We just wrote about the NanoPi R3S LTS dual gigabit Ethernet SBC and router with HDMI output and a speaker connector last week, but FriendlyELEC is back again with the similar NanoPi R76S equipped with two 2.5GbE ports, HDMI video output, an M.2 socket for a WiFi/Bluetooth SDIO module, and a more powerful Rockchip RK3576 octa-core SoC coupled with up to 16GB LPDDR5.
Like its predecessors, the NanoPi R76S is offered as a bare board or with a metal enclosure. It comes with a 32GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot, a USB 3.0 port for storage or wireless expansion, a USB-C port for power, a small 8-pin GPIO FPC connector, and a few buttons and LEDs.
NanoPi R76S specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3576
- CPU – Octa-core CPU with 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0 GHz
- GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, and Vulkan 1.2
- NPU – 6 TOPS (INT8) AI accelerator with support for INT4, INT8, INT16, BF16, TF32 mixed operations.
- VPU
- Video Decoder
- H.265, VP9, AV1, and AVS2 up to 8Kp30 or 4Kp120
- H.264/AVC and MJPEG up to 4Kp60
- Video Encoder – H.264, H.265, MJPEG up to 4Kp60
- Video Decoder
- System Memory – 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4X or 16GB LPDDR5
- Storage
- 32GB eMMC flash
- MicroSD card socket with support for UHS-1
- Video Output – HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60
- Networking
- 2x 2.5GbE RJ45 ports via RTL8125BG PCIe controllers, each tested up to 2.30 Gbps (Rx) and 2.10 Gbps (Tx) with iperf3
- Optional WiFi/Bluetooth SDIO module via M.2 E-Key socket
- USB
- 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port
- 1x USB-C port for power and data (to flash firmware)
- Expansion – 8-pin GPIO FPC connector
- Debugging – 3-pin UART header (1.5 Mbps baudrate)
- Misc
- Power, User, and Mask buttons
- 2-pin connector for RTC battery for the HYM8563TS RTC
- 3x LEDs: SYS, LED1, and LED2
- Power Supply – 5V/3A via USB Type-C port
- Dimensions – PCB: 58 x 58 mm (8-layer PCB); enclosure: 62.5 x 62.5 x 29.2 mm
- Weight – 37.5 grams without the case, 145.5 grams with the metal enclosure
- Temperature Range – 0 to 70°C
FriendlyELEC provides a long list of supported OS and software tools: Alpine Linux, Android 14 Tablet/TV, Buildroot, Debian 12 Core, Debian 11 Desktop, FriendlyWrt 21.02/23.05/24.10 (OpenWrt fork), OpenMediaVault, Proxmox VE, Ubuntu 20.04/24.04 Desktop, and Ubuntu 24.04 Core, all with Linux 6.1 LTS and u-boot 2017.09 support. That’s pretty much the same list as for the NanoPi R3S LTS, albeit with a few variations. More technical details and links to images can be found on the wiki.
People who want to use the R76S as a headless networking device with its enclosure will again deplore the lack of access to the UART header without having to open the device, while the similar Rockchip RK3582-based Radxa E52C provides USB-C debug port for easy access to the serial console. However, note that the Radxa device does not offer HDMI output or an M.2 socket for WiFi/Bluetooth.
Most other NanoPi boards do not support WiFi and Bluetooth, but the new Rockchip RK3576 board does through an M.2 socket for an SDIO wireless module and two internal antennas.
The NanoPi R76S starts at $49 with the board only, 2GB RAM, and 32GB eMMC flash, and goes up to $99 for the module with 16GB RAM and a metal enclosure. For some reason, the company has yet to offer the AC200 SDIO wireless (WiFi 5 + Bluetooth 5.0) module as an option on the R76S page, but I could find it for $9.99 on another page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Thanks Jean-Luc for a great article! Seems from the pictures that the SoC is on non-finned side of the metal enclosure, how do they plan on dissipating the 10W (15W?) of heat? I couldn’t find answer in the linked wiki page either.
