The newest version of the Raspberry Pi was just announced, and you can read about it here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-4-on-sale-now-from-35/
And the “Raspberry Pi 4 v 3B+: first hands-on review!” by Andrew Webb is here:
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I’m unsure if the performance benefit is enough to make it beneficial for use in SNO systems.
Surely the extra ram is worth it?
I have zero idea.
Well, it would depend on what you’d want to do, but my rule of thumb is to always max out RAM, especially if it can’t be changed later. I can’t come up with an excuse to buy one of these right now, but if I did, I’d definitely spring for the extra RAM.
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I have been running Storj on a 2 GB Pi 4, with a 2TB SSD attached - with about 1.5 TB available to Storj. It works very well now, but…
I had quite a few problems getting the storage setup nice and stable - there are some issues with some USB3/SATA adapters - although I bought my initial adaptor on a recommendation, I ended having to buy a second and change the storage mode used to access the SSD.
Another issue was that all the main chips run very hot on the Pi 4 especially when you are pushing the i/o. I managed to get a heatsink and small Pi controlled fan (Fan Shim) working quite well, but needed to solder the Fan Shim to GPIO header to get the necessary physical clearance.
Working like a dream now. Based on my experience - and I have been working in technical IT for 20 years - I wouldn’t currently recommend the Pi 4 route to “newbys” or those who aren’t prepared to get their hands dirty at the command line, (and possibly soldering iron) and are up for the challenge. Saying that, with luck, future firmware updates should improve the situation.
Hope this helps!
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Running an SNO on a Rpi 3B+ with a 2TB 7200 HDD attached to a storage board. It was a pain in the beginning, but now it’s stable. I figured out that 5 is my sweet spot on the concurrent connections on the Pi. Ram is limited by command to 800MB on docker and I have enabled swap of 1024.
I’d recommend the Rock Pi 4 for that kind of job. Mostly the same specs as the Raspberry (except only one HDMI …), better power supply (its USB-C goes to 12V, unlike the Raspberry Pi 4 which stays at 5V), a better heat sink option (large (as big as the Pi), passive), CPU on the bottom (great for attaching the heat sink), can boot from eMMC (more bandwidth and stability than the Pi), supports M.2 storage (which I don’t use, as it collides with the large passive heat sink).
I see the Rock Pi4 is already
What I would like is a storage node for less than $100, including the disk.
I think it is possible.
But… when we are out of beta, will there be a native (Linux) version? Not using docker might improve performance (or system load), but I want to make sure things will keep on running.
So my choices are:
Pi 3
Pi 4
Rock Pi 4
Any recommendations?
I’d recommend something with reasonable Ethernet and a fast disk interface, so the Pi 3 isn’t going to cut it. The Rock Pi has better passive cooling options and an M.2 option, which is nice, except that its large heatsink and the M.2 interface collide, which is not.
Alternately you could use a GnuBee which is a board that has six 2.5" or 3.5" SATA connectors and needs less power.
You can build and run the storage node without Docker:
I found these passive heatsinks/cases. They are the best for RPi. No soldering, no noisy fans, while the CPU temp drops down about ±15’C degrees. If used proper thermal paste it can go up to 20’C degree down.
Regarding RAM.
I have 4 nodes running on RPi’s. Never seen more then 300Mb of RAM in use.
But never seen the speed higher then 30Mbps. Lets wait for production and see then 
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