This cheap Raspberry Pi 4B alternative offers two unmatched features
Radxa, a Brazilian developer of single-board computers (SBCs), has started sales of its Rock Pi 4C SBC that is designed for ultra-cheap ultra-compact systems.
The Radxa Rock Pi 4C SBC is based on the Rockchip RK3399 system-on-chip (SoC) that was originally designed for inexpensive Google Android tablets and therefore has a rather decent feature set and performance. The board could potentially power an entry-level home-theater or entertainment PCs project or a ‘typewriter-class’ office PC that does not need significant performance.
The Rockchip RK3399 SoC packs two high-performance Arm Cortex-A72 cores running at up to 1.80GHz, four energy-efficient Arm Cortex-A53 cores operating at up to 1.40GHz, Arm Mali-T864 GPU, as well as a multimedia engine that supports hardware decoding of modern video codecs used by streaming services, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264/MPEG4-AVC, H.265/HEVC, VC-1, VP9, VP8, and MVC.
Universal SBC
The Rock Pi 4C SBC comes with 4GB (or less) LPDDR4 memory onboard, an optional eMMC storage module (up to 128GB), and can support a microSD card or an M.2 SSD (up to 2TB, PCIe 2.1 interface) SSD. On the connectivity side of things, the board features Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 5, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports (2.0 and 3.0), a mini HDMI 2.0a output (supporting 4Kp60), a mini DisplayPort 1.2, a GPIO header, a 3.5-mm audio connector, and a USB-C connector for power.
The SBC measures just 85x54mm and can fit into various chassis and is compatible with various accessories, including those designed by Radxa itself.
As for software support, the Rock Pi 4C SBC can work with various Linux operating systems as well as Google’s Android along with select versions of Google’s Android TV.
The Radxa’s Rock Pi 4C SBCs is available now from a variety of retailers, including Amazon (for $110) as well as AllNetChina (for $59).
Via CNX Software
