Hi, I'd really like to set up an affordable pi hole on my new network.

 

I think I have it narrowed down to three choices, but I'm not sure which to select.

 

There's an orange pi 3 LTS kit available for $61. However, there is a warning listed on that  Armbian image regarding the PCIE controller, that I don't  understand the implications of. How serious is that problem?

For a significantly less I can pick up this android TV box, that has set up tutorials on YouTube for Armbian. TX3 Mini Android 8.1 TV Box 4K TV Amlogic S905W Quad core H.265 Decoding 2.4GHz WiFi TV Box - 2GB/16GB. But it's not clear to me how much more challenging this would be to set up/maintain compared to an orange pi.

 

 

Lastly, there's an orange, For Lts Kit  for $110 which is initially quite a bit more than I wanted to pay, but I'm wondering if the ease of setup, and potential additional functionality might make it worth it. It's still less than half the price of a similarly powered raspberry pi at the moment.

PCIe is fully broken by design on H6 SoC. There were some community efforts (mainly by Icenowy) to wrote some hacks that "translate" the broken part into usable data but not sure how successful that was. In conclusion if you want to rely on PCIe avoid Allwinner H6.

 

Also I strongly recommend avoiding tvboxes. For once they are not officially supported (and most likely never will) and for the other these things are sold as cheap as possible and vendors tell you everything that is necessary (including lies like claiming H6 tvbox has 4G of memory which is technically impossible) to make you buy their crap. Also there is a chance that even tough buying the same product as somebody else that internal components change without telling you and breaking potential ways to install Armbian. Solving such issues is up to you. Check https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/#i-have-a-tv-boxtablet-from-insert-random-vendor-can-i-use-armbian-on-it

 

I personally have a pihole running for years on an Orange Pi One. Yes, that low budged Allwinner H3 with 512M of memory. It is way enough for that purpose. Orange Pi Zero (the older one with H2+ SoC) could do the same with smaller package but no HDMI (who needs monitor anyways when you have SSH). Its onboard Wi-Fi is crap though so don't rely on it.

I also use a Orange Pi One as PiHole without problems.

As Backup a NanoPi A64 is also running here PiHole if the Orange Pi One is down