A few years ago the idea of a fully-functional computer with a $35 price tag seemed crazy. These days you can find models that sell for as little as $5 or $9. But the Raspberry Pi Zero and CHIP aren’t particularly powerful.

Neither is the PINE64… but it’s more powerful than most other devices that sell for under $20.

This single-board computer has an Allwinner 1.2 GHz 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor, support for up to 1GB of RAM, and a starting price of $15… at least during a Kickstarter campaign that’s scheduled to launch on December 9th.

Update: The Kickstarter campaign is now live, although the computer has a slight name change: it’s called the Pine A64.

pine64

A pledge of $15 will reserve a model with 512MB of RAM, and a 10/100 Ethernet port. Spend $19 and you can request a model with 1GB of RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, and additional connectors for an optional camera, touch panel, and video adapter.

Both models feature ARM Mali 400MP2 graphics, two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output with support for 3840 x 2160 pixel displays, and 3.5mm audio jacks. The PINE64 has no built-in storage, but there’s a microSD card slot which can handle cards up to 256GB.

The developers say the computer can run Android 5.1, Ubuntu Linux, and other operating systems.

Plug in a keyboard, mouse, display, and Ethernet cable and you’ve basically got a small, low-power computer. But there’s also a Raspberry Pi 2-compatible 40-pin header for connecting additional hardware, including accessories designed for the Raspberry Pi.

via CNX Software

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24 replies on “PINE64 single-board computer coming to Kickstarter soon for $15”

  1. I see that Pine64 is backed by former Popcorn Hour people, and their business person is a former executive at Countrywide Home Loans.
    I think I will buy a board AFTER they are finished with Kickstarter.

    https://pine64.com/our-story

  2. Why so small amount of RAM? With 4 Gb (being able to upgrade from 1 Gb for price reasons) it would be able to run a Gnome desktop as a champ (or I think so)

  3. Why do all these inexpensive mini boards and tablets only come with 512mb of RAM? It would cost what, maybe an extra $5 for 1gb instead? Gimme a break!

    1. It’s not as newsworthy to have a $20 board, when there is already a $9 board. Granted, the $9 board is not ideal for most users, but people look at the titles rather than the reality of having to spend $10 or more to make it functional.

  4. Calling it a “supercomputer” on their website makes me think of that other crowd-funded “supercomputer” that just vanished…

  5. It looks like a great 64bit Ubuntu board, which that puts it ahead of the Pi2. If it had hdmi 2.0 and hdmi CEC, I would pay $40 for the board.

      1. Pine64 appears to be very similar to Snapdragon 410. The DragonBoard 410c sells for $84 on Amazon. I checked the Geekbench results for the 410, and they are roughly double that of the Rpi2 for both single and multi-core. I am thinking that Pine64 1GB would be twice the performance as the Rpi2, making it a bargain at half the price of Rpi2. If anyone is using the Rpi2 as a desktop, Pine64 is full Ubuntu and twice the performance. I changed my mind and I am going to buy one.

        1. That snapdragon 410 is in like every under $30 smartphone makes me wonder how much OEMS actually pay for it

          1. Qualcomm doesn’t typically sell their devkits at a competitive price point. Keep in mind, even the no-contract phones are subsidized.

  6. Never cease to amaze, put in a 64 bit chip and half the ram. If you are going to put no ram in a unit go with 32 bit chip with better support like anything from AmLogic. I am anxious to see the first made with 4gb ram. I would easily get the Pi Zero before this

  7. I don’t think there is a market for so many DIY ARM mini PC startups. Most of these will flat out fail. Those that manage to deliver something will just be a one-time thing with no future support. If they can’t gather a hacker community fast enough, even those that succeed initially will go out of business after a short while. If they want to stay afloat, they have to show something that all the others didn’t do yet. Simply being cheap is not such a feature, I’m thinking about integrated GSM, FPGAs, ultra low power consumption to work from a single solar cell and such. We simply don’t need even more Arduino/RasPi/Propeller clones.

    1. I don’t understand why these board companies are using all winner processors they are hampered by having no hardware decoding in Linux so what you age getting is a cheap android box when all is said and done

    2. I think the $5 Pi Zero and the $9 CHIP are impulse purchases and enable simple projects. You can throw one of these boards in a Gameboy or Nomad case and have a cheap retro game system. They are not contenders for media devices or simple computers. The PINE and the Orange PI should allow for a cheaper media device.

  8. So a slightly upgraded orange pi with half the ram… One step forwards and one step back are there Linux drivers for the graphics on this chip?

    1. The OrangePi was my first thought, but it isn’t 64 bit and doesn’t support 4k. For $4 more, you get the extra ram and faster eithernet. Neither board supports Wifi.

      There are Mali 400 drivers from Mali and in the sunxi repo, it’s a fairly common graphics chipset on low cost boards:

      https://malideveloper.arm.com/resources/previous-releases/open-source-mali-gpus-linux-kernel-device-drivers-previous-releases/
      https://linux-sunxi.org/Mali400

      The Mali 400, IMO, is the limiting factor on these boards. They’re slow and limited to OpenGL ES 2.

  9. How about an open source car computer kit for a couple hundred more?

    1. One could be built on top of a ODROID board, and still be under $200.

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