NicoD

Ok. I'll wait till things are fixed. I did just test install to NVMe and boot from sd and it indeed didn't work as it should. Couldn't boot into x anymore. Install to eMMC does work. I'm already very happy to have this. I can have the same setup on my trip as I've got on my main desktop at home with the Mekotronics mini. With a 1TB NVMe for movies. That's great I was really let down by the FE images for it. Seems there's degression. The old R6S image was better than the new R6C Ubuntu. Big thank you!

@Igor This made my day. I needed an SBC for my trip next week. Haven't received my KEdge2 case. Now I can use the R6C with NVMe and the software I like/need. 👍 Installed on R6C, NVMe works and both ethernet ports work. All I need to do is make my 5Ghz wifi antenna work. I do have a 5Ghz dongle that works, but not good enough for camping internet. Thank you! I'll see to make a video about it. Will it be accessible in the default download page?

Armbian Jammy Gnome on the Orange Pi 5A.

What steps did you take? Do you have an sd-card with an OS installed? What image did you install? You should be able to boot the board with a 2A 5V PSU. It doesn't consume much with nothing connected. The board does not support PD power, but you can use a PD PSU. It will not negotiate to go to higher voltages. Steps to take : 1. Download image : https://www.armbian.com/orangepi-5/ 2. Write onto sd-card with any image writer. On Linux I use gnome-disks. On Windows I use win32diskimager. Most people use balena etcher. 3. Put sd-card in the sd-reader of the board 4. Connect HDMI, keyboard and mouse, network cable and then connect USB-C power to the correct USB-C port(The one in the corner) That should boot the board and show the Armbian initial setup where you need to set a root password, username and user password...

Hi all. Here my review of the Mekotronics R58-Mini and R58X-4G. These are my favorite RK3588 devices. Easiest to work with on a desk. Been my main-desktop for the last months. I've been using MonkaBlyat his Armbian images. It is stable, fun to work with, has GPU drivers and VPU. But it is using the dirty rockchip kernel. So once armbian can be build for these devices, and mainline has matured these should be the best RK3588 devices for me at home. For on the road I've got the Kadas Edge2Pro. Here's my video. Mekotronics download page : https://www.mekotronics.com/h-msgBoard.html Armbian from MonkaBlyat for R58-Mini : https://monka.systemonachip.net/r58-mini/Armbian_23.05.0-trunk_r58-mini_jammy_legacy_5.10.110.AFM.img.xz Armbian from MonkaBlyat for R58X (4G/Pro) : https://monka.systemonachip.net/r58x/Armbian_23.05.0-trunk_r58x_jammy_legacy_5.10.110.AFM.img.xz RKDevTool and SPI boot loader for Armbian : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gg9So9nuVax_AC82UQJOq1mHBea3sQ4q/view?usp=share_link Here all my gathered info :

Interview with @rpardini.

@BasThere are user built images from @monkaBlyat for the Mekotronics boards. It has wayland GPU blob + panfork GPU driver + VPU acceleration + box64/86 and wine preïnstalled. All info and links in the description of this video.

All depends on your budget. The HC4 is a good option. I've got 2 of them that I use a NAS. Just no bt or wifi. That can be fixed with a bt dongle. It is a nice device for gaming too. Not very powerful, but has good software. I also use a NanoPi R6S (RK3588) with USB3 to SATA adapter with a 2TB SSD. That has 2.5GbE. So can do up to 280MB/s over my network. But software support ain't great (yet) for it. The NanoPi R5S has a bit better I/O with NVMe. But is way less powerful. There are also older SBCs with SATA like the Orange Pi + and OPi+2. Totally not powerful. But does the job of slow NAS. OPi+2 has gigabit ethernet while OPi+ only has 100Mbit. I used to use the OPi+2 for many years as NAS. Now happy to have replaced it with R6S. Any SBC can do what you want with a USB3 to SATA adapter. Just see if it's got USB3. I would probably look for an RK3399 since it's the best supported SoC with the best I/O. NanoPi M4B for example has PCIe over GPIO on which you can put a 4 x SATA hat. It does cost a bit more, but you get what you pay for. I used to use it with a NVMe hat as main desktop. Now I use RK3588 for that goal. Mekotronics R58X-4G/RK58X-Pro. It has everything. NVMe, SATA, HDMI-out, DP-out, USB-C with DP, HDMI-in, wifi, bt, GPU drivers and VPU drivers. Great for gaming. It's is powerful, has great software. But doesn't have mainline support yet. It is the most future proof. Rock5B I can't advice since there are a few design flaws on it. I'm not sure about the Rock3A. I don't have it and am not sure if the software is good. I kind of lost my trust in Radxa for that. They make too many variations what makes supporting their boards near impossible. Odroid's always have great software. Check my youtube channel for more info. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpv7NFr0-9AB5xoklh3Snhg

