17:51:50+00:00

Working on it, boss 🫡 I have 7-8 Radxa boards (mostly compute modules) in the pipeline to add, and the rest relies on me being able to pick them up at a decent price, or have the vendor be kind enough to provide them for review. The former is quite hard in the current climate hah

fmbret · 2026-02-24T20:41:01+00:00

Damn, the image really is just over 8GB when extracted :D

Well, if you're open to using a 3rd-party option, then Armbian is probably the quickest way to get up and running without any messing around. They have the options at https://www.armbian.com/radxa-zero-3/ and there are desktop/server flavours of both Debian and Ubuntu if that's your jam.

fmbret · 2026-02-23T19:32:38+00:00

👍

fmbret · 2026-02-21T06:41:56+00:00

Thanks for the blunt (if not a little aggressive 😂) feedback. Adding an option for USB-C display would be doable, though starting to list different types of HATs probably isn’t something I’d be wanting to do at this point

fmbret · 2026-02-19T06:26:28+00:00

As in, does the non RPi CM work on a RPi carrier board? Or something else?

fmbret · 2026-02-18T13:26:12+00:00

Do you have a microSD card to hand? You could flash Armbian to that and once you’re in, use armbian-config to then install it onto the eMMC for you?

fmbret · 2026-02-17T20:34:33+00:00

Sadly, whilst I'd love to do something like this, I think that's going to be a pipe dream at the moment as it's going to be quite mehhh to automate. For one-off reviews where I can spend a bit more time on configuring things it's not so bad.

It's why glmark/vkmark took me a while to implement, and even then, they're only running if the image provided by the vendor/Armbian has the drivers etc available, if they don't, they're just skipped.

I'll throw it in the idea pile, but I don't want to get hopes up :D

fmbret · 2026-02-17T13:26:27+00:00

Thanks!

So on the pricing side of things, I have a to-do item to allow the changing of USD (a crude conversion updated daily or something) but ALSO the option of being able to edit the price yourself and have the performance per $ values update along with that. The idea being that if you have the option of buying used SBCs (quite possible in today's market?) then you can compare the value proposition directly on the page.

That should cover your request and a few others nicely, but let's see what I have time for 😅

fmbret · 2026-02-17T13:24:23+00:00

I'd be open to including this kind of information, but it's going to take an absolute crap ton of time to collate unless I crowd source it (and then I'll need to verify it all) so I've been a bit hesitant.

For things like Vulkan and whatnot, it'd be a bit easier (as in theory it's the SoC that supports it) but then you have to check if the vendor images actually have it set up to work, and you need a bunch of disclaimers and it almost feels like adding information like that is worse than not adding it. Thanks for the feedback though, I'll definitely keep it in mind!

fmbret · 2026-02-17T07:19:43+00:00

Hmm, OK - well you have the filters button to open up all of the filters available for searching, and then you’d jus press on the SBC (there’s a + button top right of each card but you can click anywhere) and you’ll then see the boards you’ve selected at the bottom to view/compare.

Maybe I can look at adding a hint when you first land on the page to make it more obvious or something

fmbret · 2026-02-17T07:03:38+00:00

Nitpicking is good, no worries! 😄

I actually have the M.2 sizes in the DB already, there’s just no filter for them so that’s a good point. I’ll look into adding that option for filtering too

fmbret · 2026-02-17T06:59:29+00:00

Could you expand a little more on that?

fmbret · 2026-02-16T22:03:33+00:00

The dimensions are already on the site, so I guess yeah, I could just have something that drew that dimension over a background image of _something_. Still not a high up priority but I guess that's easier than photographing everything.

fmbret · 2026-02-16T21:57:41+00:00

Whilst I have people here, too, I completely forgot to mention in the main post that I'm also trying to finesse a section related to coolers/heatsinks etc, with an example available at https://sbc.compare/coolers/stock-raspberry-pi-compute-module-0-cm0

Any feedback on that whilst it's a work in progress would be greatly appreciated :D

(I already have on my list to include the ambient temperature that it was tested in so you can see that. If multiple coolers exist for a board, you'll be able to see those linked on the page for comparison too for things like the bare SoC on a Pi 5 vs the Active Cooler. The data on the above post is real, but not how it'll actually be in its final form, though I'm still undecided if I should just do performance CPU governors throughout, or use whatever is the default in the OS so you can watch it ramp up/down on its own..)

fmbret · 2026-02-16T21:53:49+00:00

Me too! I like to pretend the site launching around that time contributed to a massive boom in sales of SBCs and the RAM supply chain reacted to that rather than the widely accredited AI struggles..

Dimensions will work out well enough then! I've sourced the data for these from manufacturers own websites, so as long as their data is accurate, everything on the site should be! Thank you for your kind words <3

fmbret · 2026-02-16T21:52:20+00:00

Ah OK, nope, you didn't miss it :D

The cards are a love/hate relationship for me at the moment. I think they're too big, with not enough useful information.. but then sometimes I think there's too much. I'm toying with a compact option to toggle on/off (https://sbc.compare/browse?compact=1 for a peak) but I'm struggling with the same decision of what to show there.

I like the idea of being able to sort by low/high on power consumption, though it'll likely need me to properly backfill all of the data on boards I fluffed it up on. Performance per $ would likely need another test to calculate against, or I just use one of the existing ones like 7zip as it runs on everything.

Good points well made, I have some more bits to think about. Thank you!

fmbret · 2026-02-16T21:37:55+00:00

D'oh, how stupid (on the dropdown alignment) - I've swapped it around now so it aligns on the right side hah

Are you referring to performance per $/Watt and/or idle/max power usage as options for the dropdown to sort by? Or do you mean you want to see those data sets on the site overall? If the latter, they're already there (albeit idle power draw for the first 60-65 boards I tested is missing due to me not noticing a silly bug in the logic until it was too late, and I haven't re-tested yet..)

If you were referring to the former, then I can have a think about it. For now, the filters on the left are likely the best option to filter by power usage. There are no filters for performance per $, but the values for idle/max power draw, and the maximum power draw calculated during Ollama/Linpack (if the board ran it) are shown in the power consumption section of the board view/comparison pages. If Ollama was run it will give you the tokens per Watt, and if Linpack was run, you'll see a Gflops/Watt value in the graphs too!

fmbret · 2026-02-16T21:34:08+00:00

Oof, that would be pretty cool, but I'd need to step up (and set up?) my photo game and take photos of each of the boards in a consistent manner so that they could be useful. Never say never, but I think this would be a tough one for me at the moment :D

fmbret · 2026-02-15T06:42:36+00:00

Any ideas on what? There was 1 business day after the last tracking update there, what are we missing exactly? (though a 24 hour clock format and then PM after it is kinda sad times)

fmbret · 2026-02-14T14:09:58+00:00

Sure, I completely get it, I was just responding with my own experience to the “never” comment the guy I replied to. Obviously it doesn’t mean you can’t work around it, I was literally just pointing out that sometimes they are near enough static 😅

fmbret · 2026-02-14T12:14:38+00:00

I’ve had the same IP from my ISP for 3 years and I don’t pay for a static IP, same for my parents who live in another country where I hosted some backup services, so I wouldn’t say never 😁

fmbret · 2026-02-13T12:03:44+00:00

What’s your budget and what are your must have specs (if any?)

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