A tiny x86 SBC with Raspberry Pi GPIO (Radxa X4, tested)

[@JohnneyleeRollins]

Red Shirt Jeff is the pi killer we all deserve

[@saszab]

3:55 But his math is bad: "50-60% better performance" in reality means 33-50%. Proof: 7887.9/5456.5 = 1.4456 10764.4/7946.8 = 1.3546 10790.2/8138.6 = 1.3258 11019.0/7968.4 = 1.3828 11019.0/7329.0 = 1.5035

[@new_beginning2571]

can it work without heatsink? or any other small lightweight heatsink(likr rpi5 fan) will work? what is the weight of the board?

[@neothermic1]

One tiny thing to consider, if it ships with thermal pads rather than thermal paste, it might be relying on the physical distance being bridged. Replacing thermal pads with paste can lead to poor contact, and might explain why it got too hot! This is especially true for CPUs without an IHS like the N100 SoC, as you can't put too much pressure on the CPU else it'll just crack, so you're either relying on a VERY tight tolerance mount, or you're using a thermal pad to give everyone a bit of breathing room.

[@JeffGeerling]

True; but I tested with two sets of my own thermal pads (and tried with theirs too), and you have to have fairly thick/non-standard pads to get good contact. The heatsink case is just a weird design. The best thermals I got were with the thick thermal paste, followed closely by my custom thermal pads - check the linked GitHub issue for more on that whole process.

[@kancheongspidergaming]

That pad looked like PTM7950/equivalent PCM but maybe its just me because applying these can get messy.

[@XenonG]

@@kancheongspidergaming Then could probably be uncured PTM.

[@azbesthu]

@@kancheongspidergaming I was wondering if it was PTM7950, too :) I did put that stuff to my notebook with huge cpu, because even high quality branb pastes were worse then the factory stuff. Pastes were pumped out after a few weeks by the changing core temperatures. For n100 I think it is ok to have paste.

[@Sylvan_dB]

@@JeffGeerling Sounds like it needs a copper shim.

[@velocity37]

That "crumbly thermal pad" you show looks like Honeywell PTM7950. It's a bit of a pain to apply, but it performs better than paste and sits somewhere between paste and liquid metal in terms of thermal performance. Helps to stick it in the freezer a while before trying to separate it from its plastic. Cut to size, peel 1 side, apply, and then peel the other off carefully.

[@JeffGeerling]

Could be; they should definitely call it out in the docs or in a little note in the box, if that's the case though! Other testers who have gotten that pad working said they still had the same thermal issues though, I think it's just the case / heatsink design needs a good revision.

[@fredbompard7097]

​@@JeffGeerling i'm afraid when i read you. I order 2 boards with 2 cases and 2 POE HAT. I'm not confident about the result of the build and the temp. 😅

[@zerotwo_.002]

This i came to share this too. That colour and the peel gave it away for me lol.

[@KameraShy]

Reminds me of a couple weeks ago when I was fiddling with Gorilla double-sided tape. It was also unexpectedly painful to apply at first, but once I got the technique down, it was ok.

[@Wahinies]

The best pad does not outperform the best grease and even still the best pads cost like 1/3 of a SBC so I doubt it...

[@CDVentress]

Hey Jeff, I’ve been watching you for years, but I don’t usually comment but wanted to say congratulations on the great job you keep doing every day. Thanks.

[@nikobellic570]

Thumbnail designs are always on point with Jeff

[@coder543]

I'm surprised that they didn't just pre-load firmware onto the RP2040 that would be used from the host-side in Linux to emulate the Raspberry Pi GPIO header and provide a compatibility layer for existing HATs and software.

[@LostieTrekieTechie]

Considering the variety of pins and protocols, that's probably a lot easier said than done.

[@JeffGeerling]

A lot of HATs require direct communication between something in Linux and something on the GPIO pins, which makes using it through a USB/UART bridge like the Pico is designed to do a bit hard. Like GPIO touchscreens need a framebuffer coming from Linux's display stack, that might be hard (not sure if impossible) to do through the RP2040.

[@coder543]

@@JeffGeerling even if they couldn’t handle display HATs, basic GPIO should have been easy to emulate, but I hear you

[@FreeOfFantasy]

@@JeffGeerling At least under linux it really isn't that difficult, I wrote a kernel module for a construct like that at work that tunnels GPIOs, RS232 and CAN (and a few domain specific protocols) over an SPI (and an interrupt pin). It doesn't have quite the reaction speed of directly integrated GPIOs and interfaces but it did it's job well. You really just need a few fake files in the appropriate places in /sys and a kernel module to handle it.

[@alexdev6161]

@@JeffGeerling Yep, it's not just basic on/off GPIO. You also have interfaces like I2C, I2S, SPI to deal with. It's doable as a proof-of-concept, but I'm not sure how practical it would end up being. The fastest link between RP2040 and the N100 is USB 1.1 Full Speed, which provides low bandwidth and introduces high latency. It's an external microcontroller after all, it should be treated as such. All I/O heavy-lifting on the RP2040 and minimal communication with the main CPU. Realistically that's fine for most use cases.

[@gortys3929]

Jeff, it would be wonderful if you could make a follow up video 6 months after to see if there is enough support and improvements. Tahank you for the video ❤

[@JeffGeerling]

Since this board will likely go into service, I'll have more to say at some point, for sure!

[@bcastroalves]

It's not a Raspberry Pi killer, but at least it's something quite different from the other SBCs, which are basically ARMs (well, we have some RISC-V, but not at the same level of performance and support). I really liked this proposal from Radxa, already thinking about buying one, but here where I live, the problem of energy dissipation will be worse.

[@codeman99-dev]

8:45 "The hardware is very cool though..." You mean "The hardware is very hot", right?

[@JeffGeerling]

Haha you got me!

[@protocetid]

I wonder if an Intel Atom type chip based on Zen 5 or Lunar Lake would make an x86 smartphone possible. Hell I’m curious what a smartphone using the current Intel Atoms would be like. They don’t get as hot as the N100 right? I can’t find info on their thermal performance.

[@shodivnoname8950]

​@@protocetidI mean, there's a ton of tablets or laptop-tablet hybrids with bay trail atoms or atom x5 and older celerons Some don't even have active cooling Should work for a phone tbh

[@rr3609]

@@protocetid Asus ZenFone 2 is a smartphone from 2015 and has an Intel Atom Z3580, if i remember correctly there were high thermals and high battery consumption and compatibly issues with some apps (same as MediaTek ARM processors in the beginning).

[@pearan]

​​@@protocetidno phones are arm based for a reason x86 phone will be slow or hot and has a high battary usage

[@vikingforties]

Well, the world of liquid nitrogen cooling had to come to SBCs sooner or later.

[@CTSFanSam]

Ahh, when the cooling solution is 10x the size of the box that needs cooling. Wellllllll, that would be cool.

[@vikingforties]

@@CTSFanSam That's a good point and probably about the same for rack mount servers when you add up the volume of cooling kit for data centres. Hot & cold aisles, under floor ducting, chillers, evaporators, more ducting, heat exchangers etc.

[@klausstock8020]

​@@vikingforties It's just that datacenters don't aim for the raspberry form factor. Which is basically what made this thing fail.

[@josh3771]

Thanks Jeff, interesting board for the right use case and once the bugs get polished out. Would be interested to see how it performs with an improved heatsink

[@JeffGeerling]

I was planning on doing a little more testing with another heatsink-though didn't get time to set something up that was solid enough I wasn't nervous about killing the X4. Luckily I have a 2nd board now, so I'm more willing to precariously zip-tie a cooler to it for testing.

[@josh3771]

@@JeffGeerling Cheers. If Red Shirt Jeff has time, Liquid Nitrogen, unlocked bios, power mod and OC this thing to the moon

[@kritikusi-666]

beautiful review. I was thinking about replacing my Pi5 with these. I will definitely wait and see what other revisions will become available. Thanks @Jeff you rock dude!

[@JeffGeerling]

I think with a better case, that would solve about 80% of my gripes!

[@rpalme84]

Glad to know that I'm not the only one with a big box of still mostly functional tech with such a name. I call mine my "Box of broken dreams."

[@MarcBehar]

Any video with an SGI logo demo is a win for me

[@eliteschw31n64]

About dual channel, the N100 cant do that. Yep its 2024 and we have still ram single channel cpus around

[@JeffGeerling]

Oops, I read the specs wrong! I guess it's just 32-bit vs 64-bit single channel access that's causing the discrepancy.

[@JohnADoe-pg1qk]

I think the bigger bottleneck of the CPU is the small number of PCIe lanes. Nobody expects performance miracles from this CPU, so the memory connection is usually not a big deal. However, this also halves the maximum amount of RAM, which is not relevant on this SBC with soldered-on memory below the maximum possible. But the 9 PCIe lanes limit the variety of possible I/O quite a lot, which is not particularly important for this SBC.

[@azbesthu]

@@JohnADoe-pg1qk If you don't have much interfaces, 9 is more than enough. I have one router form factor board with n100. It has four 2.5G lan, x1 nvme m.2, x1 m.2 wifi e-key and one mPcie. I'm not sure if the 9th lane is used at all in that :D

[@shivanSpS]

@@JohnADoe-pg1qk Actually the X4 is one of the fews cases of the N100 having all 4 lanes on a single connector, in this case the M.2, it is x4 3.0 what you can actually use to run a dgpu, its not much but it is the minimum needed to get a playable experience.

