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Higole F7G Plus Review – An affordable rugged tablet tested with Ubuntu 20.04 & Windows 11

Ruggedized industrial-use PCs are typically expensive so it is refreshing to see Higole F7G Plus, an Intel Gemini Lake Refresh tablet, being offered at an affordable price. Higole kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at functionality and performance running on Ubuntu and also its Windows performance. Hardware Overview The Higole F7G Plus is a 10.1 inch IPS touch screen rugged industrial fanless tablet that uses Intel’s 14 nm Gemini Lake Refresh N4120 processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 1.10 GHz Celeron processor boosting to 2.60 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics. Designwise, meeting the MIL-STD-810G standard which is the de facto ‘ruggedized’ standard for consumer products and covers whether the device can work in a broad range of environmental conditions including surviving dropping, is evidenced by the thick protective shell around the tablet. To ensure its IP67 Certification for waterproofing each of the ports are covered by detachable rubber […]

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$249 Rockchip RK3588 8K mini PC comes with up to 16GB RAM

Mekotronics R58X is an embedded mini PC powered by Rockchip RK3588 Cortex-A76/A55 processor with 16GB RAM, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 8K capable HDMI and DisplayPort video output ports, HDMI input, M.2 NVMe storage, and more. This is yet another announcement of Rockchip RK3588 hardware following ROCK5 Pico-ITX SBC, Firefly ITX-3588J mini-ITX motherboard,  and Mixtile Blade 3 server board among others. Melotronix R58X may have different use cases, as it is suitable as an IoT gateway, an industrial PC, an edge computing platform, a video analytics server, digital signage, a vehicle control unit, and other embedded applications. Mekotronics R58X mini PC/SBC specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with four Cortex-A76 cores @ 2.4 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz, an Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU, a 6TOPS NPU, 8K 10-bit decoder, 8K encoder System Memory – Up to 16GB LPDDR4x Storage eMMC 5.1 flash 2x SATA 3.0 connectors + SATA power […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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UP Xtreme i11 mini PC review with Ubuntu 20.04, Edge Insights for Vision

UP Xtreme i11 is both a single board computer and a mini PC powered by an Intel Tiger Lake processor and designed for industrial edge applications. I received the one sample of the mini PC called “UP Xtreme i11 Edge Compute Enabling Kit” last December based on an Intel Core i7-1185GRE processor, fitted with 16GB RAM, a 128GB SSD, and pre-loaded with Ubuntu 20.04 operating system. I’ve now had more time to play with the system, and I’ll report my experience with Ubuntu 20.04 and Edge Insights for Vision, a computer vision framework that’s part of the getting started guide. The latter was missing from my package possibly because customs opened the package, and forgot to put it back in. The most important part is “devkit” is used as username and password. Software for UP Xtreme i11 and Fan Control While Ubuntu 20.04 is pre-installed on the mini PC, it’s […]

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ICARUS Elkhart Lake Pico-ITX board targets IoT, AIoT, and computer vision applications

SECO ICARUS is a Pico-ITX single board computer based on Intel Atom x6000E, Celeron, and Pentium Elkhart Lake processor that’s designed for edge IoT, AIoT, and computer vision applications. The SBC ships with up to 16GB DDR4 IBECC (in-band error-correcting code) memory, eMMC flash and/or SATA storage, supports up to three independent displays, features two Gigabit Ethernet ports with TSN support, M.2 sockets for WiFi/Bluetooth and cellular connectivity, several USB ports, serial ports, and other I/O interfaces. ICARUS specifications: Elkhart Lake SoC (one or the other) with Intel Gen11 UHD Graphics Intel Celeron J6413 quad-core processor @ 1.8GHz (3GHz Turbo); 10W TDP Intel Celeron N6211 dual-core processor @ 1.2GHz (3GHz Turbo); 6.5W TDP Intel Pentium J6426 quad-core processor @ 2.0GHz (3GHz Turbo); 10W TDP Intel Pentium N6415 quad-core processor @ 1.2GHz (3GHz Turbo); 6.5W TDP Intel Atom x6211E dual-core processor @ 1.3GHz (3GHz Turbo); 6W TDP w/ IBECC and IHS […]

