This Arm Based SBC Can Run Steam Games! PC Games & EMUs On The Rock Pi 5

[@ETAPRIME]

Pretty awesome to see this working, what older games should I try out?

[@mikeclark4480]

Would love to see some gog stuff running on this

[@keeganbowers4949]

Crisis obviously

[@Alejandrodaniel1818]

between rock pi 5 vs oragen pi 5 which would be better

[@GustavoMsTrashCan]

@@Alejandrodaniel1818 As of now, rock pi 5 is almost two times more expensive compared to the orange pi 5 while delivering the same performance.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Try the PS2 version of Psychonauts through a PS2 emulator.

[@alx8439]

Dev guys behind box86 and box64 deserve a huge respect and donations for their job

[@seguramlk]

YES

[@microlinux]

Well, it's just ptitseb for 99% of the code haha

[@merthyr1831]

Agreed. They're doing something that only Apple was able to do until now. Windows has its own ARM translation layer but it works/worked horribly, yet these volunteers are making software that is giving ARM SBCs even more versatility as desktop systems.

[@mystechry]

This is for the most part a single man effort by a man known as ptitSeb. He is well known in the OpenPandora community, as this all started with him porting hundreds of open and closed source games to that wonderful little system. As he ran out of open source games he started with this project to make even more games playable on arm platforms.

[@alx8439]

@@mystechry that guy deserves an Oscar

[@btarg1]

Another step closer to ARM gaming handhelds!!

[@HellsPerfectSpawn]

?? Which architecture do you think powers the switch and vita.

[@neliaironwood7573]

@@HellsPerfectSpawn He means something like the Steam Deck but on ARM, not those two consoles.

[@crawkaw5227]

Higher end mobile phone already do that, but with so little support is quite difficult to get into it, the power is there just need more dedicated Devs working on it and maybe one day we will have true all in one device.

[@tristan6509]

It already exists, It's called the nintendo switch The switch is quite literally an nvidia shield android tablet with different packaging.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Stereo sound is amazing, even on headphones. I thought for a second that sound was coming from my speakers until I pulled an ear out. Was worried I would disturb someone, but nope.

[@dalfvideos]

If you had shown me this a couple years ago I would have thought this was a trick-- this kind of performance is insane! Really excited to see what the future brings. As this technology evolves imagine what it'll mean to devices like a potential steam deck 2, for example -- you could have much bigger battery life for starters.

[@gambyt5952]

I love stuff like this. Flag ship PCs haven’t really interested me the last couple years. Insane prices and insane tdps ruin the magic.

[@MegaManNeo]

I wouldn't call ~210€ exactly cheap either but then again, getting a used x86 machine of around that price point probably takes more space and wastes more energy.

[@gambyt5952]

@@MegaManNeo Nah but it’s cheaper than most gpus right now. Also yeah I’m really big on things being energy efficient,cool,and quiet. I think I’m just getting old though haha. I’d rather have a solid gaming experience on lower settings at a lower resolution on say a 75w 1660 super than I would spending thousands on a 4090 with a 300w tdp that’s going to turn my room into a tropical country mid July.

[@CharlieConcepts-pw9ur]

@@gambyt5952 True, and while we all wish it was cheaper than 210 pounds. By the time you are done upgrading an SFF used pc to turn it into a gaming computer you'll end up approached at least 300 dollars american any ways. Where I live, the cheapest you can get an 6th or 7th gen I-5 SFF PC is 100 dollars. You can usually pick them up from local universities surplus and salvage programs. Then you still need to add an SSD. Since they are sold without SSD's. You can get an 1 tb SSD right now for 55 dollars. That puts you at around 160 dollars so far. With modern games you need at least 32 gb of ram. That'll cost you 80 dollars. So now you are at 240 dollars. You don't need to buy an OS, and these older computers can't run windows 11 any ways. So at least Ubuntu, pop os, and manjaro are free. But you still need to buy an graphics card. And if you want to buy an new graphics card. Then the RX 6400 low profile will cost you 150. End result is that building an basic small form factor gaming PC will cost you 400 dollars american after taxes. Or in terms of pounds thats around 330 pounds sterling. Which is 120 pounds more expensive than the Rock 5.

[@dieglhix]

tdp of 4090 is 280w only with proper powerlimit only 4% perf loss

[@merthyr1831]

would recommend testing the harder (city) tracks for Gran Turismo 4. Sadly most systems that can GT4 great fall apart in the slower tracks due to poor optimisation and heavy screenspace effects. Some great work by open source devs (once again!) on getting some amazing performance on x86, something that highly paid Windows-on-ARM engineers would kill for! I've also seen other videos claiming that the Rockchip SoCs are even faster than their real life examples due to worse drivers compared to their equivalent Qualcomm competitors (the SD850 is actually slower than this chip on paper, for example!) so hopefully a lot of optimising coming their way!

[@IngwiePhoenix_nb]

Source Engine -> DirectX 9/10 -> Wine (-> OpenGL) -> box86/box64 The technical overhead of the translation layers is insane, and yet, watching those games run /at all/ is a marvel. I am so, so impressed by this chip! :D It is amazing and I can't wait to see future iterations of this!

[@sametayaz4891]

box86 devs are the best for sure.

[@alpzepta]

Box86/64 = I can finally play Unreal Tournament 2004 on an ARM pc now

[@shephusted2714]

nvme speeds differ on various rockpi models - something to watch out for - new sbc should be on the way soonish - another thing to note - the combo of more cores,fast nvme and 2.5gbe and wifi7 will make a difference

[@mingdug1824]

Imagine if someone were to make a handheld outta this, that'd be sick

[@y4lnux]

There is a box64 tutorial on Microlinux channel, a little to techie, but really good tutorial

[@labman472011]

Taki Udon just did a video about steam games on arm processors. I wonder what happened recently to spark this idea across creators

[@thegreeneyej]

Great video, You should let people know the difference between this chip and the “S” variant, Found on the Orange Pi so they know what to look out for… they are not the same chip! Ones a value chip, and the other is geared for performance. It would of been “fun” to know the temps before and after a good gaming session. (How that case worked, or not.). 🙏

[@palaves245]

but the only thing that changes is not that the without 's' has less usb 3.0 input and ssd nvme x1 with less speed support than with the without 's'?

[@eduardor2k]

@@palaves245 yes, the changes are not that significant, the cpu and gpu are the same

[@r0galik]

Their performance in games should be identical.

[@chilledbroccoli899]

Shout out to DarkevilPT representing Portugal

[@darkevilpt5306]

Simmmmm!

[@skyline8121]

Hi ETA, outstanding intel about ARM gaming 🥳🥳🥳, how about an active cooling for that Soc??? Just how it did, exceeded my expectations in such early state but just wondering how far can go with a good cooling 😎

[@Kw1161]

Thanks for the outstanding video and information. I always like it when you do GTA5! Have a nice week.

[@GraphicalRanger]

At this rate, Arm based Tablets and Handhelds will be Steam Decks / Desktops in a couple of years... Spooky!

[@Anonymous______________]

It's not the hardware that's innovative, it's the software. Wine + DXVK = Say goodbye to the spyware formally known as Windows.

[@GustavoMsTrashCan]

...unless you want to play a competitive game that demands Windows due to anticheat incompatibility on Linux. That, and mouse smoothing (And yes, I'm aware it is possible to "turn it off" but it seems that it doesn't "turn off at all".)

[@josephgospa4031]

Wrong dude, it's the software that still needs to catch up with RK3588 hardware to fully benefit of such powerful ARM64 SoC. Software eventually will do.

[@GustavoMsTrashCan]

@@josephgospa4031 Hardware compatibility =/= software compatibility. Even so, the incompatibilities are there (since years ago, mind you) and it won't (magically) change now.

[@Anonymous______________]

​@@GustavoMsTrashCan lol, true but this really only affects games written in UE5 and uses EAC.

