ROCK 5 in ITX form factor

Hi,

I found some interesting in the wiki



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Very interesting product!

@hipboi what are the plans for this board? Any ETA on availability or price?

Seconded! If this comes in significantly cheaper than Firefly’s ITX-3588J I’d definitely be interested.

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Happy Dragon’s Year! We are back to work from the holidays.

ROCK 5 ITX will be the most powerful RK3588 device with the latest LPDDR5, 10% faster ram than others on the market. It will be generally available in April. I think we can send some samples to developers soon.

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Great news! Thanks for the Info.
Can you show us the heat management? :blush:


There’s a more accurate board placement picture now. I really am curious about the price and if it can compete with the N100 NAS Boards for around 150-200$

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I’m also very interested in such a board.

The heatsink follows the Intel LGA115x type with 75x75mm hole dimension. We choose this for two reasons:

  1. RK3588 TDP is quite low, we can just use cooler without fan(passive cooler).
  2. This type cooler cost is low, the advantage of the ARM motherboard is low cost, you don’t want a cooler that cost half of the motherboard.
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Why not put ddr5 sodimm to make first board with easily removable RAM modules? Is this even possible with RK3588?
Yet another question - any chance for ECC?

If DDR5 is 10% faster maybe this will be that mysterious Rock 5B+, also with those four sata (in one 8470 connector) and two 2.5G ethernet :wink:

I would have preferred a PCIE slot (preferably 4 lanes) instead of the extra sata ports. This would have given the opportunity to try out different PCIE cards (usecase dependent) given the board could be placed in ITX case and powered by it. Not sure about the MIPI CSI connector given the length of the ribbon cable needs to be short.

with the given lanes of the rk3588 I do think using a riser from an m.2 port isn’t that bad of an option.

Indeed, this is the board I was looking for, as base for NAS and surveillance station. There is already a QNAP-based offer and this quite impressive Firefly ITX-3588J , but the latter is much too expensive as x86 alternative for a compact home made solution.

It seems 4xSATA are available here, and M.2 M can expand the capacity (however probably limited to 2xPICe 3.0 instead of 4x), with two RTL8125B 2.5 GbE ports included. So I am curious about full specs and price. And another question: is there hardware RAID support, as the SATA bridge is not documented?

Unfortunately, to my point of view, this ITX flavor arrives too late. I already converted my Rock5B into such solution, with a $25 ASM1166/JMB585 M.2 M module, and powered through 5V USB-C by means of a $10 specific overload protection on the 20/24 pin plug of a regular refurbished 200W ATX supply, in a FractalDesign node 304 case. As price matters, I am curious to compare. Anyway, RK3588 or better is a right SoC for the purpose.

Do you have pictures? @ydeletrain

@meco You mean pictures of my Rock 5B NAS project? Not yet, but I guess it is the right time to finalize the hardware, the wiring and test it. I just need time but may post a photograph of the concept this weekend, with non secured internal management… just to show how it can be done. Stay tuned :wink:

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@meco

Here is a preview of my Rock5B based NAS/surveillance solution. An ITX board is a smarter solution, but since I had the board, SATA M.2 M controllers (both ASM1166 and JMB585 flavors), I have just added a USB C power cable fed by a specific power board on the main 24 pin ATX plug from the power supply.

The Rock5B board is a 16/64 GB (RAM/eMMC) flavor equipped with the stock passive cooler on one side and a 5x SATA controller on the back. This really means the board has to ‘levitate’ in the case, in front of the main extraction fan of the enclosure.
The 3 SATA HDDs (software RAID 5) are powered by means of the ATX cables. The Fractal Design 304 node case can hold up to 6 disks.

I used perforated metal mounting tape for the purpose and screwed in the ITX mounting holes.
Not really fancy of course, but it does the job. I have shortly tested the solution and it works. I now need some time to secure the cables and the PCB of the small power board, then measure temperatures and power consumption at load in closed conditions, install Shinobi for the surveillance station and wire the cameras on my PoE switch and, last but not least, check if this crazy setup is suitable as NAS and surveillance station :wink:

Plugging the ATX supply at the wall immediately starts the Rock board (case power button not used) and I think the small power board is optional, if the USB C power cables can be secured in the 24-pin ATX plug (and also ‘short circuit’ 2 pins to simulate power on, I did that earlier, for the SATA HDDs only).

I hope I will be able to finish this project in the coming weeks and share my thoughts in a dedicated article…

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Looks like we now have a high-level schematic for the board:
https://docs.radxa.com/en/assets/images/rock5itx-interface-overview-1266d3c0b4e745372a48a473d78c3cdc.webp

Biggest takeaways on the storage front (for me anyway):

  • M.2 M-key is indeed limited to PCIe 3.0 x2
  • four SATA ports are fed by a PCIe 3.0 x2 controller (maybe a JMB585 or ASM1166?)

Any RESET button on the front panel ? That’s the thing I’m missing the most on many SBC and the only button I’m using on a PC.

It would seem so based on this image - unless something’s changed since this version of the board was made :smiley:

that’s the maskrom button, which you hold and press to enter maskrom mode, I’m really speaking about a reset button. I.e. the board is frozen (bad kernel, crash etc), you press it to restart.

I mean, if you look to the right of the maskrom button, in the F_PANEL section, you’ll see the bit that I was referring to. You know, the RESET reference… in the front panel connector? :sweat_smile: