GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite review – A low-cost Intel Processor N100 mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro

GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite mini PC review windows 11

We’ve already checked the hardware of the GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite mini PC with an unboxing and teardown in the first part of the review. It is a low-cost mini PC based on an Intel Processor N100 CPU, coupled with 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, a 256GB M.2 SATA SSD, dual Display output through HDMI and DisplayPort connector, GbE, WiFi 6E, and a 9-pin expansion header port – as found in some NUC model – to access an external power button, reset button, and LEDs when housed in a cabinet or kiosk. You’ll find the full Mini Air 12 Lite specifications in our previous article about it. We’ve now had more time to test the mini PC, so we’ll report our experience with the Mini Air12 Lite running Windows 11 Pro operating system in the second part of the review. We’ll go through a software overview, test most of the features, run […]

GEEKOM GT1 Mega Review – Part 2: An Intel Core 9 Ultra 185H Meteor Lake “AI” mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro

GEEKOM GT1 Mega Windows 11 Pro Review

I’ve already gone through the specifications, an unboxing, and a teardown of the GEEKOM GT1 Mega AI mini PC powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H “Meteor Lake” processor with 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD in the first part of the review. I’ve now had more time to play with the GEEKOM GT1 Mega, so I will report my experience with Windows 11 Pro operating system in the second part of the review testing features, running benchmarks including an AI benchmark, evaluating networking and storage performance, testing the thermal design while under stress, and taking measurements for fan noise and power consumption. Software overview and features testing Going to the System->About window in the Settings confirms we have a GT1-Mega mini PC powered by a 2.50 GHz (base frequency) Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor with 32GB of RAM running Windows 11 Pro 23H2 build […]

Maxtang T0-FP750 review – Part 3: An AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS mini PC tested with Ubuntu 24.04

Maxtang T0-FP750 mini PC Ubuntu 24.04 review

We’ve already checked out the hardware of the Maxtang T0-FP750 mini PC with an unboxing and a teardown in the first part of the review, before thoroughly testing the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS mini PC in Windows 11 Pro. The time has now come to report our experience with Ubuntu 24.04, and more exactly Ubuntu 24.04.1 “dot” release, with the Maxtang T0-FT750 mini PC in the final part of the review. This will include a software overview, feature tests, benchmarks, storage and USB performance evaluation, 2.5Gbps Ethernet and WiFi 6 network performance tests, a stress test to check for thermal and/or power throttling, and fan noise and power consumption measurements. We will also compare the results of the Maxtang T0-FP750 mini PC in Ubuntu 24.04 against the ones for the earlier Maxtang MTN-FP750 mini PC using AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS CPU which we tested with Ubuntu 22.04. Ubuntu 24.04 system […]

BeagleY-AI SBC review with Debian 12, TensorFlow Lite, other AI demos

BeagleY-AI review

Today I’ll be reviewing the BeagleY-AI open-source single-board computer (SBC) developed by BeagleBoard.org for artificial intelligence applications. It is powered by a Texas Instruments AM67A quad-core Cortex-A53 processor running at 1.4 GHz along with an ARM Cortex-R5F processor running at 800 MHz for handling general tasks and low-latency I/O operations. The SoC is also equipped with two C7x DSP units and a Matrix Multiply Accelerator (MMA) to enhance AI performance and accelerate deep learning tasks. Each C7x DSP delivers 2 TOPS, offering a total of up to 4 TOPS. Additionally, it includes an Imagination BXS-4-64 graphics accelerator that provides 50 GFlops of performance for multimedia tasks such as video encoding and decoding. For more information, refer to our previous article on CNX Software or visit the manufacturer’s website. BeagleY-AI unboxing The BeagleY-AI board was shipped from India in a glossy-coated, printed corrugated cardboard box. Inside, the board is protected by […]

Radxa X4 review – An Intel N100 alternative to Raspberry Pi 5 tested with Ubuntu 24.04

Radxa X4 Ubuntu 24.04 review

We already looked at the Radxa X4 kit featuring an Intel N100 SBC with a design similar to the Raspberry Pi 5 and accessories including a Radxa Power PD 30W power adapter, an NVMe SSD, and a USB-C to USB-C cable, in the first part of the review, before installing Ubuntu 24.04 on the board.

In the second part of the review, we will test Ubuntu 24.04 in more detail with some benchmarks and power consumption measurements to show how well it works (or not) compared to a Raspberry Pi 5. We will also test the 40-pin GPIO header on the Radxa X4 controlled through a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller.

Maxtang T0-FP750 review – Part 2: An AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro

Maxtang T0-FP750 mini PC review windows 11

We already listed the specifications and performed an unboxing and a teardown of the Maxtang T0-FP750 mini PC in the first part of the review. We’ve now had time to test the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS mini PC in more detail with the Windows 11 Pro operating system. So in the second part of the review, we’ll report our experience with the Maxtang T0-FP750 in Windows 11 Pro with a software overview, features testing, benchmarks, networking and storage performance,  cooling performance, and measurement of fan noise and power consumption. Software overview and features testing The System->About menu confirms we have an “FP750” Mini PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor clocked at 1.80 GHz (base frequency) with Radeon 780M Graphics, equipped with 32 GB RAM, and running Windows 11 Pro 23H2, OS build 22631.4112. HWiNFO64 provides additional details about the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS 8-core/16-thread processor, the Maxtang […]

Using RISC-V cores on the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board and RP2350 MCU – From blinking an LED to building Linux

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 RP2350 RISC-V review

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 was released last month with a Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller equipped with two Arm Cortex-M33 cores and two 32-bit RISC-V “Hazard3” cores with up to two cores usable at any time. So in this guide, we’ll show how to use the RISC-V cores on the RP2350 MCU, compare their performance against the Arm Cortex-M33 cores, and even build Linux for RISC-V for RP2350 boards that have PSRAM. Apart from the extra memory and more powerful cores, plus new features related to security and the HSTX interface, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and Pico will be very similar to the end user and the instructions in our article “Getting Started with Raspberry Pi Pico using MicroPython and C” remain valid. I don’t think there’s a MicroPython RISC-V image yet, so we’ll focus on running C programs on the RISC-V cores. A quick check with the Arm cores […]

Comparison of Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB and 8GB RAM – Hardware, benchmarks, and power consumption

Raspberry Pi 5 2GB vs 8GB RAM

The Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB RAM was launched last week, and since I got a sample for review, I decided to compare it to the Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB RAM to see if I could find any noticeable differences between the two boards. I’ll start with a visual inspection to show differences on the PCBA, then check system information, run some benchmarks, check power consumption, and finally try to open as many tabs in Firefox until the 2GB RAM is filled and the system becomes unusable. Raspberry Pi 5 2GB vs Raspberry Pi 8GB – visual inspection We should first have a quick look at the boards and packages there’s no obvious difference apart from seeing 2GB RAM and 8GB RAM on the respective packages. But if we look closer, we can see the resistors for memory capacity detection are in different locations for “2G” and “8G”, and […]

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