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$50 ODROID-C4 Raspberry Pi 4 Competitor Combines Amlogic S905X3 SoC with 4GB RAM
Hardkernel has just launched an update to its ODROID-C2 board, with ODROID-C4 SBC equipped with a 2.0 GHz Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor combined with up to 4GB RAM, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0 video output, and the usual 40-pin I/O header.
That makes it a worthy competitor to Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM, especially since it supports Ubuntu 20.04, CoreELEC, Android 9, and LineageOS operating systems, and comes with a proper heatsink for cooling for just $50 plus shipping.
[...] Besides benchmarks and power consumption, the boards also differ in terms of features. For example, Raspberry Pi 4 offers dual HDMI output and built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, while ODROID-C4 comes with a single HDMI port, and WiFi/Bt is optional via a USB dongle. On the other hand, ODROID-C4 comes with four USB 3.0 ports, and offers support for eMMC flash module, while RPi 4 features 2x USB 3.0 + 2x USB 2.0 ports, and does not offer an eMMC option.
See also: Raspberry Pi 4 vs ODROID-C4 Features Comparison
Also at Notebookcheck and LinuxGizmos.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:52AM (6 children)
You can buy a Raspberry Pi anywhere, while Hardkernel's DHL shipping cost from Korea doubles the purchase price.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Thursday April 30 2020, @07:13AM (4 children)
The difference is that with a Hardkernel system you get a well-engineered, competently designed system while with a Pi you get something that looks like an undergrad cribbed it together from ideas off various vendor data sheets. I've had Pi setups where I spent more than the cost of the Pi itself on all the external add-ons you needed to get it to work like it should have if it had been properly designed, e.g. custom-modded powered USB hubs to power USB devices that the Pi couldn't power but without backpowering it via the USB.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:53PM (1 child)
It's true, the PI has a number of warts and blemishes that range from minor inconvenience to truly annoying.
But the difference between a Pi and a Hardkernel system is there are thousands upon thousands of hackers posting fixes and work arounds for every conceivable problem. You're not alone when you run into a Pi problem. Someone, somewhere has hit the same roadblock as you and posted what they did to get around it.
With a Hardkernel system, you better hope you don't hit an odd case problem because chances are you're not going to find a solution. It really is a numbers game.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday May 01 2020, @02:18AM
I run both Pis and Odroids but haven't really found this to be a big issue, both are generic Linux devices and I haven't found anything I need to run that doesn't run on an Odroid just as well as on a Pi, or for that matter any other random Linux device like a Beaglebone. I'm running Pihole on an Odroid, Piaware on an Odroid, and so on, not just generic any-Linux-system software like WeeWx but stuff written to run on a Pi that runs just as well on an Odroid.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:23PM (1 child)
Also, with a Raspberry Pi, there's a whole world of hobbyists that are playing with it. Sure there are a few people using ODROIDs, but the Raspberry Pi community is massive in comparison. Which leads to more support, because there's more of a market. I'd choose a Raspberry Pi every time.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @09:02AM
Sorry, but that isn't a convincing reason to use raspi. I've seen that "massive community", it's similar to the community around Ubuntu - 99% know-nothings looking for a step by step guide to run kodi. The odroid community is smaller, but if you have an issue you can post on the forums and the /developers/ will respond to you. Plus, odroid has quality hardware. I have a near 5 year old XU4 currently clocking over 2 years uptime as a media server and still running strong.
(Score: 1) by DancesWithRobots on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:11AM
If you're in the states, try Ameridroid. Base price costs about 10% more, but you have a whole range of shipping options. But no stock on the C4 at this time.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bot on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:53AM (3 children)
Bought a C1, that I now use as video player in a waiting room with kodi 8h/day, pretty stable. Only gripe, the stable kernel stayed at version 3.10 or something, newer ones are experimental.
I also got the hifi DA converter, which sounded clean enough for my needs.
Then this happened, https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=115&t=18874 [odroid.com]
So, out of the blue they asked me to confirm a shipping address and sent me a free replacement. I didn't need to ask for it, didn't even know about the issue, didn't have to send stuff back, nice. It's not about the mistakes you make, it's about the way you get out of them.
I am going to go for the C4, I notice the recommended voltage is now 12v (even if 5v should be possible looking at the spec) so it probably doesn't get power using one of the usb ports like the c1 used to, in alternative to the dedicated jack. On the good side it is compatible with the DA converter, so I should be able to use it as a supercollider unit and probably also a mixxx unit. 12v is not a bad voltage too in terms of versatility. After the C4 becomes obsolete I hope to find a 8 core fanless ryzen SBC in their lineup :) they do x86 arch too IIRC.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:29AM
I have an old C1 on the shelf, it was replaced by a C2 a couple of years ago. Used as a media centre running LibreElec (now running CoreElec). The C2 does hardware accelerated H264, and it does 4K at 60fps so it's been great. Uptime must be over 6 months, never misses a heartbeat. I'm talking to a mate now on buying 2 and splitting the shipping for the C4.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:58PM (1 child)
I notice that the C2 is only $4 less than the C4. That seems a bit odd.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday May 01 2020, @02:36PM
Maybe the C2/C1/C0 has still some demand (for many uses even a c0 is good enough and they probably suck less power). It's not wise to give them away, especially if the board components are not produced anymore.
