Khadas Mind 2 portable mini PC gets Intel Core Ultra 5 125H or Ultra 7 155H update, USB4 and Thunderbolt 4 interfaces

Khadas Mind 2 is an update to the Raptor Lake-powered Khadas Mind portable mini PC offered with either an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H or Core Ultra 155H Meteor Lake processor. It ships with up to 64GB LPDDR5, PCIe 4.0 storage, and adds Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 interfaces that were missing from the first model. We reviewed the original Khadas Mind Premium with both Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04, and its dock, and it was indeed a pretty cool, albeit pricey, device with features like a small built-in battery to move the computer from one room to another without turning it off, and the Mind Link interface enabling connecting to the Khadas Dock for extra peripherals, the Mind Graphics for higher-end graphics, and more. Limitations included the lack of USB4 and 2.5GbE ports and the Khadas Link was limited to 64GT/s, but the second generation model addresses most of these […]

Raspberry Pi 5 PCIe HAT+ board features gigabit Ethernet, 4G LTE (mini PCIe), two USB 3.2 ports

Waveshare has recently introduced the PCIe to MiniPCIe GbE USB3.2 HAT+ for Raspberry Pi 5 adding gigabit Ethernet, a mini PCIe socket for 4G LTE, and two USB 3.2 Gen1 ports to the popular Arm single board computer. The HAT+ is compatible with IM7600G-H-PCIE/EG25-G-mPCIe series 4G LTE modules with 4G/3G/2G global band and GNSS positioning. Additionally, it has a gigabit Ethernet with an onboard RJ45 port, two USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, an onboard power monitoring chip, and EEPROM. All these features make this HAT useful for applications such as industrial routers, home gateways, set-top boxes, industrial laptops, industrial PDAs, and much more. We have previously written about many different types of HATs for the Raspberry Pi 5 designed by Waveshare including the Waveshare UPS HAT (E), the Waveshare PoE HAT (G), the Waveshare PCIe to USB 3.2 HAT+, and many other products. Feel free to check those out if you […]

ArmSoM CM5 Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC

Radxa ROCK 5 ITX RK3588 mini-ITX motherboard review – Building an Arm PC and NAS with Debian KDE

In this review, I’ll show how I installed Debian on the ROCK 5 ITX mini-ITX motherboard powered by a Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Arm Cortex-A76/A55 processor, before building a computer/NAS with the Arm mini-ITX motherboard, testing various features and running benchmarks. In the first part of the review, we checked out the Radxa ROCK 5 ITX (Arm) and Jupiter (RISC-V) mini-ITX motherboards with specifications and unboxing, and the Auriga 6-Bay NAS mini-ITX chassis used in this review. I already built the computer with the Jupiter RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard, so here I simply switched the RISC-V motherboard with the Radxa ROCK 5 ITX Arm motherboard and installed a few SATA drives. Radxa ROCK 5 ITX first boot – A tricky start… Radxa provides getting started instructions on the documentation website which I mostly follow to hopefully boot within a few minutes. I had to prepare the hardware first. So I installed a […]

CrowView Note Review – A 14-inch laptop shell designed for Raspberry Pi 5 and Jetson Nano Developer kit

Elecrow CrowView Note is a laptop shell with a 14-inch Full HD display, an 84-key QWERTY keyboard with a touchpad, built-in speakers and microphone, and a 5,000 mAh battery that’s specially designed for the Raspberry Pi 5 and the Jetson Nano Developer Kit thanks to adapters. However, it can be used with any machine with either a full-featured USB-C port or spare USB and HDMI ports. So it works with any Raspberry Pi model, Windows, Mac OS, or Linux computers, Android smartphones, PS4/PS5 game consoles, and more. This type of laptop shell has been around for years with the first one being the Laptop shell for the Motorola Atrix 4G smartphone introduced in 2011, and more recently Nexdock launched a range of laptop shells such as the Neckdock XL 15.6-inch touchscreen display and wireless charging. The CrowView Note differentiates itself with its low price and direct compatibility with the Raspberry […]

MILK-V Jupiter review – A RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard and PC tested with Ubuntu-based Bianbu OS