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congatec launches 10 new COM-HPC and COM Express Computer-on-Modules with 12th Gen Intel Core processors (Sponsored)

congatec – a leading vendor of embedded and edge computing technology – introduces the 12th Generation Intel Core mobile and desktop processors (formerly code-named Alder Lake) on 10 new COM-HPC and COM Express Computer-on-Modules. Featuring the latest high-performance cores from Intel, the new modules in COM-HPC Size A and C as well as COM Express Type 6 form factors offer major performance gains and improvements for the world of embedded and edge computing systems. Most impressive is the fact that engineers can now leverage Intel’s innovative performance hybrid architecture. Offering up to 14 cores/20 threads on BGA and 16 cores/24 threads on desktop variants (LGA mounted), the 12th Gen Intel Core processors provide a quantum leap [1] in multitasking and scalability levels. Next-gen IoT and edge applications benefit from up to 6 or 8 (BGA/LGA) optimized Performance-cores (P-cores) plus up to 8 low-power Efficient-cores (E-cores) and DDR5 memory support to […]

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Phytium D2000 ARMv8 Mini PC runs Linux, supports gaming with Box64 emulator

Dragonbox is now taking pre-orders for a “Phytium D2000 ARMv8 Mini PC” with an octa-core 64-bit Arm processor, 16GB RAM, a 512GB NVMe, and an AMD Radeon RX550 GPU that makes it powerful enough to play older PC gaming like Crysis through Box64 x86_64 emulator, the 64-bit version of Box86 x86 emulator compatible with Raspberry Pi and other 32-bit Arm platforms. If the Dragonbox name sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the community that developed the Pyra handheld Linux game console/PC, except now they are offering a mini PC based on Phytium D2000 processor based on the same FTC663 Armv8 cores as found in the earlier Phytium FT2000/4 processor, with both Pythium SoC specifically designed for desktop PCs, contrary to most other Arm SoCs on the market. Phytium D2000 mini PC specifications: SoC –  Phytium D2000 ARMv8 octa-core custom Armv8 (FTC663) desktop processor @ 2.3 – 2.6 GHz with 8MB L2 […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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ODROID-H2+ SBC discontinued due to supply shortage

Hardkernel has just discontinued ODROID-H2+ single board computer based on the Intel Celeron J4115 Gemini Lake Refresh processor, which followed ODROID-H2 SBC itself being discontinued shortly after Intel decided to phase out Intel J4105 and other Gemini Lake processors. The reason given is the “uncertain situation of main component supply”, which could mean Celeron J4115 processor is hard to get (or expensive), or the Realtek RTL8125B chipset provides 2.5GbE networking. That means Hardkernel does not offer any x86 SBC at this time. That’s a shame before ODROID-H2+ was a well-supported SBC running Linux or Windows, and great value for money at $119, especially for people interested in the two 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports found on the board (and upgradeable to six), not to mention support for SO-DIMM memory and M.2 NVMe SSD. Update: There were multiple components with very long lead times that must have contributed to the situation as […]

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MINIX NGC-5 Review – Windows 10, Ubuntu 20.04, and external GPU

MINIX has just launched a new mini PC in their NGC range called the NGC-5. Although it uses a somewhat dated Intel eighth-generation Core i5 processor, the integrated Iris Plus Graphics 655 is notable for being one of the more powerful iGPU solutions. MINIX kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu together with using an eGPU. Hardware Overview The NGC-5 physically consists of a 153 x 153 x 43mm (6.02 x 6.02 x 1.57 inches) square plastic case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses Intel’s older 14 nm++ Core i5-8279U Coffee Lake processor which is a quad-core 8-thread 2.40 GHz processor boosting to 4.10 GHz with Intel’s Iris Plus Graphics 655. The front panel has just a LED power indicator whereas the rear panel includes dual gigabit Ethernet ports, dual USB 3.1 ports, a DisplayPort 1.2, an HDMI 2.0a port, […]

Boardcon EM3562 Rockchip RK3562 SBC with 8 analog camera inputs