The Best Single Board Computers Of 2021 Top 10 ARM SBC’s

hey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at the top 10 arm-based single board computers for emulation and 2021. now this is my list i've done a lot of testing with all of these boards and if you're a regular viewer of the channel you know i'm a huge fan of arm based sbcs specifically for emulation like i mentioned i've done a lot of testing on the channel with all of the boards we're going to take a look at in this video and when it comes down to it this is my list these are my top 10 picks and you might have a different opinion on where these go on your list so i mean if you're interested you can leave your list in the comments below i'd actually like to know what your favorite board is and really what you've been using for emulation in 2021 now remember this is an arm based board list we're not going to be taking a look at anything with an x86 cpu in this video and there's some really good boards on the market using x86 and most of the time when it comes to emulation you're probably going to get better performance out of something like that but when it comes to these arm-based boards these are my top 10 picks so coming in at number 10 we have the jetson nano 2 gigabyte version now one of the reasons this is coming in so low on the list is because of the development towards emulation on this board there are a few distros out there that do have a lot of emulators built in you can install ubuntu on this and run a bunch of emulators it's actually a really powerful board at a great price but there's not a lot of emulation developers out there working on optimizations for this thing what we have here is the jetson nano 2 gigabyte model it's coming in at 50 us dollars we have a quad core arm a57 cpu running at 1.43 gigahertz 2 gigabytes of ram and a 128 core maxwell gpu this will actually play easier to emulate gamecube games it'll do psp dreamcast and even sega saturn but like i mentioned one of the big reasons this is coming so low on the list is because there's not a lot of development geared towards emulation on this board now if you had the regular jets and nano with four gigabytes of ram you could actually download retro arena from techtoy tinker he's got a lot of systems set up it works out really well but that's about the only emulation os that i've seen for these boards here moving up to number nine we have the rock pi 4 now there's a few different models of this i believe the a b and maybe even a c model of the rock pi 4 but we have usb 3 usb type c for power in full size hdmi and it's powered by the rockchip rk3399cp with up to four gigabytes of ram now i'm personally not a big fan of the arcade 3399 but development has actually come a long way in the last year on this little chip here but what we have here is the rock pi 4 by radaxa you can get these up to 75 dollars with four gigs of ram the cpu is the rockchip rk3399 six cores two a72 cores running at 1.8 and four a 53 cores running at 1.4 the gpus the mali 860 mp4 and this will basically do up to psp and when it comes to psp there are still a few games that struggle on this but like i mentioned development has come a long way on this little chip set in the last year moving up to number eight this really needs no introduction we have the raspberry pi zero or the zero w now this is a great little board for handheld projects when it comes to like handheld emulation but it's very very low in power and even some snes games can lag if it's not set up correctly and that's why this one's coming in at number eight now don't get me wrong this has been one of my favorite little single board computers to build handhelds around but uh you know in 2021 it's getting a bit long in the tooth given that we only have a single core one gigahertz cpu with 500 megabytes of ram you can pick these up anywhere from five dollars to 15 depending on where you go very low power consumption that's why they're great for handhelds but this will basically only do up to around snes and gba it's definitely time for the raspberry pi foundation to update this board keeping with that raspberry pi zero form factor we have a new one to the market the red axis zero now this is actually a really powerful board given its form factor and they're offering a bunch of different models from 512 megabytes of ram and no emmc storage up to four gigabytes of ram and 128 gigabytes of emmc storage now that's built in storage plus we have a micro sd card from what i've seen anywhere from 15 up to 75 with the quad-core cortex a53 cpu running it up to 1.8 gigahertz it's an amlogic s905 variant so it does have a lot of support on the market right now the gpu is a mali g31 mp2 up to four gigabytes of lp ddr4 ram and up to 128 gigabytes of emmc storage i've taken a look at one of these on the channel i did some emulation testing and this will do up to psp it's actually pretty amazing what this little board will do given that it's the same exact form factor as the raspberry pi zero number six on my list is the odroid c4 now development on this little board has really come a long way when it comes to emulation the chip they're using in here has been out for android for a while a lot of people have been working with this and we do have a few different distros like emulec and botocera that we can flash directly to a microsd card or an optional emmc module this is powered by the amlogic s905x3 we have a quad core cortex a53 cpu running it up to 2 gigahertz mali g31 mp2 gpu up to 4 gigabytes of ram and like i mentioned this does support an sd card or an optional emmc module and again just like some of the other boards this will basically do up to psp really well i've also had really good luck with n64 emulation on the c4 and when it comes to the price on this 54 us dollars from odroid's website but you have to factor in shipping there and if you try to buy this on a third-party site you're going to see it up marked i've seen it go for around 75 on some sites this is an old one but in my opinion it's still a great little board this is the odroid xu4 i'm not exactly sure when this is going to reach end of life but if you have one of these boards you know how great it was or is for emulation still this does really great n64 and psp emulation and it really doesn't matter if you're running android or something like botocera standalone emulation os for this thing but for the cpu we have an 8 core samsung exynos 5422 up to 2 gigahertz only 2 gigabytes of ram but that's plenty for emulation and what this little thing can do it supports a microsd card or an optional emmc module like i said amazing n64 and psp emulation dreamcast works really well here with an android build and using redream and from hard colonel's website you can pick these up for