Corsair MP600 Mini M.2 2230 NVMe SSD delivers up to 4800 MB/s read/write performance

Corsair MP600 Mini is a high-performance M.2 2230 SSD based on the Phison E21T controller that delivers up to 4800MB/s sequential read and write performance and designed to be used in Valve’s Steam Deck, Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 and 9, and other products that won’t take a M.2 2280 SSD. We are seeing more and more single board computers and other electronics products use M.2 sockets for storage, but the smaller boards won’t take the traditional M.2 2280 SSDs that usually deliver better performance than smaller M.2 2230/2242/2260 drives, and so performance may be impacted on this type of hardware. But the Corsair MP600 Mini changes that with high sequential and random read/write performance. Corsair MP600 Mini specifications: SSD Unformatted Capacity – 1TB NAND Technology – 3D TLC NAND Host interface – PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 Performance Max Sequential Read – Up to 4,800MB/s tested with CrystalDiskMark (CDM) Max Sequential […]

Orange Pi 5 SBC gets its own $20 low-profile ICE Tower cooling fan

A few years ago I reviewed the ICE Tower CPU cooling fan for Raspberry Pi 4 which is an oversized heatsink with a cooling fan and some RGB LEDs that obviously does its job at cooling the board, but the main benefit is really its aesthetics. 52Pi has now designed another ICE Tower cooling fan for the Orange Pi 5 SBC, and the new Orange Pi 5B, with the same concept except for its low-profile design. It’s probably not needed for the Orange Pi 5 which should do fine with a heatsink, but it may help for the Orange Pi 5B due to the extra heat from the WiFi 6 module. A company representative for 52Pi told us that: I have seen this Orange Pi 5B motherboard posted on your site, there are quite a lot of reviews and discussions, so far after our engineer’s test, this motherboard has quite […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

ASUSTOR FLASHSTOR NAS supports up to 12 M.2 SSDs, 10GbE networking

ASUSTOR FLASHSTOR 6 and FLASHSTOR 12 are network access storage (NAS) devices powered by a quad-core Intel Celeron N5095 Jasper Lake processor and designed for respectively 4K audio and video content consumption for the former and 4K video editing for the latter. Both models come with 4 GB of DDR4-2933, two USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 ports, and HDMI 2.0b video output, but the FLASHSTOR 6 supports up to 6 M.2 NVMe SSDs and 2.5GbE networking, while the FLASHSTOR 12 can take up to 12 M.2 NVMe SSDs and handles 10GbE networking. ASUSTOR FLASHSTOR specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N5105 quad-core Jasper Lake processor @  2.0 GHz / 2.9 GHz (Turbo) System Memory – 4GB SO-DIMM DDR4, expandable up to 16GB via 2x SO-DIMM slots Storage 8GB eMMC flash for the OS FLASHSTOR 6 (FS6706T) – 6x M.2 2280 NVMe drive slots, up to 14x drives with AS6004U expansion unit for […]

Linux 6.3 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.3 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): It’s been a calm release this time around, and the last week was really no different. So here we are, right on schedule, with the 6.3 release out and ready for your enjoyment. That doesn’t mean that something nasty couldn’t have been lurking all these weeks, of course, but let’s just take things at face value and hope it all means that everything is fine, and it really was a nice controlled release cycle. It happens. This also obviously means the merge window for 6.4 will open tomorrow. I already have two dozen pull requests waiting for me to start doing my pulls, and I appreciate it. I expect I’ll have even more when I wake up tomorrow. But in the meantime, let’s enjoy (and test) the 6.3 release. As always, the shortlog […]

Beelink EQ12 mini PC features Processor N100 “Alder Lake-N” CPU, up to 16GB RAM

Beelink EQ12 is a mini PC powered by an Intel Processor N100 “Alder Lake-N” quad-core processor offered with 8GB or 16GB DDR5 memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD for storage, as well as two 2.5GbE ports, and a WiFi 6 & Bluetooth 5.2 wireless module. The actively cooled computer also comes with two 4K capable HDMI ports, three USB 3.2 ports, and a 10Gbps USB Type-C that also supports DisplayPort Alternate Mode enabling the EQ12 to drive up to three 4K displays. Beelink EQ12 specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N quad-core processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24 EU Intel HD graphics @ up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W System Memory – 8GB or 16GB DDR5 4800 MHz RAM Storage 500GB M.2 2280 NVMe SSD  upgradeable up to 2TB Support for 2.5-inch SATA SSD / HDD (CNXSoft: not shown in the specs, but a “scalable […]

NanoPi R6C review – Ubuntu 22.04, NVMe SSD, USB debug

FriendlyElec has recently announced the NanoPi R6C mini PC that a variant of the Rockchip RK3588S powered NanoPi R6S mini PC and 2.5GbE router that we reviewed with FriendlyWrt/OpenWrt and Ubuntu 22.04 earlier this year, but with just one 2.5GbE and one GbE interface, a built-in M.2 NVMe SSD socket and USB-C Debug UART port for easy external access to the serial console. The company sent me a NanoPi R6C sample for review, but since we’ve already tested the similar NanoPi R6S extensively, I’ll write a single-post mini review this time around, checking out the hardware, and focusing on testing the new features such as the NVMe SSD and the USB debug port when running Ubuntu 22.04. NanoPi R6C unboxing As usual, the device came in a non-descript cardboard package with a few 3M rubber pads. The most obvious change compared to the NanoPi R6S is that all main ports […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

Orange Pi 5B SBC adds up to 256GB eMMC flash, built-in WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 module

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 […]

$85+ NanoPi R6C 2.5GbE router and SBC gets M.2 NVMe SSD socket

FriendlyElec has come up with a low-cost version of the NanoPi R6S with the NanoPi R6C router/SBC based on the same Rockchip RK3588S octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor but offering just one Gigabit Ethernet port and one 2.5GbE port, and adding an M.2 NVMe SSD socket for storage. The NanoPi R6C is also offered with 4GB or 8GB RAM, an optional 32GB eMMC flash soldered on the board, a Micro SD card socket, an 8K capable HDMI 2.1, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, and a few extra features we’ll discuss further below. NanoPi R6C specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S octa-core processor with: CPU – 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 quad-core GPU with OpenGL ES3.2 / OpenCL 2.2 / Vulkan1.1 support VPU – 8Kp60 H.265/VP9/AVS2 video decoder, 8Kp30 H.264 decoder, 4Kp60 AV1 decoder, 8Kp30 H.265/H.264 video encoder AI […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC