7 ms·

Radxa Rock 5 ITX: 8-Core ARM Mini ITX Board with LPDDR5 RAM

43 points by sthlmb 2y ago

favorited 2y ago
I'm a bit confused by the wording on PoE: > If you choose to power via PoE you can expect to get 25W of output. Can you power this device via PoE ("choose to power via PoE"), or can this SBC power other devices over PoE ("expect to get 25W of output")? I clicked through some other reviews, but didn't see it addressed.
- jandrese 2y ago
  The article says there are three ways to power it. The ATX power supply connector, a DC barrel jack, and some third way not specified. It does have a USB3 port so that might be it, or it could be PoE. Very unclear from the couple of articles.
- sthlmb 2y ago
  Ah, you power this device via PoE and it can then draw up to 25W from a PoE switch feeding it. You cannot power another device via PoE with the ROCK 5 ITX as the source
- maicro 2y ago
  Not sure if this was added or edited later, but the linked article clarifies: ROCK 5 ITX Power over Ethernet (PoE) Here we can see that the PoE module is not soldered in and connects using 8 pins which is quite nice. If you choose to power the ROCK 5 ITX via a PoE switch (the ROCK 5 ITX doesn’t provide PoE power to another device) you can expect to get 25W of power budget for the system itself and any peripherals/devices you plan to power from the boards connectors. (my summary of that quoted section:) So, you can power the board with PoE, which will give the board and any connected devices 25W of power budget. Without looking at the specs of the CPU/GPU, that's probably enough to run at least one m.2 drive and a couple USB peripherals?
rbanffy 2y ago
It's not fast, but at least it's cool.
amiga-workbench 2y ago
When these ARM boards start coming with UEFI and I don't need to hunt around for blessed OS images with patched kernels I'll be a lot more interested, until then I've got to stick with x86 to maintain my sanity.
- robotnikman 2y ago
  Same thing I'm thinking as well when it comes to ARM PC's, being restricted to a specifically patched distro is very limiting.
  - PlutoIsAPlanet 2y ago
    It's also bad for the planet as it artificially restricts the lifetime in which a board can be used.
    - robotnikman 2y ago
      This as well. In comparison, you can repurpose any old x86 PC rather easily.
- drewg123 2y ago
  How do we know it doesn't? I didn't see any info in the linked page about the system firmware, though I could easily have missed it.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  UEFI is not enough if you don't have all the drivers in the OS image, especially the GPU drivers. Last year I bought a cheap Windows Qualcomm 8xx ARM tablet on sale and it was very nice for the money but I returned it when none of the ARM Linux ISOs I found online could boot on it despite the tablet having UEFI support, because Qualcomm. Booting Linux distros out of the box is such a non-issue on X86 that we take it for granted when on ARM it's just a pipe dream. If the ARM PC future is all proprietary custom firmware blobs that need to patched for each SoC/motherboard for Linux to boot, then you can keep them, I'll stick to X86 thank you very much.
jandrese 2y ago
Anybody have a clue what the price point will be? This board seems pretty neat as a SFF PC replacement, but not so much if it costs $500 or more.
rcarmo 2y ago
I've been looking at these kinds of boards as well: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/02/10/2000 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/02/10/2000 So far, mostly the same results, although I do have another with much more RAM that I'm still writing a draft on.
andrewstuart 2y ago
It's always the software that's the missing element. I prefer low end Intel compatible boards because the software just works. I spent too many hours with weird arm devices trying to get them to do basic stuff that is taken for granted on Intel, such as booting up.
drewg123 2y ago
Too bad it doesn't have PCIe slots. It could be interesting as a low-end 10Gb/e storage/web server if it had enough I/O.
- alexchamberlain 2y ago
  2x 2.5Gb/s interfaces are pretty chunky on this spec of board, isn't it?
  - drewg123 2y ago
    I have a board with a 16 core A78 serving static content via 100Gb/s (encrypted via ktls, offloaded to the NIC). My arm fu is not good, so I'm not sure how a quad-core A76 compares.
    - NewJazz 2y ago
      What board is that? A78 is a couple generations newer.