[@DigitalJedi]

Yup. They're using a single DDR5 32-bit sub-channel. I honestly wasn't sure if the N100 would tolerate that as not every device will. 9x PCIe 3.0 is a bit limiting, but in this form factor it isn't too bad. It has 4 going to that M.2 slot and not a whole lot else going on that needs bandwidth.

[@zimbu_]

If he's Jeff Geerling until next time, then who will he be after next time?

[@marcogenovesi8570]

only way to know is to see the next video

[@SockyNoob]

ExplainingComputers obviously

[@crenn6977]

His name will be Inigo Montoya

[@waltherstolzing9719]

@@SockyNoob ... which is coming up ... ... ... ... ... ... ... verrrrry soon

[@minigpracing3068]

The next generation of the n100 may be impressive, and having it on a CM4 sized board would be great.

[@oliverer3]

I can't help but think that formfactor would be even more annoying to cool but would be useful!

[@bjarne431]

With intels latest cpus made at 2nm by tsmc they have like 50% efficiency gains and beats out snapdragon in efficiency. So a n100 based on the new design would be very interesting

[@TheHardie]

For a second I regretted the purchase of a N100 Passive cooled MIni PC for my personal Router/Home Lab Project! But then the performance and thermal numbers helped a lot to calm down! xD Thanks @Jeff Geerling for this honest review!

[@zambonidriver42]

30 seconds in, I smell a kernel recompile. 😂

[@c1ph3rpunk]

How many days are we at without one.

[@boneappletee6416]

​@@c1ph3rpunk stuck at 0

[@jenovaizquierdo]

I ordered mi Radxa X4, and I'm waiting for it. 😊🤩 awesome review. 👏

[@Modj-j5m]

Where did you order ?

[@gabrielnilo6101]

By comparing Lattepanda Mu with Radxa it seems like Radxa has great value. Even if the heat is a problem, you can buy a Radxa X4 12GB with 128GB eMMC WiFi 6 for $100 and still have $85.90 to buy a custom cooler to deal with the heat... It does seem fun to try to cool this board.

[@JeffGeerling]

Yeah hands down the X4 wins on price/value over the Mu. But the Mu I think will win on performance if you're looking for a SoM style N100 board.

[@dktol56]

@@JeffGeerling Have you taken a look at the ODROID-H4 / H4+ / H4 Ultra? Definitely more expensive (and bigger), but more flexible and faster. The H4+ seems to be the sweet spot at $180 with the N97 CPU and dual Intel I226-V 2.5 GbE, and 4 SATA ports. You still have to add your own SO-DIMM DDR5 RAM and M.2 2280 storage. They offer a NAS case (requires assembly) for $33 that can accommodate 4 X 3.5" rust drives. They also also have a min-ITX adapter board for $22, so you can use it in conventional mini/micro/ATX cases. Been eyeing this for a while.

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

A Jeff video on a Saturday? Don't mind if I do. :)

[@JeffGeerling]

Heh, a rare treat. Usually I'd post on Thurs/Fri, but this week we did some Geerling Engineering experiments that took me away from editing in time :)

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

@@JeffGeerling Hi, Jeff! I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of experiments they are. :3

[@PhG1961]

Awesome review Jeff! You're my hero... well let's say, you're one of my heros! There's of course Great Scott, a guy with a Swiss accent and many more! All awesome KZbin channels! What a wonderful era we live in (technology wise...).

[@theJonnymac]

so decent board, it just needs a custom heat sink and better fan set up.

[@hackerx7329]

And apparently a better case (which if it becomes popular at all I'm sure somebody will design) and apparently MUCH better software support. The support side including software, community, and educational materials is still where the Raspberry Pi family easily beats everything else.

[@arch1107]

the m.2 is not in a ideal place and is limited to the smallest size, it is a interesting idea but alot has to be improved here

[@whette_fahrtz]

@@arch1107 theres no room anywhere else, it just needs airflow. The airflow is compromised because the two hot parts cant be on the same side, because the board is too small, because the Pi form factor was *never* good and Radxa should have ditched the idea the moment they couldn't guarantee compatibility with existing hats and cases, which of course was probably very early on in development. The Pi B board layout is absolutely awful and I really do not understand why we put up with it, *especially* when minute changes to the boards, which happen ALL the time, are enough to break compatibility. Like, a Pi 1 B can't fit in a Pi 5 case or vice versa, so remind me why we're stuck with the Pi 1 B size?

[@DigitalJedi]

@@whette_fahrtz Agreed. Something more in line with the Orange Pi-sized boards would be ideal here. They're already wider than the Pi. Just commit and go for the minimum size that doesn't do things like half the memory bandwidth and kneecap the cooling.

