You should be aware that the R4 is NOT a finished device that you connect and then it runs. You will also need an FDTI with 3.3V so that you can get OpenWRT on the R4 at all. I can also tell you that, depending on the intended use, there may be heat problems. The 5G modem should have a heat sink, the SFP ports also.
I don’t plan on using the sfp ports, just the regular lan ports.
I’m happy to fiddle with serial flashing to setup. I just need it to be stable once setup.
Cheers ill checkout heat sinks for the modem too!
Take a look at Getting Started BPI-R4 | BananaPi Docs for the officially supported add-on cards. There’s a list of compatible 4G/5G modems, at least some of which are M.2.
As for the housing, I would advise against the acrylic case. You’re gonna need some way to cool your Wi-Fi 7 card, and the metal version serves as a decent heatsink. Just beware that the stock thermal pads on the Wi-Fi 7 card are the wrong thickness, you’ll absolutely need to buy some 2.5 mm pads to replace them with.
In the official AliExpress store (titled SinoVoip) there must be a kit of the BPI-R4 with a case and a fan/heatsink combo for the SoC. If you’re not planning to use copper 10GbE transceivers that’s all you’ll need cooling-wise. Maybe throw in an extra heatsink for the 5G modem to be extra sure.
As for antennas and pigtails, there’s a thread dedicated to that topic. TL;DR: if you want the best of the best, you could go for the expensive Taoglas GW.52.A153 tri-band Wi-Fi antennas (available on Mouser, Digikey etc.), but you likely won’t be able to take full advantage of them for a long while until we have a proper functioning driver. The pigtails must be U.FL/IPEX to RP-SMA female, RG178 coaxial cable (they are often listed specifically as compatible with mini PCIe cards). Buy 3 x 20 cm and 3 x 25 cm to make routing easier. Make sure the pigtails on the same band (2.5/5 or 6 GHz) have equal length.
If you’re not ready to make a sizable investment in antennas, buy a pack of 6 along with the pigtails from the official store and don’t bother with anything else you could find on AliExpress.
Compatibility with NVMe drives is most likely going to be mixed depending on the revision of BPI-R4 that you’ll end up getting and the drive itself. Steer clear of M.2 2280 SSDs with chips on the bottom side. Tall SMD inductors on the BPI-R4 board make those problematic to install. Again, put a thermal pad of the appropriate thickness on the SSD to press it against the metal case.
Finally, don’t forget about the power supply. For a maxed-out BPI-R4 it is recommended to use a USB brick that will supply 20 V through Power Delivery.
You won’t need a serial kit to run OpenWrt. The BPI-R4 supports booting from an SD card, which I find to be the most convenient way to use it.
Most importantly, don’t expect the software to run out of the box and do everything in web GUI. OpenWrt is still months away from that goal. Wi-Fi 7 is particularly problematic and works nowhere close to the advertised throughput.
I might hold off till wifi7 is stable. So I can do it all at once.