      - drewg123 2y ago
        Nvidia Bluefield3
        dist1ll 2y ago
        The BF3 is a DPU, not an SBC right? Or can it be operated without a host? I'm curious about your setup.
        drewg123 2y ago
        It can be operated w/o a host. It offers the ability to connect 16 lanes (or is it 32?) of PCIe Gen5. It has a 1 GbE management port, a BMC running OpenBMC, and a 400GbE NIC that does crypto offload. The debug environment is FANTASTIC.. you can remote attach a gdb, set breaks, and step through bootup. It made it super easy to get our OS going on it (especially when I couldn't talk to the serial-on-lan port for a stupid reason, and could not get into the box.. I could at least use the debugger to verify we were booting).
tiffanyh 2y ago
Why Not Smaller? Why is this board so (physically) large in size? You can see how much wasted space, by looking at this photo: https://bret.dk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/radxa_rock_5_itx_cam_lcd_rtc_m2_mounting-jpg.webp https://bret.dk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/radxa_rock_5_itx_...
- msk-lywenn 2y ago
  This is aimed at desktop use. I guess it would be hard to mount if it was smaller than mini-ITX spec and/or wouldn't mount firmly on some/many desktop cases.
- jayd16 2y ago
  Its as large as the IO Panel. Also that space is for an M2 drive, no?
  - sthlmb 2y ago
    Yes, those are the mounting holes for the M.2 that's connected to the left of the photo (visible in other photos)
  - tiffanyh 2y ago
    But Pico-ITX boards exist with M.2 support. And those boards are about 1/3rd the size of Mini-ITX Eg https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/pico-itx-boards-amd-ryzen-v2000-pico-v2k4 https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/pico-itx-boards-amd-ryzen-v2000-p...
    - wtallis 2y ago
      That board is double-sided: the CPU and the SSD slot are on the back, while this ITX board has all the connectors and the processor on the top. That makes a difference both for the complexity and cost of building the board, and the complexity of assembling a system with the board, heatsinks and all.
    - ThatPlayer 2y ago
      But there aren't really generic Pico-ITX cases are there? What's the point of designing a Pico-ITX board if you need a custom case anyways? Just use the Radxa Rock 5B at that point.
synergy20 2y ago
is the board still low profile for mini-itx case? the 2USB+HDMI seems a little higher than I remembered.
- aidenn0 2y ago
  ATX and mini-ITX should use the same size IO shield.
  - synergy20 2y ago
    not really, mini-itx has a low-profile form, which means, really thin
Scramblejams 2y ago
One of the big selling ports of ARM is lower power consumption so I'd have loved to see some numbers, particularly idle watts. Also, I can find full photos of the board elsewhere but full front and back pics of it would have been nice to include.
sthlmb 2y ago
tkaiser has some additional information from his initial testing at https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/blob/master/articles/Quick_Preview_of_ROCK_5_ITX.md https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/blob/master/articl... if people are curious to know more, though it should be noted these were early release samples and as such, software/firmware isn't exactly perfect at the moment
dist1ll 2y ago
No PCIe connectivity is very unfortunate. I think these ARM/RISC-V SBCs are very attractive in combination with high-throughput NICs (or if you're into AI, things like the Tenstorrent cards). That'd be very nice for building smaller prototypes of 100G+ edge compute, CDNs, cloud, serverless platforms etc. without having to shell out for an Ampere Altra (or x86 equivalent). Nowadays there's such a big move towards heterogeneity that good PCIe connectivity feels like table stakes for SBCs.
jordemort 2y ago
I'd love something like this with socketed RAM so much, the only ARM boards I've seen with socketed RAM so far are high-end expensive server stuff.
- sthlmb 2y ago
  They did mention on their forums that a ROCK 6 ITX would likely come with socketed RAM but that's not likely to be until later this year sadly
st3fan 2y ago
But what does it cost and where can you buy them
- sthlmb 2y ago
  4GB LPDDR5: $99 8GB LPDDR5: $119 16GB LPDDR5: $159 32GB LPDDR5: $239 Actual vendors aren't known yet but I imagine allnetchina, arace, and OKdo for the EU/UK market will be supplying them