[@MaximinoReyes]

​One possible solution would be a version of the Sunfounder Pironman 5 Case with sufficient ventilation and enough surface area of the heatsink and fan

[@Chilliwillikers]

"....the box of shame...." Definitely have one or two of those 😂

[@JeffGeerling]

"The desk drawers full of shame" :D

[@kendokaaa]

That's what I call my room

[@williamBryan-k2e]

go to the channel 'explaining computers' - the host fixed the heat problem. He rejected the thermal pad for the cpu and put a better one on. He also had to put in a copper shim as the space between cpu and that case top was too big. Once that was done, tested. He was able to get the cpu temp down to acceptable - with and without the fan on. FIXED. I cannot find one on amazon, so I can wait a while later - but I want to test.

[@JeffGeerling]

I bought a set of copper shims after seeing his video, will be trying them!

[@Gareth.W]

@@JeffGeerling Please let us know how you get on. I'm tempted to pick one of these up to replace my old Raspberry Pi CM4 that I use as a Plex media server, as I believe the N100 can handle hardware transcoding unlike the Pi.

[@r.in.shibuya]

That’s the end of RADXA sending Jeff free stuff 😂.

[@roberts.3712]

hahahaha

[@jcorey333]

This is a cool review. I'm still leaning towards trying one of these eventually. I've got too many projects on my back burner though. 😅. I think one of the big things that pi has going for it is the huge community and ecosystem around it. It is THE default SBC and there's so much support and so many tutorials. I think a lot of your videos of SBCs highlight that that robust community and documentation is often missing from non-pi boards.

[@marksmithcollins]

Huge ecosystem for pi? lol x86 has humongous ecosystem

[@jimmya1118]

I like it and hopefully they stick with it till it becomes a Pi competitor. btw jeff, while i appreciate the closed captions, it blocked the labels are the bottom of the graph you showed.

[@johnbeer4963]

Nice video Jeff - You mentioned something about the channels on the memory... The N100 is single channel anyway... perhaps you meant a reduced bus width? I heard something about that.

[@JeffGeerling]

Yes, I was a little off in my statement, it's single channel on the SoC, but this board has 32-bit wide access vs 64-bit on the Mu.

[@johnbeer4963]

@@JeffGeerling I wonder if the models with more ram will have the full bus width

[@mikedavison4313]

I have done a lot with SBCs and the issue I have with the SBC community is there is a race for specs without asking what is the target use of the boards. Take this one for example, it would be good to talk more about what its good for. Yes it has enough grunt to run some games, but since you most likely have a laptop or mobile phone already why not use than instead? For simpler projects I find the humble Espressif wifi enabled no frills boards more than sufficient.

[@pascalmartin1891]

I agree. I found the raspberry pi Zero to be almost perfect for most of my applications. I looked a bit at espressif but it seems to be an embedded programming environment, not as convenient and flexible as a full Linux system. One exception, which may make me upgrade to the Zero 2: OS upgrades through apt are slow as hell. Reinstalling a new OS is faster if your application is easy to install and configure.

[@OriNachum]

I love the microprocessor “host” architecture. Can make working with it is amazing (at least for development phase)

[@AttilaSVK]

I like the concept and the price point. Maybe with some careful design it would be possible to design a 3D printable adapter for an off the shelf CPU heatsink. That would be cool :D

[@mikehensley78]

HAT or HAB not. ;) That still seems like a pretty cool little board. I bet it would make a nice little retro arcade box.

[@JeffGeerling]

This is true-that's something I didn't test at all but it could run a lot more than the Pi, or even many of the Rockchip boards.

[@JohnneyleeRollins]

everything isnt the pi killer im not looking for; im so confused, i bought it anyways

[@turbochargedfilms]

the real pi killers were the friends we made along the way

[@Marauder-q2v]

@@turbochargedfilmsmaybe the real pi killer has been within us the whole time

[@Splarkszter]

​​@@Marauder-q2v RP2350 cores?

[@Mk98788]

Im really exited for the pi zero version That ones Ethernet option & POE Shield looks amazing

[@SockyNoob]

Still waiting for the Pi Killer to turn themselves in. Can't believe they've gotten away with it for so long under many different names!

[@LelandHasGames]

Something in that form factor running windows, that's pretty appealing. I only recently found a permanent and functional use for my Pi 4. Using a board like that as a mini media center, that would be really cool.

[@lifehacker123]

I own a Zotac Zbox CI337 Nano, which also comes with an N100. For being a small home server, it’s great but at the same time it’s not great. The N100 chip really draws quite a lot of power in idle. 5-7W for me. And since my Zbox is passively cooler, it is going to crash a lot when running it 24/7. In cold weather it will do fine, on hot days it is going to crash. Also, you can’t upgrade it from its soldered on 16GB of RAM. BUT: the N100 chip itself is really fantastic in “real life” scenarios. Synthetic benchmarks don’t do it justice. Zipping and unzipping files is a blast. Running Jellyfin on it is awesome since the GPU has true hardware codec support. And the CPU is beefy enough that I’ll never run out of steam when doing most things I need it to do.

