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I like the sound of the Pine64 ROCK64 one, with the 4k HDMI, USB3 port and 1Gbps ethernet, does anyone have that board, I'm curious how the software support is?

rcarmo 9y ago
Same here. I’ve been thinking of setting up a fanless, low power personal workstation that is little more than an X and RDP client driving a 43” 4K monitor, and I’m curious to know if the 4K display is at least 60Hz and if it can run Remmina and Firefox at a useful clip.
tmikaeld 9y ago
That's definitely the most beefy Single Board computer I've seen to date, especially with 4GB of RAM, should be able to run a browser at a reasonable performance. Anyone know of a FAST eMMC card?
- itdaniher 9y ago
  eMMC via the ZIF connector on the Rock64 is a bit of a pain to get setup, involving a serial console and uboot commands, but I see better than 20MBps on an A1 class uSD. I use a USB3 SSD for my /home, it's even faster.
polartx 9y ago
As one of the suckers that preordered the 4gb version, I'd strongly caution against getting one. I've tried every OS released for it, and they're all rife with bugs producing kernel panics aplenty. This makes running the unit as headless unfeasible. I drawer'd it and replaced it with a tried-and-true Odroid c-2. Btw if you're looking at SMBs, check out dietpi.com, its well maintained and brings a world of functionality to SMBs
- anfractuosity 9y ago
  Thanks a lot for your reply! This is exactly the kind of thing I was worried about and is one of the reasons I do like the RPis I have so much which seem to have very decent OS support.
itdaniher 9y ago
I have had a decent experience with the 4GB ROCK64. Armbian provides a reproducible build that I've found to be perfectly stable in practice, and while I have yet to try booting the image, I was able to build the 4.4.x kernel version I'm running, on the device at that. There's mainline kernel support in 4.14, but I'm unclear as to whether it supports USB3, which, behind the price point and the 4GB of RAM, is the main draw. I only run the device headless, so I can't speak to the behavior or interactions associated with the graphics engine.

rcarmo 9y ago

Same here. I’ve been thinking of setting up a fanless, low power personal workstation that is little more than an X and RDP client driving a 43” 4K monitor, and I’m curious to know if the 4K display is at least 60Hz and if it can run Remmina and Firefox at a useful clip.

tmikaeld 9y ago

That's definitely the most beefy Single Board computer I've seen to date, especially with 4GB of RAM, should be able to run a browser at a reasonable performance. Anyone know of a FAST eMMC card?

itdaniher 9y ago
eMMC via the ZIF connector on the Rock64 is a bit of a pain to get setup, involving a serial console and uboot commands, but I see better than 20MBps on an A1 class uSD. I use a USB3 SSD for my /home, it's even faster.

polartx 9y ago

As one of the suckers that preordered the 4gb version, I'd strongly caution against getting one. I've tried every OS released for it, and they're all rife with bugs producing kernel panics aplenty. This makes running the unit as headless unfeasible. I drawer'd it and replaced it with a tried-and-true Odroid c-2. Btw if you're looking at SMBs, check out dietpi.com, its well maintained and brings a world of functionality to SMBs

anfractuosity 9y ago
Thanks a lot for your reply! This is exactly the kind of thing I was worried about and is one of the reasons I do like the RPis I have so much which seem to have very decent OS support.

itdaniher 9y ago

I have had a decent experience with the 4GB ROCK64. Armbian provides a reproducible build that I've found to be perfectly stable in practice, and while I have yet to try booting the image, I was able to build the 4.4.x kernel version I'm running, on the device at that. There's mainline kernel support in 4.14, but I'm unclear as to whether it supports USB3, which, behind the price point and the 4GB of RAM, is the main draw. I only run the device headless, so I can't speak to the behavior or interactions associated with the graphics engine.