Powerful ARM board?

[sci4me]

Hey guys! So, I am looking for a fairly powerful arm board that will run linux (ununtu server) which will be used to host my personal Minecraft server. I will probably want to get the most powerful board I can find. I want dual or quad core if possible, >1GB of ram, >1GHZ processor speed, if possible, sata, also if possible it would be nice to be able to boot from an SD card but if not its fine. I would like to keep the price to a minimum. I suppose 200 dollars US or so. Maybe more, but that is kind of pushing it as is... If anyone knows of any arm boards that may come close to what I need, please let me know! I will be searching aswell, but I figure the more help I can get the better chance I have of getting the perfect board. Thanks for reading and please reply asap!

[Fsck]

Best specced system I've ever seen:  http://cubox-i.com/

The quadcore with 2GB is what, 120$?

[marshallh]

https://www.element14.com/community/community/knode/single-board_computers/sabrelite

https://cubieboard.myshopify.com/

http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/04/12/udoo-single-board-computer-features-freescale-i-mx6-dualquad-and-atmel-sam3-mcu/

There are crap tons of these out there, most of ubuntu sd images avbaialbe....

[sci4me]

I like the cutieboard, wish they had a 2+GB version. Maybe arm isnt the best solution though... it just has to be small and as cheap as possible while still meeting the specs I need... And I will need 2+GB of ram to run the server so.. hmm.

[sci4me]

The odroid looks good... however, from what I can see, I like the XU more. The only real difference I see is that it is .1 GHZ slower... hmm... I'll look into it more later, i need to go to sleep.

[Fsck]

I wonder how the big-little thing works with a full desktop OS like Ubuntu.

[garak]

+1 For the ODroid

I like the cutieboard, wish they had a 2+GB version. Maybe arm isnt the best solution though... it just has to be small and as cheap as possible while still meeting the specs I need... And I will need 2+GB of ram to run the server so.. hmm.

Yeah, given what you've told us is your intended use, I'd say that ARM isn't the best idea right now. Minecraft, while entertaining, is written in such a way that it uses RIDICULOUS amounts of memory and until ARM64 comes along the maximum amount of memory you can address with an ARM32 CPU is 4GB. That's assuming you assigned all of the address space to RAM, which is impossible. Technically you could get around this by using memory paging and whatnot, but I don't see it happening. The Cortex-A57, which I believe is the first ARM64 chip, got taped-out in March, so I expect it's a little way off yet.

tl;dr You might be better of sticking with Atom or suchlike for now.

[sci4me]

Can I get a decently low power Atom for relatively cheap? I would look into it more atm but I have to go soon..

[TheDirty]

An Atom or VIA embedded mini-ITX would work.  You would just need to supply the power and memory.

You haven't given us a location, but for suggestions:
http://www.newegg.com/Embedded-Solution/SubCategory/ID-446

Otherwise just look in your local used ads.  Anything below 2Ghz is on the toss out list at this point.  You could get a regular PC.

[nctnico]

I wonder how the big-little thing works with a full desktop OS like Ubuntu.

From experience: it works just fine. Just cut back on the desktop theme.

[Crazy Ape]

The linux comunity has just gotten linux running on the Rockchip RK3188.
This is a 1.8GHz ARM quad core with 2GB RAM.


Cheapest I could find with a quick search.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/MK809-III-Quad-core-RK3188-1-8GHz-Androind-TV-Box-4-2-HDMI-2GB-RAM-8GB/1236256677.html

And this is the same as the one in the video.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/DHLDHLOriginal-2GB8GB-Rikomagic-MK802IV-RK3188-Quad-Core-Android-4-2-Smart-Mini-TV-Box-HDMI-Dongle/1288090191.html