Radxa Orion O6: Mini-ITX mainboard with ARM CPU for standard Linux
An affordable board with a fast ARM processor that can boot vanilla Linux via UEFI. What's more, the Orion O6 fits into PC cases.
(Image: Radxa)
The Chinese manufacturer Radxa sells a rather exotic mini-ITX mainboard: The Orion O6 comes with a soldered-on ARM processor, but unlike many other ARM single-board computers, it should be able to boot numerous Linux distributions via UEFI. There are also plenty of connections and PCI Express 4.0.
The heart of the Radxa Orion O6 is the ARM processor CD8180 from the Chinese company CIX Tech. It integrates a total of 12 CPU cores in accordance with the latest ARMv9.2 specifications: four Cortex-A720 with a clock frequency of 2.8 GHz, four additional compressed Cortex-A720 with 2.4 GHz and four small Cortex-A520 with 1.8 GHz. For comparison: The Raspberry Pi 5 uses four significantly slower Cortex-A76.
In addition, there is a modern Immortalis-G720 GPU with ten shader clusters. It accelerates ray tracing effects on request, but does not achieve smooth frame rates in complex games. An AI unit (Neural Processing Unit, NPU) is also included; it manages 30 trillion computing operations per second (30 TOPS).
The processor has a thermal design power (TDP) of 30 watts, so it urgently needs a CPU cooler. 8 to 64 GByte LPDDR5-5500 RAM are soldered directly onto the mainboard and cannot be expanded.
Exciting: "ARM China" is explicitly printed on the board. There has been a dispute between the parent company ARM and its Chinese subsidiary for years, but apparently ARM China still has access to the latest specifications. The Taiwanese chip contract manufacturer TSMC produces the processor using 6-nanometer technology.
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DT boot, ACPI follows
CIX provides an Open Firmware Device Tree (DT) for UEFI boots. An option with Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is to follow, according to a Radxa employee. Debian and Fedora are therefore currently running; Ubuntu and Windows on ARM, among others, are to become executable this year. According to Radxa, CIX has already shown Windows demos with the CD8180.
The Orion O6 uses all kinds of additional controllers for its connectivity. It includes two 5 Gbit/s Ethernet ports, HDMI 2.0, Displayport 1.4 and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A (5 Gbit/s, formerly known as USB 3.0), two USB 2.0 Type A and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type C ports. A Displayport signal for connecting a monitor runs via one of the two C sockets. Both are capable of USB Power Delivery.
As an alternative to the standard ATX power connection, the mainboard can be operated via USB power. Radxa recommends a power supply unit with 20 volts at 3 amps, i.e. at least 60 watts.
Radxa Orion O6 (3 Bilder)
Radxa
)The PCI Express x16 port is connected with eight PCIe 4.0 lanes. Theoretically, it can even run graphics cards. An M.2-M key slot addresses an SSD via four PCIe 4.0 lanes. There is also an M.2 E-key connection (PCIe 4.0 x2), for example for a WLAN module.
The Orion O6 fits into all PC cases that accept mini-ITX mainboards. The board is available in China via Arace and Aliexpress. Prices range from 209 euros for the 8 GByte version to 455 euros for the 64 GByte version. A rudimentary acrylic glass housing and a simple CPU cooler are always included. An aluminum housing including a cooler with radial fan is available for 39 euros.
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