Ha. I'll check it out. I'm waiting for them to sell the case. I hope it's soon. I'm now working on the Mekotronics devices. Got the R58X-Pro now. The same as R58X-4G but added sd-cardreader, 10GbE (that doesn't work yet), front display, 2 extra USB2 ports and a programmable volume knob. I like it a lot. Tho M.2 is used for 10GbE NIC, bit a shame since now no storage device can get the 1GB/S speed of the 10GbE. Still an amazing board to play with.

Hi all. I've done an interview with Igor from Armbian. We talked about the new release that's coming this weekend. And about armbian-next, the new updated build framework.

Lakka is not Armbian, go to Lakka/LibRetro forum for this. Did you at least try an Armbian image?

I haven't updated to use the latest wine version. You can use whatever version you want. There is a reason why to use wine 5. It does the old 32-bit programs better since it can emulate win 95/98 Version 6.x can only do from winxp. Good luck with it.

You can install box86 and box64 from repo, but for me wine then doesn't work. I use armbian-gaming. I need to work on it to make a few improvements. But it gives me a headache thinking of it. sudo apt install box86 box64

It works on rk3588 with Armbian Jammy and Sid. The RK3399 flag is for arm64, doesn't matter what board. I think there's a flag for rk3588 too but not sure what it changes. I also have a Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@NicoDsSBCs Haven't shown much rk3588 gameplay now I think of it. But it is great. Not sure about Roblox. I don't know it.

@balbes150I already made the video. I did say in it the sollution for eMMC install is in this thread.

Games with the blob driver. I've been told it should work, but it doesn't. Wine works, so box86/64 also work. But nothing GPU accelerated works. PPSSPP is using llvmpipe software render. So I'll do the same configuration as I'm using on the R58X-4G with Jammy Gnome + panfork driver and multimedia repo. For the gnome desktop it's a little more buggy because of flickering mouse pointer. But I gladly take that for having my games/PPSSPP working. I'll probably make the video tomorrow. I'm done testing. Only issue is it doesn't boot when other USB drives are connected. And no eMMC install as you said.

Good you say it. I was planning to do this when I had a good configuration. Still searching for the best result. I think I'll start with server image, then install the panfork drivers and multimedia with kodi. Then reboot and install ubuntu-desktop for gnome with wayland. The blob does work well, but I'm unable to make some things work with it. I'm running it like that on my Mekotronics R58X-4G. I love it.

This installs moonlight with hardware decoding for RK3588. https://forum.radxa.com/t/introduction-to-rockchip-multimedia-ppa-for-ubuntu-jammy/14537 @amazingfate Is the one who does this.

@balbes150Wifi works. I'm starting to make the video about your Armbian image on Khadas Edge2. Good work. It's a great experience.

