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Add to SafariWhen comparing ASUS Tinker Board vs Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH, the Slant community recommends ASUS Tinker Board for most people. In the question“What are the best single-board computers?” ASUS Tinker Board is ranked 11th while Intel NUC Kit NUC7i3BNH is ranked 27th. The most important reason people chose ASUS Tinker Board is:
The ASUS Tinker Board offers performance that outclasses other single-board computers in this price range. It can easily be used as a daily PC substitute and it can easily handle some tasks that competitors (like the Pi 3 for example) find difficult. Things like image editing, streaming Full HD videos, and even playing some simple browser-based games can easily be done on the Tinker Board.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Great value for the price
The ASUS Tinker Board offers performance that outclasses other single-board computers in this price range. It can easily be used as a daily PC substitute and it can easily handle some tasks that competitors (like the Pi 3 for example) find difficult. Things like image editing, streaming Full HD videos, and even playing some simple browser-based games can easily be done on the Tinker Board.
Pro Fits on most Raspberry Pi cases
This single-board computer copies the form-factor of the raspberry pi to a T. The size is about the same and most of the connectors are at the same spots as the Raspberry Pi.
Pro The official OS is quite complete out of the box
You can get the official Linux image for the Tinker Board website. It's actually a customized version of Debian that's changed to work as smoothly as possible on Tinker Board's hardware.
It comes with all the essential applications every PC has nowadays (web browser, text, editor, etc.) and some more specialized tools that are used to control the GPIO pins and that allow more advanced users to "talk" to the hardware.
Pro Built-in WiFi and Bluetooth
This board has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities.
Pro Possible to connect an external WiFi antenna
Yes, you can add an external WiFi adapter to most SBCs but the ability to connect an external antenna to the embedded WiFi is a pretty rare feature.
Pro Unique and pleasant aesthetic
Unlike most boards on the market, the ASUS Tinker Board is rather aesthetically pleasing as well. It has an array of colours which help distinguish the different connectors. Especially nice are the GPIO pin headers which are all colour-coded to identify the various types of pins.
Pro Gigabit Ethernet on board
And since it has a dedicated controller which is not shared with USB it's very fast an the speed doesn't depend on USB usage (and vice versa).
Pro Previous Raspberry Pi owners will find themselves at ease with the GPIO library
The Tinker Board uses the same GPIO libraries as Raspberry Pi does. This means that users coming from Raspberry Pi who want to play around with the Tinker Board's GPIO pins will find it very easy to do so.
Pro Comes with appropriate case and mounting hardware for storage drives
While the cost may seem steep compared to other SBC options, seldom are those other options sold with a case that will also house your storage drives and provide adequate cooling for the entire setup.
Pro SATA III port and M.2 NVMe connector with on-board RAID-0/RAID-1 controller
The ability to harness the power of a standard 2.5" SATA III drive and an M.2 NVMe drive with four PCI Express 3.0 lanes means that sequential read rates in excess of 3GB/sec if both are SSDs. Add to that hardware RAID support and it's hard to imagine a more powerful digital storage platform anywhere near this size.
Cons
Con The support behind it is lacking
The technical support provided by ASUS is rather lacking, compared to competitors and knowing how important ASUS is in the tech world. The documentation is lacklustre, the official website is filled with marketing-speak without any actual valuable information for someone who has already bought the board, and to top it off, the download link for the official OS is hidden away inside the ASUS website in the drivers section.
Con No CEC support for HDMI
Con Limited media center support
Con Higher initial costs than most other options
It's clearly not a budget option for building a home NAS, but if you want performance and more importantly, scalability, then you'll reap the benefits of the extra upfront costs many times over as you upgrade the memory, add peripherals via USB-C and put that 7th Generation Core i3 processor to work.
