A brand new board within the Rock Pi 4 household of Raspberry Pi options has appeared – dropped at our consideration by CNX Software program. It is the Mannequin C+, which makes use of downclocked processor cores in its SoC to undercut its personal elder sibling, the Mannequin B+, on value.
There are just a few different variations, in that the C+ sports activities two micro HDMI ports as a substitute of the B+’s full-size one, and doesn’t function the onboard flash storage that’s a function of the B+, however in any other case they seem related.
The SoC is the Rockchip RK3399T, which has six cores. Two of them are Cortex-A72, the type discovered within the Raspberry Pi 4, which run by default at 1.5 GHz as a substitute of the two GHz of the OP1 within the B+ mannequin. They will, in fact, be overclocked, however solely to 2 GHz, whereas the OP1 can handle 2.4 GHz. The remaining 4 cores are Cortex-A53, seen in Amazon Hearth tablets and the Nintendo Swap. These run at 1.4 GHz as a substitute of 1.5 GHz. The GPU is similar Mali T860MP4 on each C+ and B+ boards, and the 4GB of RAM is similar LPDDR4 operating at 3200Mb/s.
Storage comes through a Micro SD card slot, although there’s additionally an unpopulated eMMC socket that may take as much as 128GB, and an M2 socket can accommodate a 2TB SSD with its switch price capped by the PCIe 2.0 x4 interface. There is a gigabit Ethernet port, with an non-compulsory HAT so as to add PoE functionality, and each Wi-Fi (dual-band AC) and Bluetooth. Enlargement comes through two USB 3 and two USB 2 ports, plus a 40-pin GPIO array. And there is even an influence button.
Talking of which, you’ll have to feed the C+ 5V at 5A through the USB-C port if you wish to use an SSD, however the board is content material with 5V at 3A in the event you don’t. The board’s dimensions are simply 3.3 x 2.1 inch (85 x 54mm), and it’ll run Debian, Ubuntu, Android (7, 9, or 11) formally, with open-source graphics drivers coming through Panfrost.
The HDMI ports are price a re-assessment, as they help completely different resolutions. One can handle 4K at 60Hz, whereas the opposite is restricted to 2K on the similar refresh price. There’s additionally a MIPI connector for further screens, and ribbon connectors for a digital camera too, so long as you’re happy with a most decision of 8MP.
The Rock Pi 4 C+ is on sale at AllNetChina for $59.99 + transport on the time of writing, with Ameridroid carrying it for $5 extra. In contrast, the B+ with 32GB of eMMC is $75 or $87 on the identical websites.