[@mikhail4519]

I need a PC that is passively-cooled, small, has at least 2 m2 slots, can run Wow Classic(old graphics) and Warcraft 3(due to being old it completely destroys PCs with bad single-thread performance), Intellij IDEa and run code smoothly. It's good to see that with each passing day it's getting closer and closer. I will sell my desktop when SBC I described will be available.

[@jmtp87q]

Will you add a segment testing gamepass and gforcenow performance? Give us your impression of optimization and networking capabilities of the devices.

[@vogonp4287]

This single board computer runs games better than my old desktop.

[@Aplysia]

"It's pronounced Rə-DAK-suh, if I say it is! Fight me. " -- ETA Prime probably

[@mandasantoso]

Gasp... It's true! ARM is the future!

[@mforce2]

I was wondering about the temps. Is the passive cooling good enough for this ? Maybe some stress testing would be interesting. The Orange Pi 5 has a heatsink with a small fan available for it.

[@MrGEOGames]

With the fan you can sustain a higher cpu clock for a longer period of time = consistent fps

[@AsadRehman1993]

Congratulations on 1 million

[@NOPerative]

Progress baby! Good stuff.

[@Sithhy]

2:01 - I like the guys' name - MonkaBlyat

[@SerjStar]

How do we convert our smartphones to this I can't wait to run other than Android on my phone so badly

[@acwbit2368]

Steam deck lol

[@ca9inec0mic58]

@@acwbit2368 read their comment again

[@ca9inec0mic58]

you shouldnt be waiting too long actually, I believe the Turnip drivers would allow us to play PC games on Android

[@shlokshah5379]

Converting your smartphone to this is a straight up down grade.

[@csolisr]

I'm currently trying to use Termux to run Linux (and Steam) over Android.

[@allthings3d]

Great review as always. It would be interesting to test this on the cheaper RK3588s variants. Also there is a ARM64 based system that runs (not well) Steam from a small company called Apple. :) Sadly it there is not native version of the Steam app, but ti would be interesting to try my version of L4D on it.

[@nightninja879]

hey can you set this up with a rca cable? in the way that the raspberry pi 4 can do ? cause this looks awesome and i like to do a retro gaming setup :)

[@hassosigbjoernson5738]

Couldn't find a price for it. The Rock Pi 4B costs at least 115 € in my country which should make this a bit more expensive. The case comes on top. For 160 bucks I get a "full" Ryzen 2000 mini PC which definitely can run Windows apps. So in terms of usability and costs it does not make a lot of sense for me.

[@HappyTribble]

From one of the links ETA provided, to the USA it's about 170$ for just the SBC, no case or extras. I agree, neat idea but butts up against "real" PC systems in terms of price.

[@darkevilpt5306]

The price varys on the ram size. I think the cheapest of them all is the orange pi 5 check their prices.

[@HungarianDerrickRose]

Just wanted to reply something like this - simply not worth the price. And you have not even considered the price of the SSD and a capable power supply. Edit - also for this kind of money IMO the Xbox Series S is the best viable option for the target audience. You have Retroarch there which covers a lot of systems and also very good standalone PS2 and Gamecube/Wii emulators.

[@darkevilpt5306]

@@HungarianDerrickRose lol its a fortune a power supply? Some images only need a microSD. Do better research. Theres the same chip board being sold cheaper if that causes u much stress. Edit: sure any intel pc or console will do better if hard gaming is what you're looking for and ignoring the possibility of cloud gaming.

[@HungarianDerrickRose]

@@darkevilpt5306 What better research? I just compared the theoretical price of _this_ board (plus case, a fast SD card for your sake, and a power supply, i checked the prices on Ameridroid) and you will spend cca. USD 200 + shipping on a board that is far less capable than a 4th gen Core i5 based tiny PC or an XSS. IMO it is not wort that price - cool toy but (for me) way overpriced. FYI: cloud gaming on the Xbox is a thing.

[@runemastafro]

Love the video. Whats the best way to cool something like this?

[@numberoneappgames]

I would love to see how the N64 runs on it. But at the end of the day can it run on windows?

[@MrGEOGames]

Yes the chip can run windows on arm

[@javiergonzalezcalvo1544]

Eta place for buy the case for the rock !? Thanks !!!

[@Szabbyhun]

We really need to see one of these rk3588s sbc's as a handheld. I wonder which one would be the best for a handheld device.

[@crawkaw5227]

Seeing the raw power of Snapdragon chips I keep wondering when will we see something like with with SD chips. Saw old video how an Sd845(55) ran crysis 3 at 30fps with stutter because of memory, just thinking how would 8th gen would perform is nuts.

[@Sp3cialk304]

Will the ADT Link egpu adapter work on these arm based boards? And if so would you be able to get decent performance.

[@jayp_2023]

Are there any handhelds using this chip? I'd love a Steam Deck lite

[@Jaroartx]

you read my mind this could be with the support of valve another great entry device the benefits are there so who knows

[@cesarvarela5438]

I wonder how it would run on an orange pi 5

[@nat2k7id]

Any comparison between Rock 5B and Orange Pi 5 plus? Since the design so much similar

[@DesocupadoXtremo]

Taki looking at armbian: am i a joke to you?

[@jierenzheng7670]

Would be so cool if it fits into a PSP or PS Vita body and we got a fun handheld

[@phoenixrising4995]

Hopefully the next Steamdeck is ARM based. At least then the battery life will be a god.

[@FroggyTWrite]

will that os image work on 3588s boards?

[@josephgospa4031]

It will not. A compatible image for a specific RK3588s board needs to be built.

[@seguramlk]

Go Linux, Go Go 🐧

[@statixbolt]

Open big screen mode on this in a follow up video!

[@eliasnunes270]

hello could you bring a video of the HX99G with EGPU please. I'm from Brazil and I really like your channel.

[@USBEN.]

Damn this is fun stuff

[@ahkawada]

WoW... IRPF 2023 at 4:35...

[@joehood732]

It's cool what it is capable of but a Mele 3Q does full windows, Batocera, and Linux with a smaller footprint. I know the architecture is different but for price, tdp and specs Mele is better.

[@AlEnzi]

Can you do OPi 5 ?

[@yingbxua6240]

Note: such rubber bands on nvme SSD will degrade after 3-7 months of SSD heating up and just stop functioning... Suggest to use either zip ties or proper heatsink attachment

[@martinbone]

Excellent video. Anyone know if the Afterburner image can be modified to work on the Orange Pi 5?

[@MrGEOGames]

Would also interest me! Good question

[@MegaManNeo]

I already have waaaay too many computers at hand, let it be x86 or ARM to justify another just now. However, I love seeing this because this is something not supposed to work like that, running x86_64 code on Aarch64.

[@phillyphillypa]

can you please review the Z Fold 4 if it book for gaming and is it worth the cost ?

[@teutonictovarish9626]

i wonder how it would handle games streamed to it like through steamlink

[@Sithhy]

Most likely even better

[@zevapini6485]

When streaming to this device it barely needs to do anything. The only bottleneck would be the video output. Anything below 4k 60fps should run just fine - as far as your streaming PC can run it.

[@ca9inec0mic58]

thats not even question, I doubt even Raspberry Pi has any problems with it

[@TheQBall1977]

I stream a cloud PC through my RPi4 and have done since release. Easy to setup Moonlight-QT works beautifully so this should have no trouble.

[@r0galik]

ETA prime just doing some search engine optimization and now everyone thinks this is called "Rock Pi 5"

[@moocow1452]

How long do you think until Valve announces an official ARM build and we get a Steam Deck lite?

