The new Orange Pi 5 has a good price for the RK3588s it uses, and can support up to 32gb of RAM. My testing shows it being 3-4x faster than the Raspberry Pi 4 4gb.
Down side is it just released, so the software support is still in its infancy. And it doesn't have wifi+bt built in, so you need to use a dongle or use up the NVME slot for adding that functionality.
Various kernel-devs on ActivityPub had some very very nasty things to say about rk3588 board stability. Different folk, on different boards. Maybe this time will be better, who knows, and maybe better drivers will improve things, but seeing such sad kernel devs has been demoralizing.
Not sure if I'm lucky, or if things have improved. But I've probably ran it at all cores busy compiling for 100 hours so far, and had uptime in the weeks, currently at 5 days.
I did use a beefy usb-c power brick, rated for 40 watts to ensure it's never getting less power than it asks for.
So far I'd say it's at least as stable as my RPi, and doesn't have anything ugly like storage or network connected via USB.
I would love to read the rants if you can find them. I was really considering getting some RK3588 based boards since it seems to be the most powerful ARM based SoC you can actually buy.
Glance through the Radxa and orange pi forums; there are plenty of growing pains still at this point, from power issues, Imagination GPU lacking support in Linux, and mostly other hardware/driver related quirks that will take time to sort out.
For some use cases they're great though, as long as you don't need specific features.
As a router or small server for running DNS, PiHole, and related services I'd recommend one of the Rk3588 systems, I bought a NanoPi R6S. The 8gb flavor is $120, $140 with a nice metal case. It's pretty fast, I compared compiling rust and it was 6-7 times faster than a RPi4 8GB. Even has two 2.5gbe interfaces.
Odroid is my go to low cost SBC. If you just need something like a WiFi connected display/sensor/switch, esp32. I really like the M5stick. Other than that specific projects usually have a list of alternatives which can help. There's a multi board build for Octoprint for example
I had a pretty bad experience with Odroid. I purchased a home assistant blue, which uses the Odroid N2+ and the USB ports died on it, which is a non-starter since I use Zigbee and Zwave USB sticks. Apparently this issue is not uncommon, and there was no way to get it warrantied or do an RMA.
I had a pretty bad experience with a Sandisk branded "Industrial" SD I purchased directly from Odroid (they put their sticker on it, partitioned it then added the payloads) as died within 1 year of very very low use.
I'm wondering if it was a real Sandisk.
Since I got about 10 at the same time it sucks: I'd have to individually test them before entrusting any of these with any data.
That's good to know. I've used them in the past for embedded vision for FIRST robotics. I was actually thinking about getting the N2+ to replace my Rpi4 for HA, but might just go with a NUC.
Down side is it just released, so the software support is still in its infancy. And it doesn't have wifi+bt built in, so you need to use a dongle or use up the NVME slot for adding that functionality.