Rock 3A single board computer review, including hardware specifications of this RK3568 board, together with demos running Debian and Ubuntu server, including speed tests of a NVMe SSD, eMMC flash module and a micro SD card.
You can learn more about the Rock 3A on its wiki pages here:
https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock3
My previous review of the Rock Pi 4B is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4p9EpjA0ZM
with a follow-up on NVMe here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6EUfqywsOI
And my coverage of the the Rock Pi 4C is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTyIFZPgBT0
More videos on SBCs and wider computing and related topics can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/explainingcomputers
You may also like my ExplainingTheFuture channel at: http://www.youtube.com/explainingthefuture
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction & changes
00:46 Unboxing
05:11 Hardware specification
09:06 Debian
15:11 NVMe SSD
19:06 Wrap
#Rock3A #SBC #ExplainingComputers
I am wondering if you could test one of the SBCs with an m.2 slot with a m.2 to SATA card, I have seen these that support 6 SATA connections. ORICO M.2 PCIe M Key to 6 x SATA 6Gbps Adapter Card for Desktop PC Support RAID-PM2TS6 It seems like this would allow you to create a nice NAS. Can these boards run freeNAS, if so, it would be great.
@husnimuttaqin4636 Says:
i use sd card for mmc. why after i login nothing happen
@altgreen817 Says:
How software working now? Better video? Because Mali GPU g52,. Is very good
@syafiqf.k.academiasolution7881 Says:
Hi, Thank you for the introduction. I am wondering whether the CSI camera is compatible with all Raspberry Pi cameras, like the one supplied by Arducam.
@maciejm8490 Says:
What is the size of this heat sink?
@jorgebelo6958 Says:
I enjoy your videos very much.
You do have a talent to convey information clearly.
Gould like to see a video of the ROCK 5 Model B - ARM Desktop level SBC (and probably comparison with the other ROCK SBCs) that was announced on January 2022.
@MagnanimousOne Says:
Thanks!
@theruisu21 Says:
thanks for your video!
@none941 Says:
Following-up, I've got the Rock 3A running on Ubuntu 20.04 server to which I've added the Mate UI. It is running very well, even playing YouTube vids, but it is balky when asked to run a movie from my smb server using VLC. There are clearly things that need to be fine-tuned where video is concerned. Sound, however, seems to be great, which I've been getting via Audacious!
I'll be attaching my drives to the 3A using USB 3.0 - Sata drive bays. I currently have 10 TB of capacity, most of it loaded, so these will be accessed via samba as they were in my old setup. Stay tuned!
@none941 Says:
With shortages everywhere and Pi 4s being rare as hen's teeth, I ordered the 8GB version of t he Rock Pi 3A to takeover file and media serving duties from my old AMD A10 PC. At the very least, I hope to cut power consumption by half while getting equal or better service from the machine.
Your comments at the end of the video, plus the demonstrated viability of Ubuntu Server 20.04, convinced me to try-out the Rock Pi 3A. I'll let you know how my adventure goes in a little bit. It will be a week or so before it arrives. Cheers!
@jamesbucsis6296 Says:
Junk
@jamesbucsis6296 Says:
Can u put raspberry pi softwear on these boards
@OpenGL4ever Says:
@ExplainingComputers
Sadly you didn't *benchmark 3d performance.* Open Source drivers for the Mali GPU do exist for Linux. And modern desktop environments like Gnome 3 or KDE do require OpenGL and similar support. The desktop environment shown here, XFCE, is an old school 2d thing only.
Could you make a new video with 3d acceleration comparision and feature completleness of all modern SoCs with Raspberry Pi like form factor?
@montecorbit8280 Says:
Anybody want to see Pi OS attempted on this board?? I know I do....
@jhonedoe3734 Says:
Which one do you think is more powerful? The 4 or the 3A?
@jhonedoe3734 Says:
Your reviews always answer ALL of my questions! I just admire your work. Keep it up!
@mmsti7867 Says:
Can I connect a E-ink screen with it?
@googleuser6875 Says:
Well I got one of these a few weeks ago, and was quite frustrated with the lack of support. If I'm not mistaken the board has been out for about 7 months now, and most of the operating systems are half baked still. When one seeks support from the wiki or forum little assistance is provided. I did however finally get one to run, and when I started the hardware tests suggested, I found the system showed 1.4 GB of memory, when I ordered the 4GB version. It went back. Very frustrating....
@stephenlittle7534 Says:
Thanks for showing us what not to get.
@Scarter63 Says:
Do you have any videos discussing Intel's ME and AMD's PSP backdoor chips that are part of every computer now?
