Orange Pi 5B is a variant of the Rockchip RK3588S powered Orange Pi 5 SBC with up to 256GB eMMC flash and a soldered-on wireless module offering WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, at the cost of losing the M.2 2242 socket and 16MB QSPI NOR flash found in the original board.
The board still comes with HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4 (USB-C), and MIPI DSI display connectors, three camera connectors, a Gigabit Ethernet interface, a few USB ports, and a 26-pin GPIO header for expansion.
Orange Pi 5B specifications with the new features highlighted in bold, and the missing ones as strikethrough text:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3588S octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz, Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU, 6 TOPS AI accelerator
- System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB LPDDR4/4x (32GB RAM is also listed, but not for sale)
- Storage – 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, or 256GB eMMC flash,
16MB QSPI NOR Flash, MicroSD card slot,M.2 2242 socket for NVMe SSD - Video Output
- HDMI 2.1 up to 8Kp60
- DisplayPort 1.4 up to 8Kp30 via USB-C port (DP 1.4 and USB 3.1 ports are multiplexed, instead of just using USB-C DisplayPort Alt mode as per RK3588S specs)
- 2x 4-lane MIPI DSI connector up to 4Kp60
- Camera I/F – 1x 4-lane MIPI CSI connector, 2x MIPI DCPHY connectors (4-lane DPHY v2.0) for up to 3x cameras
- Audio
- ES8388 audio codec
- 3.5mm audio jack with headphone and microphone support
- Onboard MIC
- Support for HDMI 2.1 eARC
- Networking
- Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port via YT8531C GbE transceiver
- Built-in dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 with BLE support
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) Type-C port, 2x USB 2.0 ports including one multiplexed with the USB-C port
- Expansion – 26-pin header with up to 17x GPIO, 3x UART, 6x PWM, 2x I2C, 2x CAN, etc…
- Debugging – 3-pin UART header for serial console
- Misc – Power, MaskROM, and Recovery buttons, Power LED, status LED
- Power Supply
- 5V/4A via USB Type-C port
- RK806-1 PMU
- Dimensions – 100 x 62 mm
- Weight – 52 grams
Shenzhen Xunlong Software provides Orange Pi OS (Android), Orange Pi OS (Arch), Debian 11, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Android 12 images. Some of the images (Ubuntu/Debian) are developed in collaboration with Armbian where the company pays for the integration and maintenance of the images. Right now, neither the Orange Pi nor Armbian websites have images for the Orange Pi 5B, but you’ll find images for the earlier Orange Pi 5.
The price for the Orange Pi 5B is higher than for the Orange Pi 5 due to the eMMC flash and wireless module with four models currently for sale:
- $89.90 for 4GB RAM and 32GB eMMC flash
- $115.00 for 8GB/64GB configuration
- $149.00 for 16GB/128GB configuration
- $169.00 for 16GB/256GB configuration
Provided software support is good enough for your specific requirements, it’s still very good value for money, considering one Orange Pi 5S – and other RK3588(S) boards – packs the performance of three to four Rasberry Pi 4 SBCs depending on the workload. You’ll find the Orange Pi 5B for sale on Amazon and Aliexpress. Additional information may also be found on the product page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Ha yes! Finally considering the eMMC up to 256GB it is not so important to loose the nvme.
Only problem is the price as it starts to creep into Radxa Rock 5B territory and IMHO you’d be better off investing the extra $$$ into getting a true RK3588 SBC then the lighter RK3588S version.
The biggest appeal of the OPi 5 was the affordable price so why pay $169 USD for the RK3588S when you can pay $189 USD and grab a Rock 5B 16GB from allnetchina and have full I/O options and a fully certified SBC…?
These clones are becoming incredibly expensive considering RPi was a $25 board ($35 for the deluxe model)
All prices have changed, Jerry. Can you remind us what model of RPi you can find at $25 or even $35 nowadays ?
From experience you can find plenty of cheap Pico/Pico Ws but all the other RPi boards are nowhere near MSRP and even the Zero 2W saw a price increase but good luck funding one unless you over pay for a starters bundle!
I noticed as-well. It was just today when I did check on prices and I am really sick of watching these high prices.