[@MrKelaher]

Great review ! seems more a thing good to build into a larger then SBC custom build with a proper heat pipe ... definite arcade JAMMA and retro-emulation uses for example ! One note - N100 is only single channel RAM, inherently.

[@EnigmaticLlamaLuminary]

You can buy a Beelink fanless mini PC with an N100, 16GB of DDR5, and a 1TB SSD for $130. If you factor in the cost of purchasing the power cable, HDMI cable, adapters, etc a Pi 5 would end up costing MORE than buying the Beelink N100 machine. I own 3 of those Beelink mini PC's. Going forward I'm done messing with SBC. Why mess around with a single board janky thing when for the same price (or less) you can have a reliable machine with an SSD, two HDMI out, multiple USB 3's etc. That's the pi killer.

[@Storm_.]

But it sounds to me that you're not using the Pi for its intended purpose. So what you value out of a Pi isn't really what a Pi is for. You just want a little mini computer to do general computing. Beelink can't do what a Pi can do, it doesn't have GPIO, it doesn't allow for education in that respect, so how can Beelink be a Pi killer if it cannot even do what a Pi can do.

[@jackw9568]

Which Beelink model and what store has it at this price?

[@T3chIdiot]

honestly, the only reason I would consider picking one up myself is the size. considering the chip and that custom 3d printed mounts for heatsinks is possible, and its smaller than a similarly priced lower power board (atomic pi) and has a more powerful chip, its definitely a good concept

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Jeff Geerling is both the pi killer and pi saver.

[@SockyNoob]

And Pi keeper. Meanwhile ExplainingComputers is the SBCmaniac.

[@dktol56]

Explaining Computers used a copper shim + thermal paste to bridge the rather large gap between the CPU and heat sink. The temperatures were much improved, so much so, that Chris disconnected the noisy fan with only a modest temperature increase under full load - no thermal throttling.

[@anon_y_mousse]

The thing I love most is the price. An x86 SBC with 40 pin GPIO that competes with the price of a Pi is for me a Pi killer. It just needs a better cooling solution.

[@erikkarsies4851]

Or just find a USB to GPIO adapter?

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@erikkarsies4851 That's one option, but then you've got even more dangling bits hanging around.

[@confusedbeard69]

This looks like a sweet little sbc for me, been looking for a small computer to use as a youtube/jellyfin media player and replace my old Ryzen laptop.

[@intrax2tv]

Buy an n100 mini pc, much better value!

[@deinemudder3066]

8:44 "The hardware is very cool though." missed wordplay opportunities.

[@KomradeMikhail]

You're better off just getting an N100 based mini-PC and stuffing a Pi Pico inside the case with it...

[@DigitalJedi]

I'm actually working on doing just that but with an older mini PC I have sitting around. i7 6700T and one exposed internal USB 2.0 header. I'm picking up a Pico 2W. The goal is being able to remotely power on the mini PC and have the pico act like an HID device to execute a simple script of inputs.

[@niikon]

Mr. Jeff, you can't just replace a thermal pad with paste when the heatsink's clearences don't account for that ☺ Whenever I replace pad with paste I add copper shims to gap the distance that usually needs to be there for the pad.

[@JeffGeerling]

Yeah; in my case I tested with the crusty pad they sent, the pads I have on hand (they're not top of the line but I use them on a lot of builds and they work fine), and with the thermal paste; all three were pretty close in general, but my own pads were slightly better for thermals. In all cases, the heatsink underperformed IMO... it should just be closer (there's a fairly large gap, even for a small pad), and pull off more heat.

[@thatiotguy8837]

Love your videos, just keep making these kind of ‘KILLER’ contents ❤

[@armisis]

Got mine. Just installed ubunto rebooting now... Can't wait to see how it does using the emmc

[@ilkoderez601]

Great video. LOVE THE SHIRT!

[@spacedoutbeard5033]

You would get arguably better cooling by laying it down on it's fan side. That would force the metal fins to work as a duct and force air over them from the fan. It might not make a huge difference, but it wouldn't hurt at all.

[@daniell.5347]

I always click when I see your videos, Jeff. Hope your day is well.

[@RaduTek]

As visible in 2:33, the heatsink is making no contact to the CPU at all. Thermal paste is not thermally conductive over such a gap. Thermal paste only serves to fill the air gaps between the heatsink and die, when they are in direct contact, to ensure maximal thermal transfer. On this board, the design requires a thermal pad, as those are much better at heat transfer over a thicker gap. This is also preferable, as the risk of damaging the die while installing a heatsink is almost none, since the thermal pad is soft.