Don’t think that’s the case – my reading of the pictures is that the fins are on the SoC side although not clear what the thermal bridge to the SoC looks like. The picture of the open enclosure base shows the eMMC / M2 side of the board
The Rockchip RK3576 SoC is on top of the board and faces the finned side of the enclosure. There should be an extrusion inside to make contact with the SoC through a thermal pad
Yeah, usually that’s how it’s done, you get a big metal chink as large as the SoC and as tall as the enclosure to touch the SoC. Quite honestly, FriendlyElec has been the first to deliver these awesome metal enclosure and they’re generally excellent at dissipating the heat, across all their models in general. There’s no reason to worry about this point.
These companies need to understand that device grade WiFi modules aren’t intended for something called a router. The range will be appalling, as there are no power amplifiers or LNAs, which all router grade WiFi modules/designs have.
I don’t think they call this a wireless router anywhere. It’s a router with wireless capabilities via a standard connector. You could use it for other wireless applications, such as lorawan, ble, etc etc.
Right?
Exactly. The wifi is a management interface tied to a VLAN only admins have access to, in case for when LAN ports goes down or mistakenly misconfigured to loose ethernet access. Simply a convenience. But for home users with low demands, wireless routing can also be set up to be used as a pocket Openwrt AP for on the go at that cheap price.
Until we get to see that it can route at 2.5 Gbps speed, I’m not even sure it’s a wired 2.5 Gbps router. We get all this random stuff that these companies call a router, but a lot of the hardware isn’t up to the task of routing traffic.
and then there’s the missing externally-acessible debug-uart over usb port… 😁 BTW, where’s the other usual suspect grumbling this is not present, we need him here, right now !
Several of us have already complained about the exact same thing on the R3S article yesterday. There’s no point rehashing the same arguments over and over. FriendlyELEC does great hardware that many of us refuse to buy anymore because of this. It’s too bad to lose sales on this, but I have probably explained it 10 times to them and it doesn’t seem to imprint well. Let’s not bore everyone here again and just silently skip to another product.
The board is only $49 you cheap bastards, that’s a couple of beers less on Friday night. Mine will arrive in a week or two, I will let you boys know.
I’d love to be able to use the m.2 for other things. I wonder if it has msata or pci 1x?
> I wonder if it has msata or pci 1x?
RK3576 has neither SATA capabilities nor additional PCIe lanes.
Can this be used as a media player?
Yes. But for this use case, you have a wider choice of SBCs.
Do you mean, something like 3588? This looks better, yes, but costs also way more that this. I have Xiaomi box s gen2 and I hate it due to laggy UI and pretty limited software/usability. I’m looking for more powerful decide 6 which I can use as a simple NAS and media player.
I’d be grateful for any direction where I can look for such platform.
Provided you don’t need Android, many people would just want a media player run LibreELEC or CoreELEC on SBCs or TV boxes. It’s been a while since I’ve just the project, but I know the level of support varies between devices, so you may want to check the better-supported devices.
Your box has a CoreELEC for it: https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/xiaomi-mi-box-s-2nd-gen/52032
Otherwise, any SBC with HDMI could, in theory, be used as a media player. But user’s requirements vary a lot. Some people may be happy just playing a 1080p60 video in Linux, while other users will require 4K, a smooth UI, audio passthrough, AV1 codec, automatic frame rate switching, Google Play store, etc…
HDMI 2.0 instead of 2.1 – whyyyy?
It looks great!
My R6C runs pretty great @3W and its 2TB storage. If my ISP would offer a 2.5Gbps internet connection I would definitely switch to the R76S.
So if you’re on the fence, I would recommend you buy it. Its less then $100 incl. postage.
Heck at this point I will just buy it for the experience and tinkering, it could always be a nice LibreElec/KODI box if not a router.
Mike
The RK3576 (R76S) already is in the kernel from what I read, whilst the RK3588S (R6C) will be in 6.18 and is only partially supported since 6.3.
This is not true. The RK3576 shares many components with the RK3588, which will significantly shorten its development phase.(in some cases it only requires RK3576 tailoring).
You can track its development progress through the RK3576 Kernel Status Matrix. Most basic router components are already in the kernel. It only lacks the HW crypto engine, so OpenVPN or WireGuard performance will not be optimal.