SBC / Low Power boards general - Raspberry Pi and what not

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tehpope said:
Radxa annouced this board earlier this year. Seems pretty killer, specs wise. 4xA55 4x76, triple monitor support, up to 16gb of ram, HDMI input?, m.2 nvme support, wifi 6 /bluetooth built-in, 2.5gb ethernet with poe. https://www.hackster.io/news/radxa-...a-rockchip-rk3588-eight-core-soc-a1755bdf4074
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Will have to see how it pans out. But I'm interested in getting one. 16gb is overkill for linux, period. I have 16gb on my Udoo Bolt and Laptop (i5 8th gen) and never even get close to using all of it. 6-8gb is the sweet spot.
Taki Udon did two vids on the chip and it seems really nice, performance wise, on android. If a community built up around it, I could see it making a killer desktop pc.

I still think, even with the market today, the Odroid N2+ 4gb is the best value. Shame it only has 1 hdmi input, but works really well as a desktop replacement. Would test out Raspberry Pi OS on my 8gb model, but I lost my sbcs during the move. :/
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Yup, it has HDMI input, and almost all of the RK3588 boards announced decided to include it. I wonder what that will end up being used for. It makes sense to have on a tablet because you could repurpose it as a portable monitor. For an RK3588 SBC, could it allow for a frankensetup where you display output from an x86 computer in a window?

16 GB at $139 (+$40) is tempting even if you have to work to waste the RAM. Although I'm sure the system would end up closer to $200 after shipping and accessories. It should be noted that the RK3588 supports up to 32 GB. Radxa decided not to go there. It's high time for flagship smartphones to start including that much for marketing reasons.

AmpleApricots said:
I had an N2, sold it after the GPU wasn't supported after over a year. it looks like the RK3588 GPU isn't supported yet either. Be aware that that can take years, if it happens at all. These small ARMs are always very tempting and have a cool list of features that in the end are only supported by a vendor kernel (if at all) that's based on a 3 year old EoL kernel version and they might maybe patch twice. Just not worth it, IMHO. A big issue is that these ARM SoC makers do not care about linux mainline and you pretty much have to hope that someone takes the time and reverse engineers it all, then it's maybe sorta usable (but not with all the features) in 3-4 years.

There's an entire fleet of x86 SoCs by AMD and intel that are super well supported and backwards compatible and everything and will also work with linux in ten years. Somehow everyone shits on them ("don't buy it" "it's slow" "it sucks") because they're so "low performance" while these ARMs get all the applause for even working while not being much faster in practice, if not slower. (and doing shenenigans like decoding video and doing OpenGL in software because the hardware isn't supported) I have a N4020 Netbook with 4 GB of RAM that can pretty much do everything I want it to do and it doesn't go past 5-7W, including the screen. (nominal 2.5-3W, can push it down to 750 mW idle when the screen is off) That's kinda weak compared to what some ARMs can do (although my N2 consumed more and ran into thermal limiting without active cooling which this Celeron doesn't need) especially in idle but man, shit just works and it was barely a hundred bucks. It can even do high end DOS games and lightweight modern indie games because it's not a complete foreign platform to them.
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It might be supported sooner rather than later this time. But yes, x86 gets a bad rap despite Just Working vs. the fragmented ARM hellscape. RISC-V is starting to get hyped up and could end up even worse than ARM.

If it does work, GPU performance of the RK3588 is around 5-10x the RK3399.
 
lizardwizard said:
Though rolling your own kernel config will always be a pain in the ass
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Eh, but you only do it once and usually don't touch it again until you need some driver.

tehpope said:
Arm is more "People don't develop for it because there isn't a market. There isn't a market because people don't develop for it." than corporate / licensing bs. At least with what I see.
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There's a huge market (in closed smartphones, tablets etc.) the problem is this "enthusiast" hardware is just a tiny sliver nobody at the companies making the SoCs and the other Hardware IP cares about. They care about pushing this shit in as big volume as possible out of the door ASAP for the newest shiny smartphone and then start working on the next one as the entire business model is that that smartphone is optimally gonna be in an african landfill in two years. Everything else is just people reverse engineering mostly on their own, which is hard, especially if the companies making the hardware don't help you/are openly hostile towards you. (ask the noveau guys)

