Is there any plan to have higher end of Rock Pi like 8GB RAM version of 4C? If there is, I will definitely buy one! Even for personal use, I always have 30 tabs (reading a lot of documentation for self-learning) and watching 1080p or playing it on the side, then do research on line while also, BT and using VPN client so I need more than 4GB. I don’t mind paying for $120 for a Rock Pi 4C with 8GB RAM (of course if we can boot OS from NVMe that would be the best), but if it’s $100 for 8GB RAM, I will buy it right now!
Desktop Replacement
There is a hardware limitation on the RK3399 processor. Rockchip is developing a successor to the RK3399 which is the RK3588 will be released in 2020 but I still don’t know if it will support 8GB.
Let me ask you a question, have you ever used a 4GB RAM CBS?
I ask this because I opened 20 tabs in the browser using a ROck Pi 4 and still have some memory left.
No but then I have a Pixelbook with i5/8GB/128GB and I could make it choking because I don’t just open 30 tabs but also running BT (Linux), Handbrake (Linux), VLC (Android), VPN client (Android), VSCode (Linux). And those 30 tabs are not just content, some of them are like Google Drive, Google Keep, Google Photos, Gmail, and LinkedIn.
If Rock Pi has an 8GB version or better yet 16GB, I would give it a try, I believe I can get around on those x86 apps with ARM based substitutions but I really need that much RAM to run all my apps.
Support up to 2 ranks (chip selects) for each channel; totally 4GB(max) address space.
1 Like
Hi. I’ve got the RockPi4B with 4GB, and also a NanoPi M4 with 2GB.
I use the M4 as main desktop with an NVMe hat. I’ve added 1GB zram, +8GB swap file on NVMe.
Works just great.
You could add 2GB zram, and 10GB swap file on NVMe and you’ll have 16GB available memory.
I use my sbc’s to do video editing and rendering and even for 3d modelling with Blender, and rendering.
If you configure them right, then even 2GB ram isn’t a real contraint. Just don’t use a swap file on sd-card. That just blocks a system.
That’s really cool! What’s the real-time performance? For things that can let it run, I am okay by leaving it overnight. But real-time is the thing I need for work, like running very smooth on development, open up apps fast enough, and while watching 1080p video without frame loss.
On my NanoPi M4 I’ve got Armbian Bionic with the Media Script from JMCC for the RK3399.
With that I can watch up to 1440p Youtube videos with 1440p display resolution without frameloss with Chromium. Should also work on the RockPi4. I haven’t tried it.
I do use different SBC’s for different tasks. For video editing I mostly use the Odroid N2. It’s got a faster CPU, and 4GB ddr4. But it ain’t got VPU/GPU drivers for Linux.
But all my main desktop tasks are now done on my 2GB NanoPi M4.
The RockPi4 is used to experiment with different images and with mainline.
I often tried different SBC’s in the past to use as desktop replacement. When I tried it the last time I had to admit it’s now better than using my pc. My pc is getting old, it makes a lot of noise, consumes a lot of power, it can’t output 4K display resolutions, …
My SBC’s now do better in all that. Only to play a pc game I turn on my pc.
Actually NanoPi M4 is one of the SBC I wanna try because of all hardware except RAM.
@hksduhksdu I was initially going to purchase NanoPi M4, until I learned about Rock Pi 4. M4 is nice board, however old revision used LPDDR3 vs LPDDR4 on Rock (fixed in new revision M4V2), and more importantly their PCIe is limited to 2x lanes (and the bundled SATA controller with proprietary inteface is limited to single lane), also USB3.0 ports sit on a hub - making it arguably worse design than Rock Pi 4. Not to discourage you, just things you should take into account when pulling the trigger. In my personal opinion, RockPro64 by Pine64 is a better option to experiment with other RK3399 boards - however it is physically too big for some applications, including mine.
1 Like