What power supply are you using?

#1

Hi all!

I am looking for a working power supply for my Rock 5B. I can’t get one of the originals RADXA PD 30W… setup: SBC + WiFi/BT + NVME SSD + SD + USB Receiver.

I know about the list, shared via RADXA (https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/5b/power_supply) but the power supplies on there are old and not sold in Netherlands anymore.

Furthermore I tried to buy three different power supplies with more or less the same power but the Rock 5B keeps rebooting… (I tried 30W and 45W PD power supplies of anker)

So my question is; what power supply are you using?

#2

Oh small additional info: I am running Android TV

#3

For the best possible stability, I’m using a PD trigger cable (set to 12V) with a corresponding connector.
You can then use any PD power supply you have, provided it’s capable of 12V output with 30-60W.

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#4

Thanks for your reply. So this is a trigger cable or something?

There is no Power Supply that’s suitable for the Rock 5b…? One that’s working instead of all kind of different modules between a power supply and the board?

#5

Well, Rock 5 is indeed a bit picky when it comes to PD negotiation…
There are some attempts to improve compatibility, and e.g. @DarkevilPT would swear that Samsung EP-TA845 will always “just work”, but the bottom line is, nothing ever beats a fixed-voltage cable for this board.
Feel free to try that Samsung charger, but if it fails (or if you, somewhat like myself, already have too many chargers as it is), a trigger cable is still the most stable solution.

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#6

Mine does work what doesnt helps is my middle man the HUB (not jabba the… never mind). Yes… its tricky.
Then the USB’s things not helping to boot when something is plugged… or maybe the cheap cables or the nvme… theres the lack of one type c just for power another just for the monitor… that would probably be the overall fix for all our issues… idk …

TA-845 seems to work fine for me but sometimes booting and rebooting hangs and by hanging it means u will need to do a power cut.

If you boot from the nvme… it will most likely require u to unplug your usb devices from the board to boot as it goes into reboot loops which is stupid cause sometimes does boots fines with all plugged other times just messes up.
If you try to turn off or reboot it somethings hangs and doesnt completes the turn off and to reboot it requires power cut.

Endless bootings happens when on NVME with usb devices.

MicroSD none of this Sh1t happens.
Emmc (dont remember having this much hassle either).

Its nvme and usb’s mostly.
If you have an hub that doesnt behave like a good quality one that can also be a factor… the board connected directly to the TA-845 on nvme never gave me issues… its just cause of my hub… But I believe I described exactly the behaviour on this matter.

Edit: Some say rpi 4b power supply from pihut works fine… I have the same issues
Some say radxa oficial one is the wey to go so… pick your poison… u will eventually be caught in some annoying restart hanging…

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#7

Many thanks for all you mr input.

I think a trigger cable is the one and only stable solution if I am correct.

It’s stupid that RADXA had built a board like this… I thought buying a rk3588 board was fun and easy but already having problems with a power supply… common… that’s stupid! And they don’t share any reliable information about it. :unamused:

#8

I have to agree with you. Some blame rockchip, some might even say they have zero issues with x and y power bricks the truth is that at some point it doesnt behave right.

At some point I thought the spi flashing would solve it which it did for a short time I mean if I used only armbian would be fine but then if I flash a MicroSD use it for another system and then remove it to go back to the nvme these things starts to happen again…

Some will say its me not knowing what I am doing the truth is… I have done plenty of testings and every now and then it hangs…

I want to believe there might be a permanent solution for this and amazingfate seems to be working on a ‘hack’ to let it boot without messing up cause the truth is that… on nvme without usb devices plugged it tends to boot right / right after it boots you can plug them back on it wont shutdown or reboot… so theres some communication time gap that gets triggered by the usb theres something there yes and doesnt make sense we go full 200W power bricks just cause of some sort of glitch… tbh… this is a sbc that uses low power and its powerfull enough to handle big things.

Jeroen look… this sounds depreciative but the truth is that… its not a big deal… you will have tons of fun with it and Im pretty sure a solution will came up.
I use armbian on my nvme and openfyde on MicroSD Im not even using the emmc atm (I might for future storage or anything…).

I remember saying in the past OpenFyde didnt had any of these hanging issues like on Armbian… the truth is that once I moved OpenFyde to the nvme the same hanging issues started to happen. So its not openfyde that is better than Armbian at all its just the nvme and usb’s. Emmc has some tricky things too…

Its the nvme crapping up energy or communication times idk… if this misbehaves now with an ssd storage I wonder how bad it will with an pci 3.0 GPU card… :rofl:

Anyway its not all bad. Ive read before that some folks used some codes to fix the voltage and that it solved everything idk if thats entirely true I havent tried going that way… mostly cause it makes me confusion specially since each flashing could void those terminal inputs… so whats the point ? Each Operative System u will be flashing will require those rules… sounds to me that a more permanent solution to that needs be rulled out.

Theres is one thing Id like to add maybe you would like to investigate this @amazingfate

Armbian OS the 22.0 version jammy I was able to reboot without needing to power cut.
Since 23.0 those issues came back.

Idk if the 22.0 had some kind of power control in its system that lost it to the 23.0 but it had it under control.

I like to keep it simple… I use this board for fun and I like to test other systems not everything goes right straight away but theres always a solution.

#9

I was having issues with PDs. It seems that on a lot of PD supplies seem to default to their lowest setting and a lot of times that’s around 5 watts. I created a power supply (power distribution) to power the board through the GPIO at 2x 5v, 3 Amps as well as some external components using a fixed power supply. I ended up with a PCB larger then the Rock 5 itself lol. I ended up finding a Chrome Book power brick that supports 5/9/12/15/18/20 volt with a minimum power of 30 watts and a max of 65 watts. I’m running it through a USB-C splitter with a dedicated 100w PD port and my board seems to no longer have any power issues.

#10

You seem to have replaced watts and in one case volts with “Amps”. These are not the same.

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#11

Lol sorry, you are correct. I just flipped them for whatever reason. Lack of sleep, IDK, but if I ran 15Amps I’d have melted the board!
The GPIO pins are rated for 3A and there are 2 leads on the 5v rail so 5v@3A for 15w x2 for 30w total. So when I was choose a PD power supply I looked for a 30w MINIMUM power supply so even at it’s lowest output it would be enough to run the board.

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