around 60 to tell you the truth i probably won't buy one of these new anymore if you can find one used or if you have one laying around you can still use it for emulation and have a great time with it so this is going to be the most expensive it's actually an outrageous little arm board but i had to throw it in here because this is the best arm emulation that i've ever seen out of any single board computer i've done a couple videos on this board this is known as the jetson xavier nx price on this is absolutely outrageous for a little arm board but these aren't made for you know recreational use these are made for ai automation and robotics projects and this still falls in line with the jetson nano really not having that emulation support but with this raw power i mean this thing goes through everything the gpu is based on nvidia volta architecture with 384 cuda cores and it comes with eight gigabytes of lp ddr4x ram i've been able to run gamecube and wii on this no problem at all and i can even upscale to 1080p with most of that stuff now that might not sound like a great achievement when we're comparing this to x86 but remember this is an arm single board computer and like i mentioned this is the most powerful one that i've ever been able to get my hands on i would highly not recommend buying this specifically for emulation now i'm gonna be cheating here with number three because when it comes down to it this is actually using fpga to run our favorite retro games but it does have an arm cpu built in this is known as the de10 nano aka the mister if you head over to the mr project's website you can see a list of all of the arcade machines and consoles that we can accurately recreate on this little device here there's tons of different accessories that you can buy for this add-on boards extra ram to help out with consoles like neo geo and this can also get pretty expensive but if you want the most accurate console or arcade experience without having to buy the real arcade machine or the real console then the mister is definitely for you it does have an 800 megahertz dual core cortex a9 arm cpu but when we're playing our favorite games on this thing we're not using that arm cpu we're actually using the cyclone 5 fpga that's built into the de10 nano otherwise known as the mister number two on my list is one that a lot of people have been sleeping on including myself now i do want to make more videos on this but it really seems like there's not much interest in this board with the newer revisions of this board and the development that's been going on with this thing it is an absolute emulation beast so close to getting gamecube out of the way but unfortunately i just don't see this board ever doing gamecube at full speed maybe the next one but when it comes to sega saturn psp dreamcast n64 this is going to handle it all day long and there's lots of different operating systems available for this board it's the odroid n2 plus up to 83 dollars for the high-end four gigabyte model we have the amlogic s922x for a 73 cores up to 2.4 gigahertz and two a53 cores up to two gigahertz you can pick up a two gigabyte model for a little cheaper but i would definitely go with the ford just because you know they have it there no on-board wi-fi no on-board bluetooth and that's really a letdown for a lot of people but we do have four usb 3.0 ports full size hdmi it supports a microsd card and an emmc module and yeah i mean when it comes to raw power this will run circles around the raspberry pi 4 and that's really going to bring me to my number one spot in this video a lot of you saw you knew it was coming number one on my list is the raspberry pi 4. and this really pertains to any of the raspberry pi 4 variants we go with the raspberry pi 4 we also have the pi 400 and the cm4 the raspberry pi seems to be at the top of a lot of different lists and for good reason i mean when it comes down to it there's a lot of different factors why this is number one on my list first up the raspberry pi community there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people working on the raspberry pi different projects home automation factory automation ai solar projects weather projects car projects radio projects i mean you name it somebody's probably done it with a raspberry pi and when it comes to emulation the development community really focuses on the raspberry pi because it's readily available i mean you can actually walk into a target or a best buy and buy a raspberry pi 4 in a physical store in the united states of course some of the boards that we took a look at are definitely way more powerful than the raspberry pi but uh ease of use really comes to mind with this thing given that the community has so much to offer if you have a problem with the raspberry pi somebody else has probably had that same problem type it into google and you can get a fix for it pretty easily if you're looking for a specific distro to run on the raspberry pi somebody's probably already come up with something be it like a home automation interface a weather station or even an operating system geared towards automotive usage now i know this video was the top 10 single board computers for emulation and raspberry pi comes to the top of the list n64 and dreamcast have definitely come a long way on the pi especially dreamcast given that we can now run redream gamecube is one of those that will never run at full speed on the pi 4 but it definitely tries its hardest it's not the most powerful single board computer out there but in my opinion it's the most versatile and that's really why the raspberry pi 4 the pi 400 and even the cm4 are at the top of my list for this one so yeah that's my top 10 list for 2021 if you're interested in picking up any of these boards i will leave links in the description and i know there's going to be people out there who disagree with me about where i put certain boards in this list so if you have your own list let us know in the comments below you can go ahead and write that out there it would be awesome to know what your top 10 boards are for 2021 but that's going to wrap it up for this one if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching

Channel: ETA PRIME

Views: 21,881

Rating: 4.9544306 out of 5

Keywords: etaprime, eta prime, top 10, top 10 list, top SBC, best SBC, best single board computer, best single board computer 2021, best single board computer for emulators, best single board computer for gaming, best single board computer for emulation 2021, best mini PC, tier list, Odroid, Rockpi, raspberry pi, raspberry pi 4, raspberry pi 400, odroid n2+, odroid c4, arm cpu, best mini pc 2021, raspberry pi projects, raspberry pi pico, top 5

Id: krEEw5MB2eA

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021