A new mini PC in the form of the RockPro64 is
expected to be made available in a few months time, with a launch pencilled in
for March 15th, 2018 and pricing expected to be placed between US$ 59 and US$ 65. The
small mini PC will be sporting a Rockchip RK3399 processor, offering a 6-core
chip equipped with two ARM Cortex-A72 CPU cores, four Cortex-A53 cores and ARM
Mali-T864 graphics.
With a slightly larger but similar form factor to
the awesome Raspberry Pi, the RockPro64 measures 5.2 x 3.1 x 0.74 inches in
size and providing more processing power. Similar to the Raspberry Pi the
RockPro64 is equipped with a I/O ports and GPIO pins and has been designed
primarily as a development board. However, as with the Raspberry Pi, it can
also be used as a small desktop computer, thanks to its support for both
Android and Linux operating systems.
The entry-level RockPro64 mini PC comes equipped
with 2GB of RAM, a microSD card reader the storage for US$ 60. If you are looking
for a little more performance then the 4GB of RAM system might be worth more
investigation and is expected to sell for around $79, and will also be arriving
in March 2018. For more processing power the even faster Rockpro64-AI system
will be launching during August 2018 priced at US$ 99.
Ports on the RockPro64 mini PC include Gigabit
Ethernet, USB 3.0 Type-C and Type-A ports, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, 40-pin GPIO
header, 1 x PCIe 4x slot, and 1 x HDMI 2.0. Unfortunately, connectivity via
Bluetooth and wireless connections are not built-in however an SDIO socket is
provided for connecting a wireless module if desired. As more information is
announced for the RockPro64 nearer its launch date as well as confirmed to
release dates and pricing, we will keep you up-to-date as always.