[@JeffGeerling]

It is making full contact in that picture (it's just hard to see), and the paste has oozed out both sides on both of the chips. I also ran all benchmarks with a thicker thermal pad from the same material I use in many other builds, and ran with the thermal pad they included (re-crusted together and smashed into place), and the results were within a few degrees of each other. See the linked GitHub issue for all the tests.

[@RaduTek]

@@JeffGeerling You're right. Thinking about it more, the temps would've been much worse and maybe it would've shut down altogether if the heatsink was making no contact. Now I feel sorry for doubting you :)

[@JeffGeerling]

@@RaduTek It's no problem at all, and yeah, if there was no contact, the N100 is just way too hot to run even idle with no heatsink for long!

[@KameraShy]

Overall, this looks like a truly remarkable device. Just think about how far SBCs have come. A few warts can be easily addressed.

[@JeffGeerling]

That's the best takeaway-we are spoiled for choice now, though wish a couple manufacturers focused on boards running under 1W idle again.

[@NerdiestPerson]

I've never been a huge fan of the whole "SBC with a microcontroller sub-processor" idea. If I want GPIO on a N100 PC, I already have a fanless N100 (that gets a little toasty, but not too bad) and multiple USB stick-style ESP32 boards (I personally like the M5 Atom ones). Sure, the total price was a bit higher and you probably won't have the full 40 pins to play with, but the lack of headache makes up for it, in my opinion.

[@LanceThumping]

At the moment, with the N100, it seems like the RPi has been killed on the performance front and with the boards getting cheaper it seems like the price front is pretty close too. Only weaknesses that x86 boards need to figure out is really matching the generalized peripherals that the RPi has and I guess this attempt with the RP2040 is probably the first jump towards that. I wonder what level of emulation you could write on the RP and x86 sides to bridge hats more completely/transparently and how close it'd get. I'm curious if we'll see other boards use this or a different method for the GPIO and what we might see on the camera connector front. It may not be a killer but RPi is definitely taking a lot of stab wounds.

[@CoryMT]

"There isn't enough space on the PCB to put in dual channel 64-bit wide address support" I believe the N100 is a single channel design, so even if they had enough space, it would still have to be single channel.

[@DigitalJedi]

DDR5 channels are 64 bits wide with dual 32-bit sub-channels. Radxa is only using 1 sub channel to that single memory IC.

[@CoryMT]

@@DigitalJedi Interesting, I wasn't aware f that, thank you!

[@DigitalJedi]

@CoryMT Yeah ddr5 is weird. In theory you can have half channels like this. Like 1.5-channel with a 96-bit interface is technically doable.

[@marcinmorun]

This sbc is figurally and literally hot!

[@nrg753]

I think it shows potential, in a year or two we could have great x86 based arm killers that have solved these small issues 🙂

[@jamescollins6085]

Maybe users could tap some threaded holes and bolt an additional active cooler to the included one with some thermal compound if Radxa don't sort out the thermal issues. Should be enough to keep thermals under control, and you can probably do away with that awful loud fan.

[@krishbin]

I see this as a development board to bring up support to other development boards. I can remote ssh into it and develop firmware, kernel for other boards that still are not well supported. Normally i use a external pico as a serial device or a jtag. The inbuilt pico is a very good thing for me. Not only other development boards but i can easily program my microcontroller that are out of reach from my main computer. Any other arm board can do what I described but x86 gives an option for broader software support and i can easily rdp to a resonably fast and smooth computer than any other sbc out there.

[@Sylvan_dB]

Yup. I think doing an N100 in a typical mini-pc form factor would be a better starting point. Then add the RP2040 (or better yet the new one!) and give access to the GPIO with a hatch.

[@Strawberrymaker]

With a small m.2 a+e lan adapter this seems like a nice little pfsense box.

[@TomaszStachewicz]

N100 in this form factor, with this many pcie lanes and with a microcontroller - well, this is awesome! But like everything from Radxa, it needs some polishing on the software and accessories support side.

[@samiraperi467]

1:41 Funny, most Intel CPUs I've seen idle at less than 2W. That's assuming minimal background processes. Looks like I'll be making a custom heatsink for my X4 when it arrives. All kinds of junk tends to accumulate over the years and I have at least two I can start with.

[@mireia3208]

Did you get to try it? I do not care about actual performance, but I do want to see those

[@IsaacShoebottom]

Looks more ideal for a TV box for a Kodi/Plex/Jellyfin viewer with the good GPU and decent single core performance, or a TV emulation box with network attached roms. I think it's good to have options, as the Pi struggles with some of this stuff sometimes.

[@predabot__6778]

Y'know... this is an area where I think VIA should try and make a come-back: really small, efficient x86 cores, for the SBC-market. They used to have the most efficient cores for a little while there - around 2004-2007 if I recall correctly. I'd also love to see what a truly compact Zen5C -only AMD-SoC could do in this form factor - on laptop they can come close to ARM-chips in power-efficiency, so perhaps they can get close in an even more constrained form-factor?