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:41AM
"GIVE ME FIVE PENISES FROM MEN AND NOW I HAVE SIX." - cardinal anus biter
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday April 30 2020, @08:57AM
I cheated and read TFS (the proper soylentil comments after looking at the title, not TFS or TFA, that's cheating), it says 4 USB ports, which is true but not automatically comparable with guys who have one USB2 and one USB3 host.
The C4 site says "The average ~340MB/s of throughput should be acceptable for many applications. Since four USB host ports share a single root hub, the transfer rate will be lower if you use multiple USB3 devices at the same time".
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by petecox on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:04AM (5 children)
It will encourage rockchip and allwinner to lift their game.
Up the RAM to ≥ 8GB and we might see the year of the ARM64 Linux desktop!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:31PM (4 children)
Some SBCs out there have 8 GB of RAM, it just isn't common yet. RPi 5 will probably include an 8 GB SKU, since the 1 GB SKU of RPi 4 has been eliminated, leaving only 2/4. So expect it to be normalized within 2-3 years.
If you meant that the SoCs themselves need to support the amount of RAM, in RPi 4's case the Broadcom BCM2711 can address up to 16 GB. Rockchip RK3399 can only do 4 GB, but it's likely that the RK3588 [wikipedia.org] will allow more.
RPi 4 is the ARM desktop (32-bit if Raspbian is running on it). They have sold millions of them.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by petecox on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:15PM (1 child)
Yeah, I was referring to TV boxes and Pinebook that seem to max out at 3 or 4GB due to SoC limits. admittedly costing a magnitude more, a smartphone may contain triple that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:50PM
I didn't look at the RK3399Pro:
https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2019/12/04/introducing-the-rock-pi-n10-rk3399pro-sbc-for-ai-and-deep-learning/ [seeedstudio.com]
4 GB has been given to the CPU and GPU, with another 4 GB dedicated to the "NPU".
I'm guessing that 4 GB is still the limit for the CPU/GPU but the NPU gets its own memory channel. Still, that's neat.
In smartphone land, 16 GB [soylentnews.org] has been hit. But you just know that some mad lad company will try to put out a 20 GB or 24 GB RAM smartphone within the next 2 years.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @06:46PM (1 child)
I don't have a good sense of scale for performance, how practical is it to run applications in an 8GB SBC ARM processor that actually use more than 4GB of memory? My vague, completely made up on the spot sense is that if you ran program that needs 6GB of memory on a SBC ARM processor it would be so absurdly bottlenecked by the CPU that the extra RAM would be a waste.
It just seems odd to me that $500 laptops with 15 watt processors and 4GB of RAM are still commonplace, but now we're getting into SBCs with - presumably? - much less computing power but potentially 8GB or more of RAM.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:40PM
Just by using the web browser and opening browser tabs (not an insane amount of them), I can eventually tie up most of the RAM in cache/buffer until it starts dipping into the default 100 MiB of swap on the microSD card. Clearly, JavaScript is partially responsible, but there you have it.
If there is any one application that can legitimately use up most of the 4 GB and need it, it's probably machine learning ("on the edge"): Image recognition - what 4GB of memory can do [raspberrypi.org]. RPi Foundation just launched a new camera [raspberrypi.org] so it's likely people will be doing more of that. Some SBCs are more specifically oriented towards machine learning. For example, the RockChip RK3399Pro has a dedicated "NPU", and can apparently have its own RAM as seen here in the Rock Pi N10 [seeedstudio.com].
I recently picked up a Lenovo 100e with 4GB of RAM and MediaTek MT8173C (similar specs to RPi 4) for about $70. It uses zram so that amount is stretched further. In laptop deals [slickdeals.net], it looks like 8 GB RAM has been segmented into ~$350 territory. But if we go by the RPi 4B's launch prices, 1/2/4 GB for $35/45/55, it seems likely that 8 GB could have been offered at a $75 price point. RPi Foundation has dropped the 1 GB SKU from the lineup and lowered the price of 2 GB to $35, and RAM prices will probably drop over the next 2-3 years, so an 8 GB SKU of RPi 5 seems likely.
Part of the problem with laptops is that they've gone thinner, perhaps switched to 1 DIMM single-channel, but most importantly, the memory is often soldered. So there is no ability to upgrade it. I would have no problem picking up a cheap $200 laptop with 4 GB and dropping a 32 GB SO-DIMM into it for another $100. And it would be worth it to me since I could open an absurd amount of stuff on it. But where's the $300 32 GB RAM laptop? Nowhere to be found.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:22AM (2 children)
I like having the complete state of the board contained on the flash card. All Pi's are identical - there's no "oops, I flashed version X onto this one and version Y onto this other one." Pick one out of the pile, stick the flash card in, and off you go.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:56AM (1 child)
Then you’d appreciate the eMMC module option. Removable yet way faster than SD/TF.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @09:20AM
And waiting 2 weeks to ship a new $1.49 eMMC>USB adapter every time you lose or break it. (Or booting from SD card to write to eMMC, playing musical chairs with rebooting).