43 points by sthlmb 2y ago

I'm a bit confused by the wording on PoE: > If you choose to power via PoE you can expect to get 25W of output. Can you power this device via PoE ("choose to power via PoE"), or can this SBC power other devices over PoE ("expect to get 25W of output")? I clicked through some other reviews, but didn't see it addressed.

jandrese 2y ago
The article says there are three ways to power it. The ATX power supply connector, a DC barrel jack, and some third way not specified. It does have a USB3 port so that might be it, or it could be PoE. Very unclear from the couple of articles.
sthlmb 2y ago
Ah, you power this device via PoE and it can then draw up to 25W from a PoE switch feeding it. You cannot power another device via PoE with the ROCK 5 ITX as the source
maicro 2y ago
Not sure if this was added or edited later, but the linked article clarifies: ROCK 5 ITX Power over Ethernet (PoE) Here we can see that the PoE module is not soldered in and connects using 8 pins which is quite nice. If you choose to power the ROCK 5 ITX via a PoE switch (the ROCK 5 ITX doesn’t provide PoE power to another device) you can expect to get 25W of power budget for the system itself and any peripherals/devices you plan to power from the boards connectors. (my summary of that quoted section:) So, you can power the board with PoE, which will give the board and any connected devices 25W of power budget. Without looking at the specs of the CPU/GPU, that's probably enough to run at least one m.2 drive and a couple USB peripherals?

rbanffy 2y ago

It's not fast, but at least it's cool.

amiga-workbench 2y ago

When these ARM boards start coming with UEFI and I don't need to hunt around for blessed OS images with patched kernels I'll be a lot more interested, until then I've got to stick with x86 to maintain my sanity.

robotnikman 2y ago
Same thing I'm thinking as well when it comes to ARM PC's, being restricted to a specifically patched distro is very limiting.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 2y ago
  It's also bad for the planet as it artificially restricts the lifetime in which a board can be used.
  - robotnikman 2y ago
    This as well. In comparison, you can repurpose any old x86 PC rather easily.
drewg123 2y ago
How do we know it doesn't? I didn't see any info in the linked page about the system firmware, though I could easily have missed it.
Rinzler89 2y ago
UEFI is not enough if you don't have all the drivers in the OS image, especially the GPU drivers. Last year I bought a cheap Windows Qualcomm 8xx ARM tablet on sale and it was very nice for the money but I returned it when none of the ARM Linux ISOs I found online could boot on it despite the tablet having UEFI support, because Qualcomm. Booting Linux distros out of the box is such a non-issue on X86 that we take it for granted when on ARM it's just a pipe dream. If the ARM PC future is all proprietary custom firmware blobs that need to patched for each SoC/motherboard for Linux to boot, then you can keep them, I'll stick to X86 thank you very much.

jandrese 2y ago

Anybody have a clue what the price point will be? This board seems pretty neat as a SFF PC replacement, but not so much if it costs $500 or more.

rcarmo 2y ago

I've been looking at these kinds of boards as well: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/02/10/2000 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/02/10/2000 So far, mostly the same results, although I do have another with much more RAM that I'm still writing a draft on.

andrewstuart 2y ago

It's always the software that's the missing element. I prefer low end Intel compatible boards because the software just works. I spent too many hours with weird arm devices trying to get them to do basic stuff that is taken for granted on Intel, such as booting up.

drewg123 2y ago

Too bad it doesn't have PCIe slots. It could be interesting as a low-end 10Gb/e storage/web server if it had enough I/O.

