Radxa Releases Affordable ROCK 3B "PI-CO ITX" SBC Starting at $45

[Fouquin]

Radxa first teased their ROCK 3B back in 2021 when the smaller and lower power ROCK 3A launched, and has just now finalized the design and specs with what they call the "PI-CO ITX" form factor; a tad over Pico-ITX size but with a standard Raspberry Pi 40-pin GPIO and rear-facing I/O. The board measures 100 x 75 mm which means it definitely won't be fitting into any housings made for the Raspberry Pi, but with the I/O aligned to one side there's a chance some Pico-ITX cases could still fit. This closely mirrors the already released ROCK 5B, but where that SBC is targeting a much higher performance and price point (with the cheapest 4 GB model MSRP set at $130 USD), the ROCK 3B starts at only $45 USD for the 2 GB, and even the 8 GB variant is only $75 USD.




Don't be fooled into thinking the lower price means Radxa didn't pack all that available board space with features. The ROCK 3B is bristling with expansion to justify its larger size.

• Rockchip RK3568 2.0 GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A55
• Mali G52 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1
• VPU supporting 4K60 H.264/H.265/VP9 decoding and 1080p60 H.264/H.265 encoding
• AI NPU with support for TensorFlow, TF-Lite, Pytorch, Caffe, ONNX, MXNet, Keras, and Darknet
• LPDDR4 - 2 GB, 4 GB, or 8 GB
• M.2 E-Key PCI-E 2.0 for optional WiFi 6 module
• M.2 B-Key for 4G LTE/5G cellular, SATA, USB
• M.2 M-Key PCI-E 3.0 slot for NVMe SSDs
• Rear-side pluggable eMMC module
• MicroSD card slot
• HDMI 2.0 supporting 4K60
• 2x USB 3.0 (1x OTG, 1x Host), 2x USB 2.0 ports
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports w/ PoE via optional PoE HAT (one port)
• 40-pin GPIO R Pi 3 compatible header w/ SPI, I2C, PCM/I2S, CAN, PWM, ADC, USB 2.0 and 5 V/3.3 V, GND power pins
• 2x MIPI DSI ports - one 4-lane and one 2-lane
• MIPI CSI camera connector
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• eDP connector
• Touch Panel connector
• RTC with header for battery
• IR receiver
• Power and recovery buttons
• USB Type C port for 6-20 V power, USB PD 2.0 or fixed voltage

More information about the Radxa ROCK 3B including available accessories can be found on the Radxa wiki. The ROCK 3B is available now from partnered retailers.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[BArms]

Very cool, Dual NICs is great. If it can work as an OpenBSD or FreeBSD firewall I'll definitely pick one up.

 

[LabRat 891]

Wow! That's a lot of I/O for a 'cheap' ARM64 SBC.
The fully-exposed PCI-E 3.0 is a big selling point over RPi.

I kinda want one, and I'm not even sure I could find a deployable use...

 

[RayneYoruka]

Notbad notbad

 

[randomUser]

wow, they have actually created a properly powered board.
So instead of lets say 4 power bricks (for 4 devices) that wont even fit into extension sockets, you can have one PD brick with 4 USBC outputs.

RPi should learn from this manufacturer instead of making their specialized power brick that is too damn huge. It covers 3 SOCKETS FFS.
I have plenty of Gan chargers yet i can't use them, because RPi were too lazy to put a PD chip on the board.

 

[Wirko]

wow, they have actually created a properly powered board.

So instead of lets say 4 power bricks (for 4 devices) that wont even fit into extension sockets, you can have one PD brick with 4 USBC outputs.

RPi should learn from this manufacturer instead of making their specialized power brick that is too damn huge. It covers 3 SOCKETS FFS.
I have plenty of Gan chargers yet i can't use them, because RPi were too lazy to put a PD chip on the board.

Adapters exist, such as this one - USB C with PD at the input, fixed voltage (but barrel jack in this case) at the output. Certainly not an ideal, or very reliable, solution but might come in handy.

 

[ebivan]

Wow, it's very nice that they basically do everything right that I always hated about the original Pis:

- All connectors to one side. Finally an SBC that can be put in a box or even in-wall and not a box that has wires coming in from all sides. I always hated that on the Pis!
- PCIe, M.2
- Even more M.2
- Dual Gigabit
- PoE
- RTC
- SIM
- MMC
- normal sized HDMI

So many interfaces and all on one side of the pcb! Take this Raspi-Foundation, it can be done! Why dont you do it?

Wow, original Pis seem really low end by comparison. Homefully the software is ok too. Raspberry Pis became more and more powerful and even more expansive over the generations. But never made good on the above mentiond shortcomings.

If I had use for an SBC, I would buy this!

 

[LabRat 891]

Related:
(1st 'config/use' that comes to mind)

AMD Radeon PCIe graphics card tested with a Rockchip RK3588 SBC (Radxa Rock 5B) - CNX Software

AMD Radeon R7 520 PCIe graphics card successfully tested with a Radxa Rock 5B Rockchip RK3588 SBC using kmscube and glmark2 samples.

www.cnx-software.com

Performance analysis of the RISC SoC used:

Performance Analysis of RK3568 AIoT Processor on Forlinx FET3568-C SoM - Blog - Forlinx Embedded Technology Co., Ltd.

Explore the performance of RK3568 AIoT processor on Forlinx FET3568-C SoM through display, hardware codec, and AI tests.

www.forlinx.net

 

[Ferrum Master]

Very cool, Dual NICs is great. If it can work as an OpenBSD or FreeBSD firewall I'll definitely pick one up.

You see realtek NIC there, as a BSD man you should immediately steer away from it.

 

[LabRat 891]

You see realtek NIC there, as a BSD man you should immediately steer away from it.

Even from a Windows PC enthusiast-gamer's perspective:
Realtek NICs are very 'bleh' to 'meh'.