We wrote about the Orion O6N Nano-ITX SBC yesterday, mentioning that the Orange Pi 6 Plus was in the works. The good news is that the CIX P1 (CD8180/CD8180) single board from Orange Pi is now available on AliExpress for $223.90 with 16GB RAM and $268.89 with 32GB RAM, including a heatsink with fan, and a 100W USB-C port adapter.
It’s the smallest CIX P1 board we’ve covered so far, but it still packs of lot of features including up to 64GB LPDDR5, two M.2 Key-M sockets for storage and/or AI accelerators, one M.2 Key-E socket for WiFi and Bluetooth, dual 5GbE networking, five displays interfaces via HDMI, DP, USB-C, and eDP, two 4-lane camera interfaces, and more.
Orange Pi 6 Plus specifications:
- SoC – Cix P1 (Codename: CD8180 or 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; Note: Up to 45 TOPS of AI performance with CPU+GPU+NPU
- Manufacturing Process – TSMC 6nm
- 12-core DynamIQ processor
- System Memory – 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB 128-bit LPDDR5
- Storage
- 64Mbit SPI NAND flash
- 2x M.2 M‑Key (PCIe Gen4 x4) 2280 sockets for NVMe SSD
- MicroSD card slot
- Display interfaces
- HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60 (note: the specs say HDMI 1.4, but it must be wrong since the standard is limited to 4Kp30)
- DisplayPort 1.4 up to 4Kp120
- 2x USB‑C ports with DisplayPort Alt Mode up to 4Kp60
- eDP connector up to 4Kp60 + touch panel connector
- Audio
- 3.5mm (headphone+mic) audio jack
- 2x speaker connectors
- Analog microphone connector
- Camera I/F – 2x 4-lane MIPI CSI connectors
- Networking
- 2x 5Gbps Ethernet RJ45 ports supporting 10/100/1000/2500/5000 Mbps speeds
- Optional WiFi + Bluetooth module via M.2 E‑Key socket (PCIe Gen4 x2 + USB)
- USB
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) “full function” Type-C port with DP Alt Mode (4Kp60) and Power Delivery
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A ports
- 2x USB 2.0 Type-A ports
- 9-pin socket with USB 2.0
- Expansion
- 2x M.2 Key-M (PCIe Gen4 x4) sockets for NVMe SSD or AI accelerators
- M.2 Key-E (PCIe Gen4 x2+ USB) socket for wireless module
- 40-pin color-coded GPIO header with UART, I2C, SPI, PWM
- Misc
- Power, BOOT, and Reset buttons
- Power, System, and Charging LEDs
- Fan connector with PWM control
- 2-pin RTC connector
- Power Supply
- 20V/5A via USB-C ports
- Battery interface with charging IC (limited details provided)
- Dimensions – 115 x 100mm
- Weight – 132 grams
Orange Pi mentions support for Debian, Ubuntu, Android, Windows, and ROS2. But it’s a little optimistic, and while all these operating systems should boot, some will miss drivers to have a fully functional system, notably Windows 11. The documentation page is mostly empty with some placeholder links for now.
The Orange Pi 6 Plus requires a cooling solution to work optimally, and the company installs the heatsink+fan combo shown in the top photos. Since the board does not have a standard form factor, they also designed a metal case for it.
Official pricing communicated by email is as follows:
- $199 with 16GB RAM
- $249 with 32GB RAM
- $9.9 for the active cooling system (Pre-assembled by OrangePi before Shipping)
- $19.9 for the metal case (Optional, and it does not seem available for sale now)
- $15 for a 100W power supply (Optional)
It’s not possible to purchase the board for $199, since it’s only available as a kit with the pre-installed active cooler and a power adapter on AliExpress. If you don’t need a power adapter, you can purchase the board on an alternative AliExpress shop. The company told us they won’t sell it on Amazon for now. Both Radxa and Orange Pi advertise 64GB RAM versions of their CIX P1 boards, but these are for sale right now, likely due to the high price of 16GB LPDDR5 memory chips.
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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