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The Radxa ROCK 5C is a credit card-sized single-board computer with a Rockchip RK3588S2 processor, support for up to 32GB of LPDDR4x memory, and plenty of I/O options including a PCIe 2.1 interface, Gigabit Ethernet, and support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4.
It’s up for pre-order for $50 and up and begins shipping April 10th. But if you’re looking for a cheaper option, the Radxa ROCK 5CÂ Lite starts at just $30. It’s similar in most respects, but it’s designed for tasks that don’t require a GPU… because it doesn’t have one.
That’s because the ROCK 5C Lite is powered by Rockchip’s new RK3582 processor which, like the RK3588 series processors, has a mix of ARM Cortex-A76 Performance CPU cores and Cortex-A55 Efficiency cores, and an a built-in NPU for hardware-accelerated AI features.
But the RK3582 has fewer Performance cores, a slightly lower-performance NPU, and lacks an integrated GPU, which means that while you should still be able to play 4K video and even run some tasks with 3D graphics on Lite models, you’ll have to rely on CPU power alone to do those things, so expect graphics performance to be significantly better on the Rock 5C than the Rock 5 C Lite.
Otherwise, the two new single-board computers are almost identical. One of the other differences is how much memory is included with entry-level configurations: 1GB for the Rock 5C Lite and 2GB for the Rock 5C.
| Radxa ROCK 5C | Radxa ROCK 5C Lite | |
| SoC | Rockchip RK3588S2 | Rockchip RK3582 |
| CPU | 4 x Cortex-A76 4 x Cortex-A55 | 2 x Cortex-A76 4 x Cortex-A55 |
| GPU | Mali-G610 MP4 OpenGL ES 1.1, ES 2.0, ES 3.2 OpenCL 1.1, 1.2, 2.2 Vulkan 1.1, 1.2 H.265 / VP9 / AVS2 multivideo decoder up to 8K@60fps H.264 multivideo decoder up to 8K@30fps H.265 / H.264 multivideo encoder up to 8K@30fps | No GPU H.265 / H.264 multivideo encoder up to 4K@60fp |
| NPU | 6 TOPS | 5 TOPS |
| RAM | 2GB to 32GB LPDDR4x | 1GB to 16GB LPDDR4x |
| Storage | 1 x eMMC connector 1 x microSD card reader 1 x PCIe 2.1 x1 FPC interface (for NVMe or SATA SSD or other accessories) | |
| Display | 1 x HDMI 2.1 1 x MIPI-DSI | |
| Camera | 1 x 4-lane MIPI-CSI or 2 x 2-lane MIPI-CSI | |
| USB | 1 x USB 3.2 Type-A OTG / Host 1 x USB 3.2 Type-A Host 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A Host 1 x USB Type-C (5V power input only) | |
| Ethernet | 1 x Gigabit Ethernet (PoE optional w/PoE HAT) | |
| Wireless | WiFi 6 BT 5.4 | |
| Audio | 1 x 3.5mm audio | |
| Other | 1 x 40-pin GPU header 1 x PWM fan connector Power Button Power LED User LED RTC connector (unpopulated by default) Antenna Connector | |
| Software | Radxa OS / Ubuntu / Android | Radxa OS / Ubuntu |
| Dimensions | 85 x 56mm 3.5″ x 2.2″ | |
| Starting price | $50 (for 2GB RAM) | $30 (for 1GB RAM) |
via Radxa and LinuxGizmos