In this review or preview of the the Shenzhen Milk-V Jupiter RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard, I’ll assemble the motherboard into a mini-ITX chassis, before installing the Ubuntu 23.10 Mantic-based Bianbu OS optimized for RISC-V platforms, and testing the device to see how much progress has been done on RISC-V since I tested the StarFive VisionFive 2 SBC with Debian 12 about 18 months ago. In the first part of the review, we checked out the Radxa ROCK 5 ITX (Rockchip RK3588 Arm) and Jupiter (SpacemIT K1 RISC-V) mini-ITX motherboards with specifications and unboxing, and the Auriga 6-Bay NAS mini-ITX chassis used in this review. I planned to start with the Radxa ROCK 5 ITX, but due to logistics and technical issues, I went ahead testing the RISC-V motherboard first. Installing Bianbu OS to the Jupiter RISC-V motherboard The board does not come with storage, so no operating system is installed. So […]

Building a workstation with Radxa ROCK 5 ITX (Arm) or Milk-V Jupiter (RISC-V) mini-ITX motherboard – Part 1: The hardware

Radxa ROCK 5 ITX is a mini-ITX motherboard powered by a Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor, and the Shenzhen Milk-V Jupiter is another mini-ITX motherboard, but based on SpacemIT K1 octa-core 64-bit RISC-V processor instead. When Radxa contacted me about reviewing those, I thought it would be interesting to review a complete kit with a mini-ITX case since I had never built this type of system myself.  Yesterday, I was surprised to receive two large packages and thought maybe a company sent me a 3D printer or laser engraver kit, but instead, I got one package with the two Arm and RISC-V mini-ITX motherboards and another with a mini-ITX NAS enclosure with 6x SATA bays. Radxa ROCK 5 ITX unboxing Let’s look at the ROCK 5 ITX motherboard and accessories first. The motherboard ships with a rear panel and two screws for the M.2 module. The motherboard features the Rorkchip […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs abd SoMs

Khadas Mind Graphics NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti GPU dock for the Mind mini PC is now available for $999

The Khadas Mind Graphics is a dock for the Khadas Mind Raptor Lake mini PC that integrates an NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4060 Ti GPU and enables users to run high-end games, edit videos, design graphics, and experiment with AI while keeping the portability and small size of a mini PC. As we’ve seen in our reviews, mini PCs now match the performance of larger machines in almost all aspects with tools like PassMark Performance showing higher-end models’ CPU, memory bandwidth, and storage in the top 10% or 20% of systems. The exception is 3D graphics performance because integrated GPUs can’t match the performance of higher-end graphics cards. The Khadas Mind Graphics solves that by adding an NVIDIA Geforce RTX 40601 Ti GPU to the Khadas Mind mini PC through its Mind Link connector also bringing out other connectors such as 2.5GbE, USB, SD card, etc… Khadas Mind Graphics specifications: Graphics […]

Sipeed Lichee Book 4A 14-inch modular Linux laptop launched with TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor

We’ve just written about Deep Computing’s DC-ROMA RISC-V Laptop II, but Sipeed has just launched the Lichee Book 4A modular RISC-V laptop based on the quad-core Alibaba T-head TH1520 processor and running Debian Linux. I was expecting the Lichee Book to launch with the SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V processor, but Sipeed started with the time-tested TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor coupled with up to 16GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash and equipped with a 14-inch IPS display. In the future, we’ll get the Lichee Book 3A with the SpacemIT K1, and the Lichee Book 5A with an unnamed Cortex-A75-class RISC-V SoC with a 20 TOPS AI accelerator. Sipeed Lichee Book specifications: 260-pin SO-DIMM system-on-module (SoM) Sipeed LM3A – Upcoming module based on SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V CPU (Cortex-A55 class) with 2 TOPS NPU Sipeed LM4A SoC – Alibaba T-Head TH1520 CPU Quad-core RISC-V Xuantie C910 (RV64GCV – RVV 0.7) processor @ […]

Boardcon Rockchip RK3588S SBC with 8K, WiFI 6, 4G LTE, NVME SSD, HDMI 2.1...