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bret.dk

@bret.dk

I test #raspberrypi single board computers and the many alternatives at https://bret.dk so you don't have to πŸš€ @bret@fosstodon.org

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09.11.2023
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Latest posts by bret.dk @bret.dk

Oh for sure, these are just the 2 examples I picked to work on the UI 😁 I haven’t officially launched the feature yet, but yup, other boards will get their moments!

10.03.2026 21:31 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Banana Pi R4 Cooler Comparison: Best Cooling Solutions Tested | sbc.compare Banana Pi R4 reaches 69Β°C under load. The Generic BPI R4 Active Cooler reduces temps by 22.0Β°C. Compare 2 cooling solutions with real benchmark data.

Hey guysss, could I ask for some feedback?

sbc.compare/coolers/bana...
sbc.compare/coolers/rasp...

You can then also see more details (including power/CPU freq) on a particular cooler like sbc.compare/coolers/bana...

Any comments? Ideas? Should I scrap it all?!

10.03.2026 19:08 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Me seeing all of the EmbeddedWorld posts kicking off today

10.03.2026 17:48 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Raspberry Pi CM0 & EDATEC CM0NANO - Raspberry Pi's Smallest Compute Module - bret.dk What IS the Raspberry Pi CM0 exactly, and why haven't we heard a great deal about it?

My curiosity surrounding the @raspberrypi.com Compute Module 0 got the better of me, so I ordered the EDATEC CM0NANO to see it with my own eyes..

bret.dk/raspberry-pi...

05.03.2026 12:22 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Damn it! Living out in the continent means I’m not constantly bombarded with reminders and I forgot πŸ₯²

17.02.2026 23:02 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

You can see the drivers and versions used in the Test Environment section towards the top of the comparison page!

Also, if you just want to check out a leaderboard for these new tests:

sbc.compare/tinymembench
sbc.compare/glmark2
sbc.compare/vkmark

10.02.2026 20:36 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Graph showing the glmark2 results on the Libre Computer Alta, Radxa Q900, and Raspberry Pi CM0 SBCs

Graph showing the glmark2 results on the Libre Computer Alta, Radxa Q900, and Raspberry Pi CM0 SBCs

We now have glmark2, vkmark, and tinymembench up on sbc.compare - albeit only on a few boards for now!

All new boards will have these tests run against them, assuming the vendors are nice and their images have drivers 😈

sbc.compare/21-libre-com...

10.02.2026 20:33 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Luckily the automation will take care of most of it and I'll be mostly sitting around waiting to swap boards out! It'll likely still take me a couple of weeks though with everything else going on.. I should go over the automation and setup I have here at some point..

09.02.2026 18:35 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
A cardboard box filled with Radxa Single Board Computers

A cardboard box filled with Radxa Single Board Computers

Pre-Chinese New Year care package from Radxa, all to be listed on sbc.compare soon!

I must say, it’s pretty validating to have one of the big players see the value in having almost their entire range available on the website. Hopefully other vendors will follow suit!

09.02.2026 17:04 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

(the data was a quick test run where the CPU governor wasn't set correctly at the start, and the timestamps along the bottom will start from 0 rather than the current time, but you can still get an idea!)

29.01.2026 17:15 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Graph showing power usage, CPU frequency, and CPU temperature over time

Graph showing power usage, CPU frequency, and CPU temperature over time

Sneak peek..

sbc.compare/coolers/stoc...

It's a work in progress, build in public kinda vibe. There are some tweaks to be made but this is roughly how it's going to be. What are we thinking?

29.01.2026 17:12 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Happy Monday!

26.01.2026 09:36 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Definitely on my shortlist!

17.01.2026 14:31 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Screenshot of a dashboard showing single board computer test agents and their benchmark status

Screenshot of a dashboard showing single board computer test agents and their benchmark status

Busy busy working on implementing new tests and a better test framework in the background for sbc.compare

I've implemented tinymembench and openssl using the same logic as sbc-bench, I'm looking at something with MAME, along with something on the GPU side..

Any requests?!

17.01.2026 13:17 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 Launched - Generative AI on the Pi 5 - bret.dk Raspberry Pi launches the AI HAT+ 2 for Pi 5. Featuring the Hailo-10H, 40 TOPS of performance, and 8GB of dedicated RAM to run local GenAI models like Llama 3.2 and DeepSeek.

A chonkier @raspberrypi.com AI HAT+ 2 dropped today with 8GB of on-board RAM (in this economy?) and 40 TOPS from the Hailo-10H..

bret.dk/raspberry-pi...

15.01.2026 08:55 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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For all of the "Speed is great, but what about longevity?" comments I get on my microSD card roundups... This one's for you πŸ˜…

I'll throw together a bit of a blog post soon to share more info, but TL;DR, I'm also testing out the endurance of a range of microSD cards to see how they fare 🧐

09.01.2026 14:51 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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I thought I’d recreate this for 2025 whilst I did some cleaning in the office ahead of the new year.. This is what was tested to make sbc.compare a reality this year!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and I wish you all a very Happy New Year, may 2026 bring you everything you need πŸ₯°

27.12.2025 12:18 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

What do people use n8n for? I keep seeing people sing its praises so I had a look.. Everything just looks to be AI generated content, or things that should probably just a script and a cron job? πŸ€”

Maybe I'm looking for a solution to a problem I don't have.. πŸ˜…

26.12.2025 18:51 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

This kind of reminds me of when I was living in Valencia and Fallas would come around with all of the decorations.. I miss those times :D

23.12.2025 18:06 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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I’m currently working on an article about the Radxa Fogwise Airbox Q900 (with its 8 β€œbig” Qualcomm A78C cores and 36GB of RAM) and it’s an efficient little guy..

The CIX P1 topped the Linpack Gflops/W table for about 2 weeks before this arrived πŸ˜…

sbc.compare/linpack

22.12.2025 13:18 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Leave that poor thing alone πŸ˜‚

12.12.2025 18:23 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
VisionFive 2 Lite SBC close up, with the JH7110 S SoC in view

VisionFive 2 Lite SBC close up, with the JH7110 S SoC in view

StarFive VisionFive 2 Lite SBC Box

StarFive VisionFive 2 Lite SBC Box

Sunday night’s play toy is the StarFive VisionFive 2 Lite.

Another #RISCV board to add to the collection, with M.2 NVMe support, PoE headers, and some other fun stuff.

Up on sbc.compare in the next few days!

07.12.2025 18:22 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Radxa Fogwise Airbox Q900 SBC in its case

Radxa Fogwise Airbox Q900 SBC in its case

Radxa Fogwise Airbox Q900 SBC Box

Radxa Fogwise Airbox Q900 SBC Box

I had something very interesting waiting for me when I got home today.. the Radxa Fogwise Airbox Q900 😍

8 big cores, 36GB LPDDR5 (my retirement is sorted), and 128GB of UFS.. mama mia

05.12.2025 19:55 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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1GB Raspberry Pi 5 Launched Alongside Price Increases - bret.dk The Raspberry Pi 5 gets a new, 1GB RAM model, and the rest of the Pi 5 range (along with the Pi 4 and Compute Modules) get price increases.

Raspberry Pi have introduced a 1GB RAM variant alongside price increases for the rest of the range πŸ“ˆ

:old-man-yells-at-ai:

bret.dk/1gb-raspberr...

01.12.2025 09:05 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

That sweep will include a range of new tests, and some small improvements here and there. I really should do a better job of documenting everything πŸ˜„

29.11.2025 19:45 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

There’s a chance you could get it down a bit, as all of my testing is down with the performance governor, including the idle power draw. I have it on my to-do list to switch back to the default governor for the idle reading but it hasn’t crept on yet. Likely when I next do a sweep of everything..

29.11.2025 19:44 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Raspberry Pi 5 2GB vs Radxa Cubie A7A 6GB vs Arduino UNO Q 2GB | sbc.compare Compare Raspberry Pi 5 2GB vs Radxa Cubie A7A 6GB vs Arduino UNO Q 2GB specifications, benchmarks, and performance. See detailed side-by-side analysis of...

And finally, if you're fine with 2GB of RAM and have a few extra dollars to hand, the @raspberrypi.com 5 enters the battle a romps even further ahead :D

sbc.compare/10-raspberry...

29.11.2025 19:06 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Why do I say it's probably not worth it if you don't care about the Arduino ecosystem? Well, if we filter by price at sbc.compare/browse?price... you can see 3 boards outperform it, with the Radxa A7A being 3x faster both on single, and all-core GB6 tests (it also has 4GB more RAM!)

29.11.2025 19:03 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
A close up of the Qualcomm QRB2210 SoC on the Arduino UNO Q Single Board Computer

A close up of the Qualcomm QRB2210 SoC on the Arduino UNO Q Single Board Computer

The @officialarduino.bsky.social UNO Q is now up on sbc.compare to.. compare?

sbc.compare/96-arduino-u...

TL;DR if you're looking for an SBC to do your usual stuff on, it's probably not worth it. Into Arduino things and want to tinker? It's probably a decent enough shout!

29.11.2025 18:58 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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Is the Amazon Basics microSD Card Still Worth It? - bret.dk Over a year has passed since I first tested 20+ MicroSD Cards and one came out on top. Is the Amazon Basics microSD card still worth it though?

I'm posting this far too late to capitalise on the lucrative Black Friday traffic but hey, I can at least confirm that Amazon haven't pulled a bait and switch yet on their Basics microSD cards..

bret.dk/is-the-amazo...

27.11.2025 21:35 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0