Rock Pi X Is The Latest Raspberry Pi Rival With Intel Atom x5 Power For Just $39
The latest challenger to the throne comes from Radxa, which is launching its new Rock Pi X single-board PC. Unlike the newly released Raspberry Pi 4, the Rock Pi X doesn't make use of a quad-core ARM SoC; instead, it uses one of Intel's legacy Atom x5-Z8300 processors (Cherry Trail). This quad-core SoC originally launched over four years ago and has base/boost frequencies of 1.44GHz and 1.84GHz respectively. The big bonus of going with an x86 chip is greater compatibility across Windows and Linux software platforms.
The Rock Pi X is being split in to two separate families: Model A and Model B. The Model B is the more feature-packed of the two, offering 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 along with a Gigabit Ethernet port. The Model A variants don't lack that wireless connectivity.
Where the Model A and Model B do sync up, however, is with the rest of their specs. Each is available with 1GB to 4GB of RAM, and they all feature a slot for eMMC stores, a microSD slot for expanded storage, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, a USB-C connector, a 40-pin connector a headphone jack and an HDMI port.
Right now, this is how the pricing stacks up for the Model A and Model B across the various RAM configurations (there is no onboard storage by default):
- Rock Pi X Model A (1GB): $39
- Rock Pi X Model A (2GB): $49
- Rock Pi X Model A (4GB): $65
- Rock Pi X Model B (1GB): $49
- Rock Pi X Model B (2GB): $59
- Rock Pi X Model B (4GB): $75
That puts the Rock Pi X at the more affordable side of the pricing spectrum, and should make for some nice competition for the Raspberry Pi 4. At this time, there is no word on availability for the Rock Pi X family.