@balbes150 I tested Armbian_23.02.0-trunk_Kedge2_jammy_legacy_5.10.110_gnome_desktop.img Didn't work with Android installed on eMMC. So I installed ubuntu-server and then it runs. I installed the blob. Wayland runs normal. But the other benchmarks perform a little worse than others. SBC-bench seems broken. If there's something you want tested, let me know. I'll see to make a video about it next week. Nice to be able to boot from USB. Just too bad can't mix Android and Armbian. Board | OS | Kernel | Clockspeeds | 7z b all cores | 7z b core small core | 7z b big core | NicoD Blender | Supertuxkart | SBC-Bench Khadas VIM2 Ubuntu 20.04 Gnome 5.18.0 1.4Ghz A53/1Ghz A53 7728 900 (core 7) 1235 (core 0) 18m26s 2.79b 5fps http://ix.io/4b4d Khadas VIM2 Armbian Kinetic server 6.1.0-meson64 1.4Ghz A53/1Ghz A53 7867 1252 (core 0) Khadas VIM3 Ubuntu 20.04 Gnome 5.18.0 1.8Ghz A53/2.2Ghz A73 10300 1636 (core 0) 2417 (core 5) 9m38s 2.79b 19fps http://ix.io/4b4S Khadas VIM4 Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome 5.4.125 2.2Ghz A73/2Ghz A53 14138 1775 (core 7) 2299 (core 0) 5m46s 52fps http://ix.io/4bkv Khadas VIM4 Debian 10 xfce4 5.4.125 2.2Ghz A73/2Ghz A53 15113 1830 (core 7) 2334 (core 0) 7m15s 2.79b http://ix.io/4blv Station P1 Armbian Jammy xfce4 5.18.19 1.4Ghz A53/1.8Ghz A72 7607 1248 (core 0) 1843 (core 5) 10m10s 7fps http://ix.io/4b9f Odroid N2+ Armbian Jammy xfce4 5.10.139 2Ghz A53/2.4Ghz A73 11755 1761 (core 0) 2518 (core 5) 5m53s 18fps http://ix.io/4b9V Odroid N2+ Armbian Kinetic server 6.1.0-meson64 2Ghz A53/2.4Ghz A73 11807 1764 (core 0) 2520 (core 5) xxx 18fps Odroid C2 Armbian kinetic server 6.1.0-meson64 1.5Ghz 5173 1320 (core 0) Khadas Edge2 Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome 5.10.66 1.8Ghz A55/2.35Ghz*** A76 16901 1766 (core 0) 2930 (core 7) 3m25s 110fps (wayland) http://ix.io/4e8w ****SBC-Bench broken big cores at 408Mhz Khadas Edge2 Armbian Jammy Gnome 5.10.110-media 1.8Ghz A55/2.4Ghz A76 15424 1524 (core 0) 2589 (core 7) 3m56s 110fps (wayland) Mekotronics R58 Debian Bullseye x11 xfce4 5.10.110 1.8Ghz A53/2.2Ghz A76 16241 1758 (core 0) 2839 (core 1) 4m50s V2.83.5 Mekotronics R58 Debian Bullseye wayland 5.10.110 1.8Ghz A53/2.2Ghz A76 16803 1777 (core 0) 2879 (core 1) 4m35s 110fps (wayland) http://ix.io/4j40 Mekotronics R58 Ubuntu 20.04 x11 5.10.66 1.8Ghz A53/2.2Ghz A76 16477 1765 (core 0) 2897 (core 1) 5m53s V2.82 4fps (llvmpipe) Mekotronics R58 Manjaro Gnome 5.10.66-28rk 1.8Ghz A53/2.2Ghz A76 16153 1572 (core 0) 2568 (core 1) NanoPi R6S Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome Headless 5.10.110 1.8Ghz A55/2.3Ghz *** A76 16385 1449 (core 0) 2493 (core 7) 3m27s 110fps (wayland) http://ix.io/4gSl Great job.

Great job. Nice to be able to run it from USB. I tried the Jammy Gnome image. CLI works but once it boots into desktop the display stops working. Keyboard also not reacting(numlock). Cheers.

I'd like to go but finances ain't there. Have to save for a cycling trip in a few months, and investing in computer gear for kids. Tho just going one afternoon is possible. But I've got to sit 2 hours on the train to get in Brussels, and then go from station to the expo, and 2 hours back. So would be a very boring day. And for just being there a few hours I don't feel it's worth it. If I would go I'd rather stay the night in Brussels on Saturday and leave Sunday evening. And have my recording gear with me to make video's. Next year I can plan it if others promise to go. Enjoy your time in Brussels. I hope the weather will be good.

