4 ms·

What kind of bolted-down expansion does a cheap n3350 box have? How fast can I swap the main storage for something completely different? Can I power it with m

by ssl-3 2y ago

What kind of bolted-down expansion does a cheap n3350 box have? How fast can I swap the main storage for something completely different? Can I power it with my USB battery bank? Does it support two digital monitors or does it instead have one HDMI and one VGA (like this is 1987)? Can I use it like an appliance and just plug in easy-to-download images like LibreELEC or EmulationStation, or do I need to understand how to make computers work before I can have a good experience with Kodi or console emulation?

AnotherGoodName 2y ago
I can see plenty of n3350 systems with dual hdmi on google and plenty with drive bays and relevant connectivity. Those seem to cost ~$100 vs the minimalist $65 ones. In terms of driver support these intel systems are the easiest to work with in Linux. Very mainstream and well established drivers.
nottorp 2y ago
All your pros are cons when you use a Pi as a 24/7 router or home server :) Requirements may vary.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Requirements do vary. And I've got no regrets about using a Pi 4 a router. It's sitting on the shelf next to me, and has been trouble-free for over four years now.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    How much stuff is hanging off usb on it instead of being in a proper case? You may not care but I do. I suppose a Pi 4 is fast enough to route 1 Gbps even through a usb network card? [I do have one "sitting on a shelf" as a home Minecraft server btw. I hate the usb ssd hanging off it.]
    - tracker1 2y ago
      There are some nice cases for RPi 4 that have a semi-integrated USB-SATA adapter in the box. The DeskPi[1] case, Argon and the NESPi-style case in particular. DeskPi is pretty neat, if costly, and the NES-like cases have easy 2.5" sata swap. YMMV. I upgraded my home LAN to 10gb/2.5gb early last year, and the RPi can't really keep up with it anymore. I'm using an N305 based mini-pc with 4 ethernet ports for my router now... exceeds my needs and runs great. My home server is an AMD 5900HX based mini-pc with also works very well (ProxMox, Docker, etc).
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      The only USB thing it has is a NIC. But given the speed of my ISP I could get around that by using VLANs, I guess. I mean: There's not much to it. LAN port, WAN port, MicroSD storage, and a (completely optional and of dubious merit) hardware RTC that sits on the GPIO header. I'm using the bog-standard Pi Foundation plastic case. It runs OpenWRT, which itself is very light-weight -- it's more-or-less just enough Linux to set up routing functions using a GUI, and it's meant to be able to fit in the tiny little bit of flash that consumer router hardware comes with. IIRC, the status at the time when I put it together was that it could route packets and perform traffic shaping at ~1Gbps even with a USB NIC. It certainly did just fine when I had a 400Mbps pipe.

by ssl-3 2y ago

AnotherGoodName 2y ago

I can see plenty of n3350 systems with dual hdmi on google and plenty with drive bays and relevant connectivity. Those seem to cost ~$100 vs the minimalist $65 ones. In terms of driver support these intel systems are the easiest to work with in Linux. Very mainstream and well established drivers.

nottorp 2y ago

All your pros are cons when you use a Pi as a 24/7 router or home server :) Requirements may vary.

ssl-3 2y ago
Requirements do vary. And I've got no regrets about using a Pi 4 a router. It's sitting on the shelf next to me, and has been trouble-free for over four years now.
- nottorp 2y ago
  How much stuff is hanging off usb on it instead of being in a proper case? You may not care but I do. I suppose a Pi 4 is fast enough to route 1 Gbps even through a usb network card? [I do have one "sitting on a shelf" as a home Minecraft server btw. I hate the usb ssd hanging off it.]
  - tracker1 2y ago
    There are some nice cases for RPi 4 that have a semi-integrated USB-SATA adapter in the box. The DeskPi[1] case, Argon and the NESPi-style case in particular. DeskPi is pretty neat, if costly, and the NES-like cases have easy 2.5" sata swap. YMMV. I upgraded my home LAN to 10gb/2.5gb early last year, and the RPi can't really keep up with it anymore. I'm using an N305 based mini-pc with 4 ethernet ports for my router now... exceeds my needs and runs great. My home server is an AMD 5900HX based mini-pc with also works very well (ProxMox, Docker, etc).
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    The only USB thing it has is a NIC. But given the speed of my ISP I could get around that by using VLANs, I guess. I mean: There's not much to it. LAN port, WAN port, MicroSD storage, and a (completely optional and of dubious merit) hardware RTC that sits on the GPIO header. I'm using the bog-standard Pi Foundation plastic case. It runs OpenWRT, which itself is very light-weight -- it's more-or-less just enough Linux to set up routing functions using a GUI, and it's meant to be able to fit in the tiny little bit of flash that consumer router hardware comes with. IIRC, the status at the time when I put it together was that it could route packets and perform traffic shaping at ~1Gbps even with a USB NIC. It certainly did just fine when I had a 400Mbps pipe.