The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
It makes sense to have on a tablet because you could repurpose it as a portable monitor
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I used to have a RK-based eink tablet with the same feature. Worked like shit (not because of the hardware, but because of the software) but you're spot on. Does that port even work in mainline or does it need some hacked up kernel? These custom kernels are often so extensively (and not rarely amateurishly) modified, even *if* (and that's a big if in many cases) the manufacturers open source their kernel (which they often don't even though they technically must) the changes are not easily portable to mainline anyways. Frankenkernel is a good description of what you usually get there. A lot of these SoC makers use the linux kernel (and here often old versions) as a free code base to write their hardware into, they do not treat it well though, or follow any established standards. Again, it's not meant to last.

The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
It might be supported sooner rather than later this time
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We'll see. I don't have the biggest trust in it. The problem is also a new shiny can stop development on older stuff any day. I really wanted to like ARM and used to have many different SBCs but's just safer to go with x86 hardware, it even has people from intel and AMD working on the kernel.
 
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basedboy said:
What's the best/most established distro for ARM currently? Might get a rpi for shitposting.
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RasPis as desktop it isn't a very well idea even if you use 8gb model.
There isn't many applications for ARM on Linux and video decoding it isn't good still.
Apple M1s are doing great things on their chips since they are pushing to port popular apps to M1 ARM.
 
What I don't get about these ultra low power builds is that most tech spergs tend to have their computer on 24/7 or thereabouts anyway so why not just... unload some of that processing power towards your pet project through that, knowing you can scale it up or down depending on your needs?

Low power PCs sound cool until you hit some form of bottleneck and suddenly you realise you've basically got a paperweight.
 
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Tom Nook's Gloryhole said:
What I don't get about these ultra low power builds is that most tech spergs tend to have their computer on 24/7 or thereabouts anyway so why not just... unload some of that processing power towards your pet project through that, knowing you can scale it up or down depending on your needs?

Low power PCs sound cool until you hit some form of bottleneck and suddenly you realise you've basically got a paperweight.
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Some users may never hit a bottleneck with a low power PC or laptop. Web browsing and HTPC? No problem. Even gaming arguably, if you look at the Steam Deck or the more powerful 6800U (8 cores and 680M graphics). Non-Apple ARM offerings are still weak or poorly optimized, while x86 mini PCs can be overpriced (like this Zen+ trash). But I think the hardware will improve faster than our ability to waste it over the next few years.

If the tech sperg is doing enough video editing, 4K gaming, particle simulations or whatever to need more performance, they will figure that out.
 
AmpleApricots said:
Eh, but you only do it once and usually don't touch it again until you need some driver.
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Depends. Sometimes new drivers will be flagged to build as a module by default in my experience, but thats more of a nuisance than a detriment since iirc modules will not load if they cant detect the device.
 
I want to like the Pi i really do but I've just not got a use for them, last time I was messing with SBC's they where mostly routerboards for custom firewalls or industrial applications so had limited I/O.

I'd like a Rpi compatable board with native SATA connections in a MATX format to build a NAS from, I know x86 boards exist just for this but I'd like a low power system that can do it, there might be one floating around but I'm not aware of it.

Stasi said:
I got a Lenovo 715q recently which falls under the small form factor/low power category

lenovo-thinkcentre-m715q-tiny-refresh-gallery-01.jpg
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I know a small team of people who scratch built a 5 axis CnC machine and they use one of them to drive it using LinuxCnC that's turning out Aerospace grade parts, those guy's are legitimae autists and worked hard to make sure everything they did was tuned to perfection.
 