My gathered info : RK3588(S) comparison -------------------- RK3588(S) 8nm LP process 4 x A55 @ 1.8Ghz + 4 x A76 @ 2.4Ghz (Not the same for all boards, between 2.2Ghz and 2.4Ghz) Mali-G610 MP4 "Odin" 6TOPs NPU Up to 32GB memory theoretically (haven't seen any 32GB yet) RK3588 RK3588S PCIE3.0 2x2 Lanes PCIe3.0 N/A PCIe2.0/SATA3.0/USB3.0 MUX 3x1 Lane PCIE2.0 2x1 Lane PCIE2.0 3x SATA 3.0 2x SATA 3.0 1x USB3.0 (refer USB section) 1x USB3.0 (refer USB section) Board SoC Memory eMMC SD-Reader NVMe/PCIe/SATA Network USB2 USB3 USB-C (dp) HDMI-out HDMI-in DP Active cooling Powered with 1. Khadas Edge 2 Pro Rockchip RK3588S 16 GB LPDDR4X 2112 MHz 64 GB xxx xxx xxx 1 x 1 x 1 x DP 1 x xxx xxx xxx (Case not out yet) USB-C PD 2. NanoPi R6S Rockchip RK3588S 8 GB LPDDR4X 2133 MHz 32 GB yes xxx 2 x 2.5GbE + 1GbE 1 x 1 x xxx 1 x xxx xxx Metal case USB-C PD 3. Radxa Rock5B Rockchip RK3588 16 GB LPDDR4X 2112 MHz Module yes 2 x M.2 NVMe 2.5GbE 2 x 2 x xxx 2 x 1 x micro-HDMI xxx XU4 heatsink no sufficient USB-C PD (Issue with PD, I'm using 5V 4A PSU) 4. Mekotronics R58 Mini Rockchip RK3588 16 GB LPDDR4X 64 GB xxx SATA ribbon 1GbE 2 x 1 x 1 x (no DP) 2 x 1 x full size 1 x Big heatsink sufficient *** 12V barrel jack *** Case could also be used to cool with a thermal pad 5. Mekotronics R58X-4G Rockchip RK3588 8 GB LPDDR4X 64 GB xxx SATA/NVMe/mini-PCIe 1GbE 2 x 1 x 1 x DP 1 x 1 x full size 1 x Big heatsink sufficient *** 12V barrel jack 6. Orange Pi 5 Rockchip RK3588S 4/8 GB LPDDR4(x) xxx yes NVMe 1GbE 1 x 2 x 1 x DP 1 x xxx xxx No USB-C 5V Other specs Khadas Edge 2 Pro also has 3 x CSI + 2 x DSI, and can have an I/O board for SD-card and uart Radxa Rock5B has 1 x CSI + 1 x DSI OPi5 has 2 x DSI + 3 x Camera port Benchmarks ---------- Board | OS | Kernel | Clockspeeds | 7z b all cores | 7z b core small core | 7z b big core | NicoD Blender | Supertuxkart | SBC-Bench Radxa Rock 5B Armbian Jammy cinnamon 5.10.110 1.8Ghz A55/2.4Ghz A76 15996 1533 (core 0) 2651 (core 7) 3m25s 65fps (panfork) http://ix.io/4jOb Radxa Rock 5B Radxa Bullseye xfce4 5.10.66-27 1.8Ghz A55/2.4Ghz A76 16138 1522 (core 0) 2649 (core 4/7) 4m35s V2.83.5 xxx Khadas Edge2 Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome 5.10.66 1.8Ghz A55/2.35Ghz* A76 16901 1766 (core 0) 2930 (core 7) 3m25s 110fps (wayland) http://ix.io/4e8w ****SBC-Bench broken big cores at 408Mhz NanoPi R6S Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome Headless 5.10.110 1.8Ghz A55/2.3Ghz * A76 16385 1449 (core 0) 2493 (core 7) 3m27s 110fps (wayland) http://ix.io/4gSl Mekotronics R58 Debian Bullseye wayland 5.10.110 1.8Ghz A53/2.2Ghz A76 16803 1777 (core 0) 2879 (core 1) 4m35s 110fps (wayland) http://ix.io/4j40 Mekotronics R58 Ubuntu 20.04 x11 5.10.66 1.8Ghz A53/2.2Ghz A76 16477 1765 (core 0) 2897 (core 1) 5m53s V2.82 4fps (llvmpipe) Mekotronics R58X-G4 Armbian Jammy Gnome 5.10.110 1.8Ghz A53/2.4Ghz A76 16421 1767 (core 0) 2852 (core 1) 3m28s 75fps (panfork) SBC-bench broken Pros+++ ------- Khadas Edge2 Pro Small and USB-C PD powered, so great for my trips but needs a metal case for that. Having the extra USB-C is great. It is either a 2nd fast access to the SoC, and can be used for 2nd HDMI display. OOWOW is great to install new software, no need for RKDevTool. The Khadas software is pretty good. Khadas has a great team that's active on their forum. NanoPi R6S Metal case makes it awesome. It is limited, but for what I wanted it's doing the job better than expected(fast NAS and even watching video). USB-C PD powered, so if I don't find a case for Edge2 I can also use the R6S on my trips. SD-Reader is great for booting and installing software. Mekotronics R58 mini Full sized ports. For home use it's good to have a device that's not tiny. Great to have the display ports on back and side and USB on the front. Case is nice, but not used for cooling. Great for digital signage with 2x HDMI + 1 x DP. Mekotronics R58X-4G mini-PCIe, NVMe and SATA. Full sized ports. USB-C with DP. Nice case, can be used to cool the board with a thermal pad but not needed. Rock5B Armbian support. Has dual M.2 sockets. SD-card reader and eMMC socket. Full sized HDMI-out ports. 