Radxa Orion O6N is a Nano-ITX SBC powered by CIX P1 (CD8160 variant) 12-core Cortex-A720/A50 processor with a 30/45 TOPS AI accelerator, up to 64GB LPDDR5, support for UFS and M.2 NVMe storage, and plenty of interfaces.
It’s a smaller and cheaper version of the Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard introduced at the end of last year. It offers most of the same features, but is equipped with a CD8160 SoC instead of a CD8180 with a slightly lower CPU frequency for the Cortex-A720 big cores (2.6 vs 2.8 GHz), more storage options, fewer display interfaces, no dedicated audio port, 2.5GbE networking instead of 5GbE, and a few other differences you can see in the specifications below.
Radxa Orion O6N specifications (highlights in bold and strikethrough show differences against Orion O6):
- SoC – Cix P1 (Codename: CD8160)
- 12-core DynamIQ processor
- 4x Cortex‑A720 big cores @ up to 2.6 GHz
- 4x Cortex‑A720 medium cores @ up to 2.4 GHz
- 4x Cortex‑A520 LITTLE cores @ up to 1.8 GHz
- Cache – 12MB shared L3 cache
- GPU – Arm Immortalis G720 MC10 with hardware ray-tracing support, graphics APIs: Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0
- VPU
- Video Decoder – Up to 8Kp60 AV1, H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8, H.263, MPEG‑4, MPEG‑2
- Video Encoder – Up to 8Kp30 H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8
- AI accelerator – Up to 30 TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with support for INT4/INT8/INT16, FP16/BF16, and TF32
- Manufacturing Process – TSMC 6nm
- 12-core DynamIQ processor
- System Memory – 8GB, 16GB, 24GB, 32GB, 48GB, or 64GB 128-bit LPDDR5 @ 5500 MT/s
- Storage
- 2x M.2 M‑Key (PCIe Gen4 x4) sockets for NVMe SSD
- UFS connector for Radxa module
- Display Outputs
- HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60 with HDMI CEC support
- DisplayPort 1.4 up to 4Kp120; MST (Multi‑Stream Transport) support; dual‑stream capability
- USB‑C port with DisplayPort Alt Mode up to 4Kp60
eDP connector with built-in touchscreen support up to 4Kp60- Support for up to 3x displays
- Audio
3.5mm combo audio jack with 32Ω headphone drive capability, integrated microphone inputAudio Header for HD Audio front panel connector; standard PC case audio support
- Camera I/F – 2x MIPI CSI connectors configurable as 4‑lane or 2‑lane MIPI CSI each
- Networking
- 2x
5Gbps2.5Gbps Ethernet RJ45 ports supporting 10/100/1000/2500 Mbps speeds - Optional WiFi 7/6E + Bluetooth module via M.2 E‑Key socket (PCIe Gen4 x2 + USB)
- Optional 4G LTE/5G cellular via M.2 B-Key socket
- 2x
- USB
USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-C port with Power Delivery- USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-C port with DP Alt Mode (4Kp60)
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A ports
- 3x USB 2.0 Type-A ports
USB header with 2x USB 2.0 interfaces
- Expansion
- 2x M.2 Key-M (PCIe Gen4 x4) socket for NVMe SSD
- M.2 Key-E (PCIe Gen4 x2+ USB) socket for wireless module
- M.2 Key-B key socket
PCIe x16 slot carrying PCIe Gen4 x8 signals for graphics cards and other PCIe devices- 6x UART via headers
- 40-pin color-coded GPIO header with 3x UART, 2x I2C, 2x I2S, 2x PWM, 1x SPI, 10x GPIO
- Debugging – Serial console header; system monitoring sensors
- Misc
- 4‑pin CPU fan header with smart PWM control
- Fan speed monitoring via TACH
- 75x75mm heatsink mounting holes
- Power button, status LED indicators
System control for Power and Reset buttons, status LED indicators- Real‑Time Clock with backup battery header (instead of CR1220 holder)
- Power Supply
- 12V DC up to 5A via 5.5/2.5mm power barrel jack or 4-pin connector
24‑pin ATX power connector20V via USB-C port (65W at least)
- Dimensions – 120 x 120mm (Nano-ITX form factor)
Radxa lists support for Debian/Ubuntu Linux distributions, full UEFI support via EDKII, and BSP and SDK available. When I first reviewed the Orion O6 with a custom Debian 12 image in March 2025, there was still a lot of work to do on the software side. Since then, progress has been made, notably with Arm SystemReady SR v2.5 certification, and some recent discussions on GitHub mention good performance of the GPU and mainlining in progress. The documentation for the Orion O6N is not quite ready, but you can check out the docs for the earlier O6 to get an idea. Software support is probably not perfect yet, and some people have noticed that CIX has yet to release a technical reference manual (TRM) for the P1 processor.
