Rock Pi 4 vs Raspberry Pi 4

I am sure it will in your mind after being involved in that conversation.

Ahem… And here in Russia it actually otherway around. Since there is not RasPi4 to buy from official retailers! While RockPi being delivered just fine.

Don’t wanna upset you, hut last time i looked in my laptops they actually had display and extra usb slots attached by XX pins ribbon…

I wouldn’t bother as the argument that ribbon cables are a rats nest to end with fitting m.2 boards with blocks of wood and screws says enough really.
Dunno what was going on there but it wasn’t thought.

An SBC is not a standard commercial product as its sits somewhere between that and partially assembled spare parts.
Its a product that could equally be used as a maker base for hobbyist or solution provider but essentially we are buying the internals of the very low end of the market in terms of cost, power and performance.

I have looked several times at the 96Boards collection and efforts and everytime been puzzled by the specifications and 96Boards seems to be one of those organisations that create specifications because that is what they do.
They make specifications and would seem isolated from both board manufactures and users and extremely inflexible specifications but if you take consumer devices the 96boards consumer spec was a joke as until the RaspberryPi4 the spec was the PI not 96Boards.

The biggest name and biggest selling consumer and also likely commercial SBC boards are the RaspberryPi because it was an extremely lean device that was just enough to be fit for purpose.
That simple design premise from the 96Boards seems to be completely missing and it just leaves me with huge questions of who those specifications are for? It would seem they are there for 96boards as that is their job.

Until the Pi4 the raspberry Pi set a form factor in SBC that was equivalent much of what has parallels to how specification was born from the IBM PC.
Good design is often free from specification and is just good design, often becomes specification, because often specification adopts the design of market leaders and is mainly market led.
The actual concept of 94boards seems to ignore the base concepts that form the basis of consumer and professional IT products via extremely restrictive specifications that severely effect design.

The subtitle for the consumer edition is “Low Cost Hardware Platform Specification” and it basically isn’t because all the market leaders of lower cost don’t use it because they have better designs of lower cost that make them the market leaders.

There is absolutely no reason to hard position an interconnect as it just makes the design less flexible and restricts the flexibility of daughter board/mezzanine layout, flexibility of interconnects to allow design flexibility has been totally overlooked.

Are you talking cheap brandless laptop that falls apart in 3 days? Every mainstream laptop has display connector and usb slots soldered directly onto the mainboard. Internal display, sure, because it has to be flexible, but what is the first thing that usually fails in a laptop? Yeah, the display.

And this is the last breath I’m ever going to waste on you.

Are you SO OBTUSE that you think I actually meant to use a piece of plywood and drywall screws? That was an example to make you THINK OF HOW SIMPLE IT IS to make something to hold everything securely together. But no, some people are so unimaginative that they need to be spoon fed every single thought because they’re incapable of generating it themselves.

Don’t like plywood then? Try plexiglass. Try aluminum. Try forming something out of fiberglass. Don’t like drywall screws? Use board standoffs.

But if you can’t take that single step beyond what you’ve heard, then you certainly have no business wasting anyone time.

Lols might not be me wasting any time and not going to waste anymore on this :slight_smile:

1 Like

Erm…well, pal, if you call HP pavilion cheap brandless, then sure, go for it. Next time, try to… I don’t know, look at iFixit guides, before telling anything

1 Like

You’re speaking to someone who is currently sitting at an HP “elitebook”, which I’ve had to rip apart more times than I can count because its a flimsy piece of trash.

I am not saying those ribbons are great but after playing with the RockPi4 and extension board they work pretty damn well.
It was just a logical question as if you do want to mount on a precision machined made daughter board they are pretty much perfect whilst giving flexibility of z height of the mounting board.
It does seem a bit pointless to go from an m.2 that points out into empty space to a ribbon converter and likely to save cost and space by being ribbon connector in the first place.
Loving the PCIe of the RockPi4 gives a huge array of options and if radxa can do a reversing adapter I would prob mount above the heatsink so access to the SD is always there.
But that is the thing about a ribbon connector above, below to the side and distance before crosstalk are all options that fixed position connectors do not give.
For a base board that might be many things flexibility of options is a huge thing and flexibility is a key word.

Does anyone know the LPDDR4 used on Raspberry Pi 4, is it 64bits? What’s the actually running freq. The chip info is not publicly available.

I have one and will have a look just got my psu and can not find where my micro hdmi adapter is!