[@88tx]

M.F. is doing A/B testing with his thumbnail

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

gotto play the game. I am surprised YT actually showed me the Different thumbnails. only reason I clicked to watch was because it was a holiday today and not because of the thumbnail. so I am not sure if the A/B test will be conclusive.

[@andresmithe298]

It's worth noting that the memory channel limition is with the N100 itself. Personally I'm happy with it as a compromise in most situations I'd want to use it. It is unfortunate that it's hard to get N100 boards that are both DDR5 and made by a manufacturer you've heard of before. I could either get an ASRock board that only supports DDR4 or an AliExpress board you need to hack C States into.

[@jierenzheng7670]

I am actually interested in Intel's new e-cores skymont to make it over to the SBC market instead. The N100 is interesting, I see mini laptops/mini pcs with it. I even have one in a 16" laptop for simple youtube/office stuff and given it to a relative. So excited for x86 (maybe it could work as a retro handheld too!)

[@jeremybarber2837]

I now want to make a small NAS out of this… not that I have a serious need, it just seems like a good use case if you can chill it.

[@Zoyx]

I have 7-inch netbook with an n100 chip in it. That seems to be the appropriate device for this type of chip.

[@CanoTheVolcano]

Been building a retropie machine inside a gamecube chassis since the pi 5 can just about run dolphin, and the gamecube is my boyfriend's favorite console. Very tempted to test this out since integrated graphics on x86 are hugely farther ahead than ARM

[@foldionepapyrus3441]

I'd never expect a universal Pi-Killer, simply as the raspberry folks have created a really great community and continue to put in quality support even for very old products... Disappointed this implementation is quite so disappointing, though on the thermal side I am not surprised at all it was toasty, just very disapointed the available case is so lacklusture - give it decent cooling and this should be a 'pi killer' for some folks needs, on paper at least, as it does actually have to work...

[@carlhannes]

I would like this inside the Fractal Baby North chassis and then I want 4 of them in a LAN-party setup with Red Alert 2 and C&C Generals

[@wskinnyodden]

NanoPC-T6, Rockchip 3588, 2xHDMI out 1xHDMI in, NVME, M.2 E Key for wifi/bt, MiniPCI for 3G/4G Modem (which has been removed on newer models which pissed me off, thankfully I still have the original model though the change screwed my planning completely as I needed that second MiniPCIe for additional wireless connectivity) This kicks butt, have it working as both access point and WiFi Client (etc etc)

[@Overlordjdl]

I’d love to see a revamp of this with a 3rd party cooling solution.

[@xuldevelopers]

Libre Computers advised against putting too much in too small factor? Is that the company that designed a brick and dared to call it a mobile phone? Makes total sense now.

[@tdevosodense]

Jeff - there should be board that is dobble-pi-size - as a standard size for sbc's - so the industry do to sizes - standard pi and dobble-pi Then there will be space for all the stuff 👍🇩🇰

[@JeffGeerling]

There is Pico ITX, but it's not used that widely :(

[@voHikky]

This actually looks exciting, like a potential Pi killer for x86 workloads. The mentioned issues don't seem unfixible.

[@pWAVE86]

Maybe important to mention in the comparison that the LattePanda Mu cost 3x (!) the Radxa X4. So you get a 3 node (proxmox HA) cluster for the price of a single SBC ...

[@eliotcole]

This is going to be my music server, as it's got that lovely 2.5gbe ... hopefully I'll bundle a load more on it, too ... but ... yeah.

[@Sithhy]

I know this video features a N100 CPU already but I would love to see a video where you test out the Asrock N100M which features the N100 but on an mATX mobo & has an PCIe x16 (but actually x2) slot, I think it would be a neat mini PC instead of using the potentially dangerous Chinese mini PC's

[@MyersJ2Original]

at around 3"50- you mentioned not enough room on the board for dual channel memory support. The n100/n300 family is single channel at any rate. It CAN be DDR4 or DDR5 basd though.

[@JeffGeerling]

True, I misread the specs; it's 32-bit instead of 64-bit wide with single channel. The Mu does 64-bit access

[@dr.benjaminbird7631]

The RP2040 based GPIO does have some interesting application - Robotics real time control is much easier to do with a microcontroller than it is to do with a computer. I've designed and used many HAT's with the RP2040 doing exactly this, interfacing to a pi via USB or serial on the GPIO header. for that application, this removes the need for a relatively complex and time consuming design / production step! Then again you'd still need motor drivers and power regulation circuitry so maybe not... but you would atleast free up board space. I wonder how much more thermal head room they could have got if they'd got rid of the RP2040 and binned off the GPIO all together?

