Hardware recommendation by use

[gotcha640]

Hi All

I've enjoyed using Alarm on a pogo e02 for a few months now, and it does most of the things I need it to. I use it for a torrent and nzb downloader, and to unrar and serve video to a raspberry pi, and to grab radio streams.

Like I said, it does most of what I want, but it gets bogged down when I try to do all those things at the same time. Video on the pi hangs, unrars slow down, the webuis freeze or crash.

I'd like to upgrade, but I can't tell what I need to consider. Is a faster Arm device with more Ram, like the cubietruck or wandboard the way to go? Do I need Atom or even Pentium?

I'd be happy to hear just a simple answer, "go buy xyz board and you'll be more than covered," but I'd also be interested in helping put together a "So you started with a Pi and now you're hooked on Single Boards" thread. I envision a table with some general specs (which I can put together) but also a note on usage.

Maybe a table of all the supported boards, unless that exists somewhere already?

[WarheadsSE]

http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms

[jeajea]

Switching to a Zyxel NSA 325 from a Pogoplug E02 resolved my minidlna performance issues. Subsequently I moved the videos from a USB drive to its internal SATA drive which should further improve performance. I also added a 512MB swapfile.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6860

The NSA 325 has twice the memory, a 33% faster processor and supports two native SATA drives. It also has wake on LAN and a hardware clock. I have a cron job that shuts it down at 12:10 AM and use wake on LAN to start it when I want to play a video.
If you need something even faster it gets a lot more expensive.

[grayman4hire]

The ZyXel NSA325 does look like a ideal ALARM box currently at around ~$130 on sale or $170 retail.

I wish the Ouya was supported. That would be a nice ALARM box for $90.

[gotcha640]

Thanks for the replies. I hadn't seen the Platforms top level, I'd only clicked through each individual and made my own list... The one on the site is better...

[pepedog]

Yep, Zyxel

[gotcha640]

Is the Zyxel really better than something like the wandboard/cubietruck/cubox with their quads and their 2gb ram? I had thought the beefier CPU and Ram would improve webUI snappiness as well as data transfer, but happy to be corrected on that.

[grayman4hire]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gotcha640', 'I')s the Zyxel really better than something like the wandboard/cubietruck/cubox with their quads and their 2gb ram? I had thought the beefier CPU and Ram would improve webUI snappiness as well as data transfer, but happy to be corrected on that.

[gotcha640]

I can appreciate that, especially when space is less of an issue. I'm working outside the US, moving every year or so, and if I can't bring it in carryon, it's not really worth while at this point. I realize even a full tower can be brought on a suitcase, but I've had enough bags show up wet, damaged, etc, it's easier to have something that fits in carryon.

So, paying a little extra for convenience is worth it to me. It sounds like the Zyxel is the way to save money and get good enough, if that's the case, I'll order the Cubox or Cubietruck and get a little extra.

[pepedog]

I have a cubox-i pro too, very solid device.