2.5GbE. Cons--- ------- Khadas Edge2 Pro No metal case yet(March). Missing SD-card, IO board can add that but then doesn't fit in the case. Seems designed for use in a small kiosk/digital signage, so all small special connectors for additional devices like displays and camera's. NanoPi R6S Designed for networking and so missing a lot of other features(NVMe, PCIe, extra USB-C with DP, multiple USB3 ports...). Mekotronics R58 mini Not the best I/O. No sd-reader what makes the use of RKDevTool needed. Expensive. Wouldn't be as good for me if I didn't know great Armbian devs(MonkaBlyat). Mekotronics R58X-4G No sd-reader what makes the use of RKDevTool needed. Expensive. Wouldn't be as good for me if I didn't know great Armbian devs(MonkaBlyat). Rock5B Software not ready for my daily needs, seems the worst supported board. USB-C PD has issue's. No good cooling sollution comes with the board. My opinion on available software -------------------------------- 1. Khadas Edge2 Ubuntu 22.04 works great with panfork. You can also use the blob GPU driver if you start with the Gnome image. Almost everything works as it should. 2. Mekotronics R58(X-4G) Armbian Jammy Gnome works great with panfork. The Mekotronics images aren't perfect. Works well for desktop/video/gaming. 3. NanoPi R6S Ubuntu 22.04 gnome works well, but panfork doesn't work with it. It's very stable, did my desktop tasks as a champ. But I'm missing gaming on it with x11. 4. Radxa Rock5B Armbian Jammy Gnome is buggy as hell. Only Armbian runs ok on it. The Debian image from Radxa is a mess, Android is unusable. DTB file seems badly hacked together. My favorite ranking for now --------------------------- 1. Mekotronics R58X-4G It has it all. Good cooling, nice it's not tiny, NVMe and SATA and mini-PCIe. 1 less full sized HDMI vs R58 but USB-C DP works too. Armbian thanks to MonkaBlyat brings this on top. 2. NanoPi R6S Limited but works well for what I wanted from it. The case is a big plus. Panfork not working. But the Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome image is great for desktop tasks. Stable, great video playback. Performs well as NAS too. Love that it has an SD-reader. I do not need dual 2.5GbE, so could have been better having NVMe instead of 2nd 2.5GbE port. 3. Khadas Edge 2 Missing of a metal case brings this down, waiting for the case to be released. The software from Khadas is the best of all. No SD-card is also a big minor. Best board for travel laptop. 4. Mekotronics R58X Works well. But has a lot less I/O than R58X-4G. Then again has 2 x full sized HDMI-out vs 1 x on R58X-4G. 5. Radxa Rock5B Bit dissapointed by the software. It does have all the bells and whistles I want. But it isn't ready for daily use yet. Armbian is the only ok-working image for it. And that is a lot more buggy than all the others. ***Don't have the OPi5***

Thank you for the instructions. I done it on Rock5B with Jammy. I had tried before but wasn't able to make it work. Must have had one of the steps missing. It plays 4K files great and with HDMI audio. Thanks to all involved. Not sure if I can make a video about it, I'll just refer to this thread in the next RK3588 review. Thanks.