Orange Pi 3B is a new Rockchip RK3566 SBC that’s like a supercharged Raspberry Pi 3B board with the same form factor, but with a faster processor, up to 8GB RAM, and support for multiple storage options with a microSD card slot, an eMMC flash socket, an M.2 Key-M socket for NVMe (PCIe 2.1) or SATA III SSDs, as well as an SPI flash that should enable features like network boot.
The board also features HDMI 2.0 and eDP display intefaces, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a WiFI 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 wireless module, four USB ports, MIPI DSI and CSI connector, and the 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO header. It’s powered through a USB-C port taking 5V instead of the micro USB port found in the Raspberry Pi 3B.
Orange Pi 3B specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3566
- CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz
- GPU – Arm Mali-G52 2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1
- NPU – 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator with support for Caffe, TensorFlow, TFLite, ONNX, PyTorch, Keras, Darknet
- VPU
- 4Kp60s H.265, H.264, VP9 video decoding
- 1080p100 H.265 video encoding
- 1080p60fps H.264 video encoding
- Process – 22nm
- System Memory – 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDDR4/4x
- Storage
- eMMC module socket (16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, or 256GB capacity)
- 16MB or 32MB SPI flash
- M.2 M-Key socket for SATA III or PCIE 2.0 NVMe SSD
- MicroSD card slot
- Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60, 2-lane MIPI DSI, eDP 1.3
- Camera I/F – 2-lane MIPI CSI connector
- Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack, digital audio output via HDMI
- Networking
- Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port via YT8531C transceiver
- Dual-band WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 via CDTech 20U5622 module (aka Allwinner AW859A)
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 host port, 2x USB 2.0 host port, 1x USB 2.0 Device/Host port
- Expansion – 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO header with up to 28x GPIOs, UART, SPI, I2C, PWM
- Misc
- MaskROM key, Reset key, Power key
- 2-pin 5V fan connector
- 2-pin RTC battery connector
- Power Supply
- 5V/3A via USB Type-C port
- Rockchip RK809-5 PMIC
- Dimensions – 85 x 56 mm
- Weight – 49 grams
Orange Pi provides a long list of operating systems with Android 11, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 11, Debian 12, OpenHarmony 4.0 Beta1, Orange Pi OS (Arch), Orange Pi OS (OH) based on OpenHarmony, and others. It’s unlikely all those images get the same level of support, so users will have to find which one works best for them… More technical details should soon become available on the wiki, and the images will be available on the download page. The Orange Pi 3B is not yet listed there at the time of writing.
Interestingly the new Orange Pi 3B has nothing to do with the Orange Pi 3 SBC introduced in 2019 with an Allwinner H6 processor and a different form factor, then followed by an LTS version in 2021, so don’t get confused. It’s not the first Rockchip RK3566 SBC that follows the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B form factor either, as we previously covered Geniatech’s XPI-3566. But the Orange Pi 3B board has more features such as an M.2 SSD socket and will be easier to purchase for individuals.
Six versions of the Orange Pi 3 SBC are currently available on Amazon for pre-order:
- $34.99 with 2GB RAM
- $51.99 with 2GB RAM and a 256GB eMMC flash module
- $39.99 with 4GB RAM
- $57.99 with 4GB RAM and a 256GB eMMC flash module
- $50.99 with 8GB RAM
- $67.99 with 8GB RAM and a 256GB eMMC flash module
There’s also a $5 discount coupon on Amazon. As usual, pricing for Orange Pi boards is good value for money provided software support follows. Deliveries are scheduled to start on August 15. The boards are now also available on Aliexpress for $30 and up. Further details may 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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