[@GustavoMsTrashCan]

Extremely unlikely: right now Very unlikely: next December Very likely: In 3 years or so

[@marcello4258]

As long as there is no thermal related Downclocking there is no reason to use a fan. It just draws even more power costs money and annoys

[@MrGEOGames]

It does throttle if you are not using the fan. With the fan i can sustain a higher cpu clock for a longer period of time

[@Blyyyth]

This is great but what about using this in a desktop environment, how about a budget media center, or playing youtube beyond HD videos? Can it play 1080p? Not everything needs to be a gaming device.

[@PiMania]

This image is also a GREAT desktop image with smooth KZbin playback etc Applying updates etc will however break it right now.

[@josephl3602]

Do you have the link for the rock5 sbc? I found a few, but I don't know the sites, so I'm a bit worried about using them without verification of their safety.

[@benjaminw4058]

Check out OKdo, has the sbc and a bunch of useful tools for getting started.

[@samh5886]

Interesting to watch and probably fun to mess around with but probably impractical for the average person as even those cheap last gen Intel atom mini PC or newer ones like the n100 you reviewed outperform this at similar or even cheaper cost. Older 2XXX/3XXX ryzen mini PC can be had for not much more as well.

[@gzaos]

Cool, but I've had enough of arm base SBC since raspberry 3 then 4 to know that these are ultra limited and will always be for gaming. I don't bother anymore.

[@PiManiac]

Btw Suggest you don't do any O/S updates.

[@Beryesa.]

Now wait until we get DXVK and other Vulkan stuff running, wow

[@quisqueyanguy120]

This is amazing.

[@ionamygdalon2263]

Well done 👍

[@AnotherCoyote]

I need to know... can it run '7 Days to Die' on any level of settings?

[@GhostRyderFPV]

Can I have a link to the hardware? I'd hate to miss out on giving you an affiliate hit

[@HungarianDerrickRose]

You really can't, because it does not seem to be available anywhere.

[@JasonMeeks79]

Could we get a 2023 version of old pcs that can run windows 98 on a budget ?

[@mitduschzentrale]

Need a proper Android Image incl. Screen Rotation for one of the 3588s !

[@xaviewgamer]

Cool!

[@turbolenza35]

soon, Intel, Windows and all X86 bullcraps will be gone. In the future, we'll use ARM desktop PCs, with SteamOS.

[@Twitch_Moderator]

Wow!!! Rock made a Pi 5 before Raspberry? I was waiting for the Pi 5 to hopefully build an emulation Station that is flawless at N64 emulation at full speed. The Pi 4 sort of works. It runs a fair bit of games. But not all the AAA titles.

[@lap87]

Could this OS be flashed and used on an Orange Pi 5 ?

[@josephgospa4031]

Nope.

[@hunterivey]

I wonder how Skyrim will run on this

[@gtijason7853]

Why do we never see videos using the LEG chips ?

[@E54OW]

probably a dumb question, but with this can you use geforce now?

[@GustavoMsTrashCan]

Even a pi zero works with geforcenow, so yep.

[@E54OW]

@@GustavoMsTrashCan does it? my pi 4 had some issues didnt work at all

[@GustavoMsTrashCan]

@@E54OW You have to fiddle with some stuff in order to make it work (zram, web browser tweaking, etc) -- it does not "just werk".

[@zicoprmday]

I use hg680p with armbian, very intersting use this sbc

[@Neopulse00]

Can this run both an eMMC and and M.2 SSD at the same time? Or does one take the bandwidth of another.

[@g.s.3389]

can you try to install home assistant on these sbc boards to find a good rpi4 alternative?

[@r0galik]

There's no reason a home assistant installation wouldn't work (I only tried unsupported installations from dietpi, which exists for the Rock5)

[@piercewiederecht5135]

Does this work on an Orange Pi 5?

[@TheQBall1977]

I wanted to know the same thing. Same GPU and CPU. Might burn to MicroSD and see if it boots!

[@piercewiederecht5135]

@@TheQBall1977 I mean it’s basically the same machine altogether

[@TheQBall1977]

It did not boot.

[@danielflipse7148]

I am a bit confused why Vulkan-backend is mentioned multiple times. This is a linux build and as far as I know Vulkan is supported only on Android for this board?