9fd77 d9WHz

32bit I think

MT53D512M32D2DS-053 WT:D

16Gb (512M x 32) 1866MHz

Thanks. No wonder quad A72 is similar to dual A72 + quad A53. Memory bandwidth limits the performance.

Its temp its also clocked down @ 1.5ghz I have got the 30x40mm heatsink but they are sold as working without.

Heatsink is just a stick on crammed between mipi & gpio and mean crammed.
Guess they will maybe make a custom one but how it covers the wifi/bt is likely to have effect, as the current one does…

I was about to start some bench marks and I am damned if I can find my micro hdmi adapter!
The 2x hdmi is also a bit of a mystery as its still struggling with 1080p video unless its local via vlc on a single output.

I think its likely to be regarded as the worst product they have produced so far, for quite a few reasons.
But will have to see as raspberry have such a strong Media fan base.

@jack tangential question but with the Rockpi4 are there any PCIe lanes left vacant that could be used ?

I don’t know the answer but think it’s too much to ask :-), as Rock Pi 4 already provides 4 lane PCIe for M.2. In contrast, the M.2 on Khadas VIM3 has single! lane PCIe.

I had a look at the schematic as read somewhere the USB3.0 on the RBPI3 is a USB PHY on PCIE.
Answer is no with the rk3399 as all hardware is direct to the RK3399.

To be honest B & B+M key devices only use 2 pcie lanes but I think you have to have a pcie switch to allow fan out.
So unless I am going totally bat shit crazy which is as probable as any you could theoretically have a m.2 extender that has a switch and x2 m.2 but 2 lane B / B+M key only compatible.

But something like

Cheaper than I thought…

PS noticed these the other day and the 2.5g ethernet have dropped a lot in price.

https://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg91497/usb3-0-to-2-5g-ethernet-adapter/dp/CS32425

The RK3399 does have a full PCIe Root Complex most devices we use, use 2 lanes but it is very possible to include a PCIe packet switch that can support 1x4, 2x2, 4x1 lanes with 4 endpoints so if you have leftover lanes you can use then.

Personally I think the M.2 connector to ribbon converter is pretty pointless and likely costly to just a single ribbon connector.
Its perfect place would be along the gpio as that stop blocking access to the sd reader.
It could feed a pcie packet switch on the extender first board that is m.2 x2 that can also feed a 2nd board via 2x 40pin ribbon that is also m.2 x2 by using both faces.

Pcie is a modular bus and its shame there are no others available and the one we have, we are stuck with only one endpoint no matter how many lanes it uses.

I was a bit worried about not having a good performance on Libreelec with it installed in my Rock Pi due to be an Alpha version. However it surprised me as hell. I wasn’t able to play 4k yet but I will be doing it i the very future.

1 Like

Rock Pi4 vs Raspberry Pi4 conclusion: A cat licks his balls and says: "Tastes are different"

rock pi4 is the correct choice for me

  • Rock Pi 4 has M.2 NVMe slot which doesn’t interfere with USB 3 ports. This is a huge advantage if you want to add a USB 3 device.
  • Rock Pi 4 is being sold with official large heat sink. Third-party large heat sinks for Raspberry Pi 4 are more expensive than Rock Pi 4 official large heat sink.
  • Rock Pi 4 is already supported by mainline linux kernel. Raspberry Pi 4 is lagging behind in mainline linux support. It is more difficult for open source developers to support Raspberry Pi hardware.
  • Raspberry Pi Forum is managed by irritable admins. On Raspberry Pi Forum, mentioning other single board computers can easily lead to banning or censorship or warning from admins. Criticizing Raspberry Pi can quickly lead to censorship or banning on Raspberry Pi Forum. Raspberry Pi Forum admins also tend to get pissed off at technical issues not related to raspbian. They say they only support raspbian. Are they trying to sell Raspberry Pi or raspbian? At least, rock pi forum admins do not actively discourage users from talking about other single board computers or technical issues. If Raspberry Pi Forum admins were managing this forum, this kind of thread could have you banned or warned.
  • Raspberry Pi 4 has installation images for more linux distributions. If you are willing to install a linux distribution manually and compile linux kernel manually, Raspberry Pi 4 doesn’t necessarily have better technical support.
1 Like

Raspberry pi 4 is better in the comparison of price, you can easily afford a raspberry pi 4 4GB model. Follow this Raspberry Pi 4 tutorial if you are just a beginner. It has all step by step guide to get started with the pi for the first time.