Pi Alternatives for Klipper

I’ve been slowly creating guides for installing Klipper on as many Single Board Computer (SBC) alternatives to the Raspberry Pi as I could find due to the shortage creating insane demand and prices!

At the bottom of this page there is a list of all the boards I’ve tested, including their cost, ease of installation and a link to a tutorial I have written to install Klipper. That said at the end of the day you guys just want to know what is the best alternative? Well just like the question of which RPi you should buy it depends on your use case and I have suggested my 3 front runners for the main categories below.

High performance setup

The high performance user is the person who would have typically purchased a RPi 4 with as much RAM as they could get! You will typically be running one or more webcams, a touch screen and probably using things like input shaping regularly.

For this I suggest the Orange Pi 5. It has the specifications to equal the Pi4 in many ways and comes in at a similar price point. The installation is very straight forward when using Kiauh and documentation of the other features of the board is better than most of the alternatives.

This would be my go to if performance is more important than cost.

Check out the tutorial here

Integrated setup

If you haven’t started sourcing your build yet or you are replacing an old control board that has suffered from the magic blue smoke then I would strongly consider an integrated SBC and control board option. Many of the 3d printer control board manufacturers have started producing these and they typically offer good value for money as well as a smaller and neater overall electronics solution.

I have tested a few of these now and my favourite is the Manta M4P/M8P boards. They combine some high end features with a nice board layout. They also offer RPi compute module compatibility for the future should they become easy to source again and you wished to swap back.

At the heart of these boards is the removable CB1 module. It offer performance similar to a Pi Zero but at the end of the day that is all you need. Early versions had some WiFi issues but the latest ones seems to be working well.

Community support for these boards is high with both Voron and RatRig communities taking them on. This is the only non Raspberry Pi board supported by RatOS!

Check out my tutorials for the M4P and M8P.

Low cost setup

For the low cost solution where you simply need a board that works, doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and you already have your controller board ready and desperately waiting for a SBC so it can run Klipper already!

For this scenario I would suggest using the MKS Pi. It is a simple no thrills SBC with performance somewhere between a Pi Zero and the Pi 3B. The OS provided by MKS comes with klipper pre-installed so it is as simple as flashing the SD card and then getting stuck into configuring your printer. I suggest ordering it with the WiFi dongle included so that you get one that is compatible.

Check out my tutorial on how to get started with the MKS Pi here

Tested Boards

Below is a complete list of the boards I have tested. I have made notes on the ease of installation of the OS and Klipper and whether or not it is a sensible device to use. For complete transparency I’ve also noted whether the boards were donated (by users), purchased (by me) or gifted (by the manufacturer).

MKS Pi

Where to buy
– Aliexpress (Verified – donated)
– Baseline cost: £36.78
– Total cost: £43 (including WiFi dongle + micro SD card)

Installation
– Easy difficulty, MKS OS is preloaded and well documented
– Setup Guide

T95 mini Android TV Box

Where to buy
– Aliexpress Amazon (Verified – purchased)
– Baseline cost: £25.99
– Total cost: £25.99 (No accessories required)

Installation
– Medium difficulty, Supported OS from Inovato and KIAUH works
– Setup Guide

Orange Pi Zero Plus

Where to buy
– Aliexpress (Verified – purchased)
– Baseline cost: £31.83
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium difficulty, generally well documented OS install and KIAUH works
– Setup Guide (Vanilla Klipper)
– Setup Guide (RatOS – Thanks to @Blacksmithforlife for this one)

Orange Pi PC

Where to buy
– Aliexpress (Borrowed but original owner bought from here)
– Baseline cost: £32.68
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium difficulty, generally well documented OS install and KIAUH works
– Setup Guide (Vanilla Klipper)

Orange Pi 5

Where to buy
– Aliexpress (Gifted by Orange Pi store)
– Baseline cost: £79.64
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Easy, generally well documented OS install and KIAUH works
– Setup Guide

Banana Pi M2 Zero

Where to buy
– Aliexpress (Verified – purchased)
– Baseline cost: £26.24
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium/hard difficulty, board no longer officially supported by Debian but last released image works, as does KIAUH
– Setup Guide

