On Tue, 7 May 2019 at 13:44, Andrew Luke Nesbit <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 07/05/2019 13:23, David Brownlee wrote: > > On Sat, 4 May 2019 at 18:16, Mike Pumford <[email protected]> > > wrote: > >> > >> On 04/05/2019 15:30, Mayuresh wrote: > >>> On Sat, May 04, 2019 at 05:49:58PM +0800, Travis Paul wrote: > >>>> You mentioned that you were looking for an amd64 board. Have you looked > >>>> at the PCEngines APU2 boards[1]? I have not personally tried them but > >>>> perhaps they fit your needs. > > I hope you don't mind me jumping in on the conversation at this late > stage. I've always had a bit of an allergic reaction to "high end" > SBC's like the APU2. I feel they are overpriced, sometimes very much so. > > For the same money as the APU2 you can get a real mainboard, one with a > much more solid construction and better performance. Similarly with > many other SBC's in that price level. If you look hard enough you can > get an entry-level serverboard with IPMI for not much more money. > > I do like SBC's very much. My favorite SBC is the OPi+2E, and I hope to > get NetBSD running on it in the near future. But the advantage of SBC's > (for me) is when they are very cheap and/or promote creative things.
The APU2 is definitely overpriced for general purpose computing. We started with the alix2d3 which suited our requirements of: small, robust, three network ports, easily available and (optional but desired) POE compatible. The APU2 was an obvious drop in replacement with better capabilities all round and we could keep using a single x86 image which would work on all units. At the time I looked for but couldn't find an arm/mips option - if I were starting again that could well be different :) David