alexchamberlain 2y ago
2x 2.5Gb/s interfaces are pretty chunky on this spec of board, isn't it?
- drewg123 2y ago
  I have a board with a 16 core A78 serving static content via 100Gb/s (encrypted via ktls, offloaded to the NIC). My arm fu is not good, so I'm not sure how a quad-core A76 compares.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    What board is that? A78 is a couple generations newer.
    - drewg123 2y ago
      Nvidia Bluefield3
      - dist1ll 2y ago
        The BF3 is a DPU, not an SBC right? Or can it be operated without a host? I'm curious about your setup.
        drewg123 2y ago
        It can be operated w/o a host. It offers the ability to connect 16 lanes (or is it 32?) of PCIe Gen5. It has a 1 GbE management port, a BMC running OpenBMC, and a 400GbE NIC that does crypto offload. The debug environment is FANTASTIC.. you can remote attach a gdb, set breaks, and step through bootup. It made it super easy to get our OS going on it (especially when I couldn't talk to the serial-on-lan port for a stupid reason, and could not get into the box.. I could at least use the debugger to verify we were booting).

tiffanyh 2y ago

Why Not Smaller? Why is this board so (physically) large in size? You can see how much wasted space, by looking at this photo: https://bret.dk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/radxa_rock_5_itx_cam_lcd_rtc_m2_mounting-jpg.webp https://bret.dk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/radxa_rock_5_itx_...

msk-lywenn 2y ago
This is aimed at desktop use. I guess it would be hard to mount if it was smaller than mini-ITX spec and/or wouldn't mount firmly on some/many desktop cases.
jayd16 2y ago
Its as large as the IO Panel. Also that space is for an M2 drive, no?
- sthlmb 2y ago
  Yes, those are the mounting holes for the M.2 that's connected to the left of the photo (visible in other photos)
- tiffanyh 2y ago
  But Pico-ITX boards exist with M.2 support. And those boards are about 1/3rd the size of Mini-ITX Eg https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/pico-itx-boards-amd-ryzen-v2000-pico-v2k4 https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/pico-itx-boards-amd-ryzen-v2000-p...
  - wtallis 2y ago
    That board is double-sided: the CPU and the SSD slot are on the back, while this ITX board has all the connectors and the processor on the top. That makes a difference both for the complexity and cost of building the board, and the complexity of assembling a system with the board, heatsinks and all.
  - ThatPlayer 2y ago
    But there aren't really generic Pico-ITX cases are there? What's the point of designing a Pico-ITX board if you need a custom case anyways? Just use the Radxa Rock 5B at that point.

synergy20 2y ago

is the board still low profile for mini-itx case? the 2USB+HDMI seems a little higher than I remembered.

aidenn0 2y ago
ATX and mini-ITX should use the same size IO shield.
- synergy20 2y ago
  not really, mini-itx has a low-profile form, which means, really thin

Scramblejams 2y ago

One of the big selling ports of ARM is lower power consumption so I'd have loved to see some numbers, particularly idle watts. Also, I can find full photos of the board elsewhere but full front and back pics of it would have been nice to include.

sthlmb 2y ago

tkaiser has some additional information from his initial testing at https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/blob/master/articles/Quick_Preview_of_ROCK_5_ITX.md https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/blob/master/articl... if people are curious to know more, though it should be noted these were early release samples and as such, software/firmware isn't exactly perfect at the moment

dist1ll 2y ago

No PCIe connectivity is very unfortunate. I think these ARM/RISC-V SBCs are very attractive in combination with high-throughput NICs (or if you're into AI, things like the Tenstorrent cards). That'd be very nice for building smaller prototypes of 100G+ edge compute, CDNs, cloud, serverless platforms etc. without having to shell out for an Ampere Altra (or x86 equivalent). Nowadays there's such a big move towards heterogeneity that good PCIe connectivity feels like table stakes for SBCs.

jordemort 2y ago

I'd love something like this with socketed RAM so much, the only ARM boards I've seen with socketed RAM so far are high-end expensive server stuff.

sthlmb 2y ago
They did mention on their forums that a ROCK 6 ITX would likely come with socketed RAM but that's not likely to be until later this year sadly

st3fan 2y ago

But what does it cost and where can you buy them

sthlmb 2y ago
4GB LPDDR5: $99 8GB LPDDR5: $119 16GB LPDDR5: $159 32GB LPDDR5: $239 Actual vendors aren't known yet but I imagine allnetchina, arace, and OKdo for the EU/UK market will be supplying them