Banana Pi M1

Where to buy
– Aliexpress (Borrowed)
– Baseline cost: £30.87
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium difficulty
– Setup Guide

Mellow Fly Pi

Where to buy
– Aliexpress (Verified – this item was gifted to me by the Mellow Store)
– Baseline cost: £35.00
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium difficulty, provided OS works but official documentation has gaps. Built in configurator to swap between Mainsail and Fluidd
– Setup Guide

Mellow Fly Gemini (V1)

Where to buy
– Included in case anyone still owns one. Buy the v2 version instead.

Installation
– Hard difficulty, Don’t use provided OS for V1 it needs a lot of parts configured and fixed. The new image for V2 works but there is no official documentation of using that method.
– Setup Guide (Outdated – due update because new image works better)

Mellow Fly Gemini (V2)

Where to buy
– Aliexpress (Verified – this item was gifted to me by the Mellow Store)
– Baseline cost: £43.22
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium difficulty, provided OS works but official documentation has gaps. Built in configurator to swap between Mainsail and Fluidd
– Setup Guide

BTT CB1 + M4P

Where to buy
– Aliexpress(Verified – this item was gifted to me by the BigTreeTech Store)
– Baseline cost: £23.53 (£54.87 with M4P board)
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium difficulty (Hard if only using official guide), provided OS works but official documentation has gaps. Only compatible with specific boards
– Setup Guide (M4P)

BTT CB1 + M8P

Where to buy
– Aliexpress(Verified – this item was gifted to me by the BigTreeTech Store)
– Baseline cost: £23.53 (£73.48 with M4P board)
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium difficulty (Hard if only using official guide), provided OS works but official documentation has gaps. Only compatible with specific boards
– Setup Guide (M8P)
– Setup Guide (RatOS + M8P – Hard difficulty)

FYSETC M10 + Cheetah Mix

Where to buy
– Aliexpress(Verified – this item was gifted to me by the FYSETC Store)
– Baseline cost: £61.06 (has to be purchased with a Cheetah Mix board)
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Hard – since my first post they have updated the documentation and OS image used (or at least linked to the correct one). It is now possible to get it up and running well over ethernet but WiFi isn’t working for me yet.
– Setup Guide

WSL (within windows PC)

Where to buy
– No where it’s a software solution for the PC you already own
– Baseline cost: £0
– Total cost: £0

Installation
– Very Hard. This requires lots of linux and command line work.
– Setup Guide

Community tested boards

Boards in this section are ones which I have not been able to test myself but members of the community have spoken out about their experiences with. To get your favourite board added to this section message me with the board and either a guide you have written or recorded or set of instructions you want me to publish.

Radxa Zero

Where to buy
– Aliexpress
– Baseline cost: £57.71 (2G ram) or £69.50 (4G ram)
– Total cost: xxx

Installation
– Medium difficulty, Supports Debian OS and KIAUH install
– Setup Guide (Tech Explores NYC)

Inovato Quadra

Where to buy
– Direct from Inovato
– Baseline cost: $29
– Total cost: $29

Installation
– Easy difficulty, Comes with OS pre-installed and KIAUH works
– Setup Guide (Standard KIAUH install)

WIP List

Here are a list of boards I’ve got in the backlog to get started on.

• Old tower PC off Facebook – Free!
• Virtualbox

Wishlist

Here are a list of boards people have mentioned / I have seen that I have yet to test. Please do let me know of any others you want to see and I’ll add them to the list, I’ll try to cover as many boards as I can afford. I can’t promise I’ll get through them all but I like to dream!

• Banana Pi BPI-M2 Magic
• Orange Pi Zero LTS
• Orange Pi One
• NanoPi Neo LTS
• Zero Pi
• La Frite (very interested in trying this one)
• Radxa Zero (very interested in trying this one)
• ODROID XU4 (suggested by XoBoR)
• re-furbished NUC/Micro PC (Suggested by ProbablePenguin)
• Makerbase MKS SKIPR
• Atomic Pi