Phalanges Mycologist said:
I'd like a Rpi compatable board with native SATA connections in a MATX format to build a NAS from, I know x86 boards exist just for this but I'd like a low power system that can do it, there might be one floating around but I'm not aware of it.
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It sounds like you want a Helios SBC
helios64-bundle.png
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Sadly there are very few in existance and I haven't seen one for sale in a while. Maybe you could subscribe to their newsletter and pre-purchase one when a new model comes out, that's the only way I know to get your hands on one.
 
Yeah, I wish there were more NAS-friendly SBCs.
Gigabit ethernet with full troughput and a few SATA ports (without extra USB/PCIe adapters) is all I want.

And the few that exist (Helios is already dead btw) are so expensive that you might as well get an mini-ITX board.
 
If it's about saving power, there's wake-up functions (automatic and via magic packet) and creative scripting/mounting (automount etc.) to have a fileserver just online when you need it to, some x86 SoCs have very low latency when waking up. You can also limit a lot of x86 machines in ways where they're maybe less performant, but also consume less power. In theory it's all about "race to sleep" and a fast machine that has a higher TDP might actually use less power than a slower machine with a lower TDP because it is done quicker and can go back to a deep idle/sleep mode (That's why stuff like turbo boost makes a lot of sense) but in practice a lot of software is just badly written and runs some tight polling loops or something and sucks on whatever CPU power indefinitely that's there to suck on so your power waste grows linearly with the processing power of your CPU. (Shouldn't be like this but man, in practice it just often is - that's why features like turbo boost then "eat" a flat 40% more energy instead of improving the "race to sleep" factor)
 
tehpope said:
ETA Prime got a hold of a SBC with the 3588 chip. The S variant at least. The hype is real. GC / PS2 / Wii on a SBC at full speed.
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Could it be? A piece of hardware free of hardware-level spyware that you could install linux on and does not suck?
I really hope a company like ECS picks this chip up, right now the only thing that keeps me away is the price, at 200 dollars + shipping + import fees + being only available in ali express (And therefore prone to going missing in the mail) this is a hard sell for me but damn I want one so much.
 
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XMassAllYearRound said:
Could it be? A piece of hardware free of hardware-level spyware that you could install linux on and does not suck?
I really hope a company like ECS picks this chip up, right now the only thing that keeps me away is the price, at 200 dollars + shipping + import fees 6 + being only available in ali express (And therefore prone to going missing in the mail) this is a hard sell for me but damn I want one so much.
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You could try your shot with the ROCK5 Model B with the $50 discount code scheme:


That gets even the 16 GB model down to $139, before various fees.

You should be cautioned that installing Linux on it and expecting things to work will not be as straightforward as x86. But there is a lot of interest in the RK3588 and the Valhall Mali GPU should be well supported before too long, because it is similar to the older one.
 
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XMassAllYearRound said:
Could it be? A piece of hardware free of hardware-level spyware that you could install linux on and does not suck?
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I think the only piece of modern hardware that doesn't have hardware level spyware is RISC-V. There's probably some shit in ARM that has glowie tech built-in.


RISC-V is probably the future for Privacy conscious folks. But it'll take a while to get where ARM is at.
 
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They can sneak anything into the silicon at level of manufacturing and you'd realistically never know. Open source RISC can theoretically help if you get to program the logic with your own hardware and vetted code. Otherwise, if it's made somewhere else, all bets are off.

How does the Rockchip square up to the low-end X86 SoCs like the Intel Celerons and Pentiums? Is there an ETA on low-level hardware features like hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding? I think even the well supported chip on the N2+ doesn't have encoding yet. What's the power consumption like?
 
That Khadas VIM4 sounds interesting. Hopefully we see an aggressive development scene for that board, hate to see its potential go to waste.
 

While the site was down, Khadas put out the edge2. Runs on the rk3588. Full speed ps2 emulation on desktop. Holy shit.

Edit: 3x scale. Full screen. ~1080p. At least with Gran Turismo 4.
 
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