For US$15: 1.6 GHz quad core CPU + 1 GiB RAM+ ports

[sje]

For US$15: 1.6 GHz quad core CPU + 1 GiB RAM+ ports
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/05/orange-is-the-new-15-pi/

Included: 100 MHz Ethernet, three USB 2 ports, HDMI video output, audio I/O, composite video output, IR port, camera input, etc.

Not included: wall wart power supply, micro SD card for mass storage, and Ethernet cabling.

Some disappointingly, the ARM A7 CPU architecture is 32 bits, not 64 bits.

From single core systems to multiple core systems to multiple systems of multiple cores; this is the direction of progress for mainstream chess processing power.

Anyone planning to build a world class chess program must now think in terms of distributed system targets.

[cdani]

Do you know if this mini computer will be burned on continuous 100% usage? Probably need some type of refrigeration.

[sje]

Do you know if this mini computer will be burned on continuous 100% usage? Probably need some type of refrigeration.

I've had my 900 MHz Raspberry Pi quad core running at full load for days and passive air cooling seems to work without problems.

[brtzsnr]

I use a few ODROID-U3 for testing. They are really nice, a bit more powerful than OrangePI+ but also about 3x more expensive. You'll need to factor in sd-card / network cable / power cable so it'll probably be around 40-50$. Still a steal.

You might want to check ODROID-XU4. 64bit and 8 (non-uniform ARM) cores for 70$. A bit better since you'll need fewer of them to build a large cluster.