[@shivanSpS]

One of the cool things about this board it is it the only N100 board that has x4 PCIE lanes avalible somewhere... not really.. ive seem matx and itx boards with the N100 that dont do this. The M.2 slot on the X4 is x4 3.0, and this is the minimum to get a playable experience out of a dgpu, unfortunately we dont have many options in low power dgpus, but you should be able to connect a RX6400 or a ARC A310 to it.

[@RomansFiveDotEight]

IMHO, the point of an SBC isn't just the form factor. It is explicitly having an ARM board. That's less novel these days but in the early days, it was the "Smartphone without a screen that I can run any code I want on" that we all wanted. Giving up power efficiency, low thermals, and low overall power consumption don't seem worth it. SBC size, on its own, solves very few problems. And where that IS important; power and heat tend to be extremely important. So an x86 SBC just seems like a solution in search of a problem. If x86 is desired, a miniPC seems to be the way to go.

[@Eldejot]

I still wonder how much of the cost of production for that N100 silicon is reflected in its price to OEMs. The chip looks to be absurdly large.

[@loginregional]

Very happy with my N100M. Boots to Linux Mint deskop in 27 seconds from button press. Going to add more fannage and 4x HDMI input to go with the installed 4x NVME on the x16 pcie. CPU temp RFN sez 71C. There's an undocumented UART1 on the board. The ol' HP is getting relegated to the floor. Yeah, I put it in a TT V21 cube. Glass window looks awesome with the blinkenlights inside.

[@Chrissi33004]

I have a tiny PC with an N100 and the stock China-cooler was too loud for me what I did was buy a tiny CPU cooler for the Raspberry Pi 4 and model a mount for the tiny pc. And surprisingly the cooler managed to cool the N100 with a 15-20W load to around 75C They don’t just look like real CPU coolers, they work like one too

[@leggysoft]

Hi Jeff, Seen the asrock jupiter X600? Fits a ryzen 7600, that's a lot of computer power in 1 inch. I bought the bigger ITX deskmeet unit because I can put a 40GBE card in it haha 5GBps dual SSD home NAS.

[@ilkoderez601]

Can you please tell us where you got that T-shirt? I love it!

[@successfulrepresentative6400]

Was this a review unit or an item you purchased?

[@ericjarvie]

I don't have an X4 to hand, but i think it's a good idea to first fit the fan connector outboard of the heatsink and then rotate the board into its position on the heatsink housing for attachment. Attaching the cable this way should provide more than enough cable for attachment and avoid fumbling with taught wires aswell overly stretching the connector wires...So connect the fan first rotate.. and then attach the board..Please let me know if you found this approach easier?

[@cx3268]

Have Pi CM4 & 3b+ and on both use the GPIO for I2C. These are in daily use.

[@RansbyJohan]

The best Pi killer is the Apple M1 chip - My Raspberry Pi 4 use 4-5w running Home Assistant, my Macbook Air m1 use 2w with an ethernet adapter, 1w with wifi and no dongles :)

[@JeffGeerling]

I really _really_ hope the new Mac mini design is almost SBC-sized. I'll rip that right out of its shell and rack mount it!

[@RansbyJohan]

@@JeffGeerling I'm really currius to know if it can do 1w dle with it's built in ethernet port, please let me know if you try it! (I'm also cheating using ethernet Zigbee hub, so I don't mess with Mac's power states, and it's also easier with UTM pass through/Aka. no passthrough) Btw. love what you do!

[@Nobe_Oddy]

YEEEAAAAA not bad for $60.... would be a great NAS board, and the GPIO makes it super easy to have a small screen on the front of it for stats or basically anything you could want... as long as your NAS software plays nice..... - I would LOVE to see something like that, Jeff .... ~=-_-=~

[@Voxelstice]

basically a smaller 2011 mac mini (that particular mac mini is the one i have, and its cpu likes to idle around 60, it also reaches 100 in some cases!)

[@russ18uk]

This could be an awesome board. 2.5gbit ethernet is useful. That may be enough to shift some units. I'd possibly have picked it over a refurb Kabylake Dell slim desktop for OMV usage if it existed when I was looking

[@yusuf9356]

The problems are only related to the box. But you did not compare the sbcs completely. You just made some bad comments about the box and said that the card was not enough. It is a very good card for its price and Much better than the arm based sbcs produced so far.

[@JeffGeerling]

Check the linked GitHub issue for a lot more test data. I didn't dive deeply into all of that-but it backs up my claims that this board is just a little too small to be an optimal N100 mini PC (if that's what you're after) and a little too clunky to be a Pi/Arm SBC replacement for efficiency + GPIO access (if that's what you're after). Plus it's straight up missing things like DSI/CSI camera lanes for vision/camera/display kiosk applications, though the iGPU can do more with standard HDMI... it's a lot of tradeoffs to cram an Intel SoC in a board this small. Some good, some annoying.