I chose an all metal case for superior heat dissipation, the duinoCase B+, and applied small heat sinks to the CPU and GPU. This time I decided to try a more involved program to see how it would run, and while it must be very slimmed down code as compared to the Windows or Mac versions of JRMC, this would still be a stiffer challenge to the ARM Cortex A53 based 1.2GHz CPU and 1GB of available RAM on the RPi3 board.

I've built several different RPi3 based music players and servers, in each case using a thin-Linux variant that maximizes the limited available hardware horsepower. I decided on JRiver Media Center 22, they now offer a preloaded SanDisk microSD card with a Debian Linux based version of JRMC22 for $39, called Id Pi. This was too good to pass up, I'm not sure why Arrow would be willing to give away Raspberry Pi 3B boards, but I took them up on it and then planned my next use case.

I recently saw a special offer from Arrow Electronics for the Raspberry Pi 3B board at 30% off, including overnight FedEx shipping, so $25 all in.

Jriver linux