[@stonededge]

Yeah, that’s true. You can select the Vulkan backend in PS2 but it doesn’t exist on Linux for the RK3588s yet - video is wrong.

[@petehall1900]

Arm tablet with steam games?

[@reedtkfilms7077]

try the orange pi 5

[@Tarbard]

Feels like witchcraft.

[@kursk8]

Looking at getting an sbc to run ultima online!

[@shlokshah5379]

How about lower end indie games? And can we run Java games this way?

[@MrGEOGames]

Indie games run great. As linux supports the java runtime you can also run java games yes

[@Milan5605]

and Orange pi 5 with 16 gb ram?

[@MrGEOGames]

Will have to try it out (i have one myself) but it should work i guess? Because its the same chip used in both

[@HazyJ28]

2030 should see Xbox 360 Level games for Android, but in 4k.

[@sethterran2492]

Elite Dangerous?

[@steviedsretro]

well.. interesting but by the time you buy the board, power, case, fan/heatsink -- now over $200.. would rather put towards a steamdeck.

[@COACTUSFECI75]

where can i buy it and what cost it ...cant find some

[@rahul875]

ARM chip is way better for Handheld battery operated devices

[@quietyoutuber]

I been trying to get my hands on a pi4 to upgrade my arcade cabinet. But as you know they don’t exist on market. So Can this board run retro pi?

[@PiMania]

I have it running JELOS pretty nicely doing all my Pi4 can + some PS2, GC, Wii

[@MrGEOGames]

Yes you can get a orange pi 5 for 120-140$ which is far more capable then the pi4

[@foxh8er]

How does this compare to equivalently priced Celeron small PCs?

[@clochard4074]

A Celeron should outperform the arm board in steam gaming because it would run games natively. But I'm not sure you can get a whole Celeron system for this price.

[@HungarianDerrickRose]

@@clochard4074 you can get a second hand tiny PC running a 4th gen Core i5 for less than the total price of this (something line a Lenovo M93p tiny). Also as I stated here in another comment: if you can spend this kind of money on an emulation/gaming system, you should really aim for the Xbox Series S (although the Xbox can't run Steam games).

[@lucusdownto]

So. PSA; the rock5b+ sounds like a pretty big update right? lpddr4/4x to lpddr5 and bifurvated m.keys, with wifi actually on the board. WELL turns out that lpddr4/4x ran at 4224MT/s And 5 runs at 54 or 5500 so sounds obviously better right? well no. lpddr4/4x has a 64 bit bus vs lpddr5 having dual 16 bit busses but is said as 32 bit. so when doing "the math" theres about 30% less data transferred per length of time. It kept emphasizing efficiency and all this other ..... and all i could think is less data per unit of time equals worse. idk whythese SBC makers do this, sorta like orange pi 5 pro and pro max, each one loses something good. pro is the s variant so why even have nvme when you can just get the plus, its lpddr5 is only 1 module vs all other 3588 having 2. & lebun cat has been making quality 55x85 mm rk3588 boards for a while. i do wish that ANYBODY would notice the RADXA NIO 12L. Im also extremely curious how Opi launched a cm5 day one of radxa's. BTW because I loved thee psp im making a cm3 (radxa) cm4 (orange pi and everyone else whho used rk3566 like SOquartz) cm4 raspberry pi, and cmRV being the mars milkv as a module. i had been wishing for alt carriers for cm3588+ but ram is 2133 and 2400 its strange

[@mattymilazzo2741]

First! Love your content! Thanks for posting so consistently, and interesting stuff!

[@BleakBeek]

I gotta ask, this OS is just some distro of Ubuntu right? So wouldn't this work with a hacked switch?

[@MrGEOGames]

The tegra x1 chip found on the chip is very low performance compared to the sbc you see here. The games would run with 10fps.

[@MrGEOGames]

That being said the switch does run ubuntu or android images yes!

[@fatso0]

Where I can buy this?