@szymongrabarczyk3561 Says:
Wow! Almost a milion subs! Haven't been here for a while. Man, you have grown... Congrats!
@cam_DA_Hawkdriver Says:
And again this manufacturer misses the mark with software. The hardware is impressive, but that means nothing without good software.
@sanjaybhatikar Says:
I often have trouble finding docker images for my Raspberry Pi projects that are compatible with Pi's ARM architecture. Is this problem going to be compounded with SBC like Rock Pi!?
@adityapandey7798 Says:
Except for the little disappointing software, the hardware seems O.K.
i just wish they will start making ssd drive mounting more sophisticated. Nice video as always, good to see Stanly the knife and Mr. Scissors doing good and getting along wih matilda.
@BaldyMacbeard Says:
This is quite exciting. While ~1000 MB/s aren't much, it is still quite enough to fully saturate the 1 Gig Ethernet. Meaning we might actually have a board feasible for a cheap, reasonably fast NAS. I wonder if we could get a 4x SATA to M.2 adapter working here...
@BackpackandGear Says:
I'm wondering if you had purchased the highest priced wireless card, would you have gotten faster speeds with your internet?
@radek_X Says:
Radxa marketing works. I have purchased that model and did not received all accesories. you are lucky - because you are you tuber.. hammm
@richardpalmanteer9798 Says:
Chris, I didn't notice a section on power requirements for the board? Can you power with a standard phone power adapter say 1.0A or a 2.0A adapter?
@sc0or Says:
M2 extender must be designed to be mounted beneath a main board, as a CPU is on top now. What s mess..
@gacherumburu9958 Says:
👍
@zuggranate8043 Says:
how much power does it need? is the raspberry pi power supply enough? (5V 3A)
@MrBobWareham Says:
I am going to stick with Raspberry pi all this other stuff is just confusing different names and layouts no no
@TheWeirdguy6 Says:
I think It's time to do a raspberry pi into video .. watching you use raspberry OS to then use python to then program stuff is kinda melting my brain. Seems like youre typing code into different windows/tabs that are inside of other windows.... Still not even sure what a gpio pin
@marcello4258 Says:
Is there an advantage using emmc over micro SD?
@gr8bkset-524 Says:
So beside RPI, which SBC vendors have good S/W support?
@DJxSIS Says:
Is the Nvidia jetson Xavier NX a SBC? It R\W 3000mb/s. :)
@Mizai Says:
2:38 you dont need scizzors anyways becouse those arex resealeble baga
@johngoard8272 Says:
I am totally confused as to what tis setup is supposed to be compared toa "normal" computer one.
@jamesdinsmore9022 Says:
Thanks!
@tiitulitii Says:
Hi, I could not send you THANKS, because only Denmark address is accepted.
@MichaelLenz1 Says:
Interesting! What about performance comparing to latest pi?
@qzorn4440 Says:
o-my going from the original smallish foot-print to bigfoot addons...🦶 the raspberry-🥠 has lots of examples like opencv...🎥 Klaatu barada nikto 👽merry Christmas ☃🙃
@cjlowe1650 Says:
Why do these boards include USB 2.0 since it's backwards compatible? Why not make em all USB 3.0?
@amnesiac-original Says:
Do you know how to program in some languages?
Do you program?
You should.
Your brain is able to do it.
8bit guy makes games in assembler.
You should also create something... I mean program.....
@MrTogorv Says:
Hello.
Tks a lot for this video.
Il live in France. So, where should I buy the Rock 3A ?
I don't want to buy it from a china website ...
Have a nice day !!!
@croshev Says:
Hello there!! Thanks for video!! Just wandering will it work with JMB585 M.2 To NGFF 5 Ports SATA3.0 Adapter Card M.2 Key M SATA3.0 Expansion Card from Aliexpress? Can you please help me with that? Thanks in advance!!
@one_step_sideways Says:
Just you wait, the Rockchip RK3588 is coming very soon (finally) and there will be new SBCs like Rock 5 and a board from Pine64 announced probably by the end of the year. This is alarming for the Raspberry Pi fanatics that are still stuck on 40-28nm, because this SoC will be made on a Samsung 8nm process, will feature 4xA76 cores at 2.4-2.6GHz, 4xA55 cores at 1.8GHz, which will be around 2.5x more powerful than the RK3399 that's found in Rock Pi 4 and other RPi 4 competitors in single core and especially multi core applications, a much more powerful Mali GPU (almost 10 times more powerful than the one in RK3399), an NPU 3.0 with 6 TOPS performance and other great features, like support up to 32GB LPDDR5.
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