We haven’t seen Radxa competitors launch another CIX P1 board just yet, but one is coming soon with the Orange Pi 6 Plus in an even smaller, but non-standard, form factor (115 x 100mm). It’s just not available for sale just yet.
The Orion O6N Nano-ITX SBC is available now for $199 in 32GB RAM configuration, and even less when using the coupon “ARACE-O6N” for a $12 discount. Before the coupon is taken into account, that’s the same price as the Orion O6 in 8GB configuration, or $100 cheaper than the 32GB version of the mini-ITX model. It also ships with a free active cooler and a free 60W PSU during the pre-order period.
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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Oh it’s pretty nice! Too bad we’re still lacking the important parts of the BIOS and kernel sources for a chip that was supposedly going to be 100% opensource, but the nevertheless the device remains awesome, and quite interesting at this price for the performance.
A few notes though: 2.6 vs 2.8 GHz: that’s not exact, in fact the O6 specs changed *after* the product release due to figuring that some chips were not stable at 2.8. Actually on the 3 I’ve touched, only one had all the “big” cores support 2.8 (and even 3.0), the other two were limited to 2.9 to 3.1 for the first cluster and 2.7 for the second one. Thus the O6 is sold at the same frequency as this one (4×2.6, 4×2.4).
I suspect that the installed RAM chips are the same as on the O6, i.e. 6400 MT/s that are operated a bit lower for stability margins. For now all the O6 I’ve had in my hands are working pretty fine at 6400 but not everyone might be as lucky. The SoC-to-RAM layout seems to be exactly the same so I expect that the conditions will be the same here; maybe they’ll later raise the frequency to 6000 MT/s as they did with the O6.
2×2.5 Gbps for this smaller form factor sounds pretty reasonable to me, however you’ll need to edit the list of supported link speeds (no 5000 Mbps).
Despite facing some internal L3-RAM bandwidth limitations inside the SoC (40-45 GB/s), the O6 remains faster than many (most?) comparable form factor PCs on a number of tasks, and is particularly powerful with LLMs. At home it is the one I use for this (at work we have the Altra with 80 cores and 384 bits DDR4 which is about 2.5 times faster).
One nice thing, the RTC is no longer the uncommon CR1220 but a simple 2-pin battery header that makes it much easier to find a common CR2016 or CR2032 battery to fit into it!
It’s not clear to me what enclosures will be usable though, and the chip *does* require active cooling.
[ PassMark cpu benchmark software sorts this SoC (12core, 2.5/2.8GHz (base/turbo)) into a range with M1 (8core, 3.2GHz, 14140) for multi threaded results having about 2/3 (~9270) and comparable to above ‘i7-3930K@3.2GHz’ to almost ‘i7-4930K@3.4GHz’ or ‘i7-8750H@2.2GHz’ for single threaded results (~1370) for comparison.
64GB version (Radxa Orion O6, not O6N) is about $650 on Alibaba(?) (thx) ]
[ at Allnet the 64GB version (Radxa Orion O6) is about $477. (thx) ]
Unfortunately, USB Power Delivery was cut from this version. Others might not care, but for me this is a deal breaker. Will the regular O6 be back in stock?
The Orange Pi 6 Plus mentioned in the post is now available, and has two USB PD ports.
https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/10/15/orange-pi-6-plus-cix-p1-sbc-64gb-lpddr5-45-tops-ai-performance/
Thank you, that looks good.
why is this important in a sbc?
Using nano-ITX is a nice move.
It seems nice, however nano-ITX is no standard. If you can find cases I’d like to see some links.
The original mini-ITX and nano-ITX where VIA “inventions”. While there were some issues with VIA at the time, for power efficiency and tiny computers they were ages ahead. The lack of adaption by the rest shows a typical NIH syndrome.