Moreover new hw is coming with same issues again and again so what is point?
So I am staying away until raspberry foundation issue new affordable board.
If considering price of wifi model and ssd, $189 USD is not final price to grap a set. OPi5B 16GB RAM 128GB EMMC version sells at USD149, which is still affordable price. If wifi module and EMMC is not required, OPi5 would still be a best option.
I by far prefere the version with the m.2 slot. I can choose high quality MLC m.2 ssd and write the bootloader i prefere on the SPI chip and be always able to fully wipe the m.2 content and still keep a working bootloader.
Also having a wifi chip that can not run with just free software like ath9k wifi chips do is a downgrade to general freedom and i would recommend to everyone to just use free Software capable usb wifi adapter.
In conclusion: The orange pi 5b is by far the more worse version of the two available orange pi rk3588 boards at the moment.
Wifi or NVME, not both. I would prefer to have the NVME.
I believe there’s talk of a OPi 5 Plus/Pro that will be the full RK3588 version to compete with the Radxa Rock 5B…?
I’m not convinced the OPi 5B is the upgrade everybody wants considering its very much the original proto model and the eMMC read/write speeds will need to be good as NVMe Isn’t super fast at below 400MBs…?
Some maybe would but NVME often kills the low watt idle and at this level the eMMC is likely more matched.
The Orange Pi5B 16GB RAM+128GB eMMC Onboard Wifi6 BT5.0 is $65 less than a Rock5B and also doesn’t need the additional $25 NVME.
So it works out almost $100 cheaper and for many an exceptionally well priced buy.
It would be interesting to bench the onboard eMMC but going to stick with the one I have, but likely would of been tempted ￡124.86
With some ML ops the Opi5 is near x5 as fast as a Rpi4 on cpu alone whilst the GPU & NPU also has near similar performance if you convert to ArmNN or RkNPU and offers a mass of NPU perf in a very low wattage board and why many may prefer eMMC.
Smart move … an easier out of the box solution for 80% of users with WiFi and Storage pre-bundled.
I hope this also means that the OPi5 will get good/continued support – rather than a switch to the new board…
Can you use RPi-cameras with it under Linux? Or any non-USB cameras? Does hardware-encoding of MJPEG or H.264 work?Do you need to use some crappy, outdated kernel with buggy, proprietary crapola libraries in order to make use of non-USB cameras and hardware-acceleration of video-codecs?
Orange Pi have released a13MP camera with 2 different lenses that’s supported by the OPi 5 yet only available on Aliexpress.
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/Sc62e7d43ffe740cf9bf289db80d12dcdq.jpg
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/Sbc7c9204e04e4b41a61909c2f577f8dfw.jpg
But that doesn’t tell me anything about actual software-side support. Doesn’t really help me, if I can’t use them and I specifically need to use them under Linux, not Android, and under a modern kernel and not some outdated, buggy, customized crapola.
No cooling solution for the RK3588S ? Is this version of the RK is able to run without heat sink ?
> Is this version of the RK is able to run without heat sink ?
Same situation as with RK3588: w/o heatsink the thing starts to throttle fully loaded. The only real difference between RK3588s and RK3588 is the latter using more I/O controllers that might contribute to generated heat.
And based on the data I collected RK3588s variants seem to be almost always lower silicon quality. PVTM then results in these SoCs needing higher supply voltages, generating more heat and throttling even earlier.
Orange Pi has a promotion for the Orange Pi 5 and Pi 5B SBC’s until the end of the month.
Prices become attractive… until you remember that there’s no enclosure nor even any way to fix a heat sink on these beasts, as usual with OPi.
They’ve made a metal enclosure for the Orange Pi 5/5B: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005558033596.html
Ah, indeed. However there’s no photo of the interior, so we don’t know if it touches the SoC or not. It wouldn’t be the first metal enclosure not in contact with an SoC, and given that OPi has never been that much into cooling capabilities but instead relies on thermal throttling, I’d emit reserves. At least I know that those designed by FriendlyELEC are properly designed.
One user shared photos of the internals.
OK, not as bad as we could expect, that could possibly work.