Khadas Mind Review – An ultra-thin Core i7-1360P mini PC tested with Windows 11

Khadas Mind Review Windows 11

We wrote about the Khadad Mind portable mini PC a few weeks ago with quite a unique design bringing the Intel Core i7-1360P Raptor Lake processor to a super thin design and enabling extension through the Mind Link connector with PCIe, HDMI 2.1, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 interfaces. We’ve now had time to test the Khadas Mind with the Khadas Dock adding 2.5GbE, two HDMI ports, and several 5 Gbps USB connectors, as well as an audio jack and a full-size SD card reader with the Windows 11 Home operating system, so we’ll report our experience that has been mostly positive. Software overview and features testing The Khadas Mind ships with Windows 11 Home 22H2 build 22621.1992 and the System About menu confirms we have a mini PC equipped with an Intel Core i7-1360P processor with 32GB RAM. HWiNFO64 provides more details about the Core i7-1360P processor, Khadas Mind […]

Khadas Mind Raptor Lake portable mini PC supports desktop dock, laptop dock, and external GPU dock

Khadas Mind dockable mini PC

Khadas Mind “portable workstation” is an ultrathin mini PC powered by an Intel Core i7-1360P 12-core Raptor Lake processor, with 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, and a “Mind Link” connector with a PCIe 5.0 interface designed for docking to a desktop dock, a laptop shell, an external GPU for gaming, and so on. The mini PC itself has a limited number of ports with two USB-C ports, an HDMI 2.0 video output, and two USB 3.0 ports, but that’s sufficient when traveling, and the Mind Dock can add extra ports at home for multiple display setups and 2.5GbE networking, while the Mind xPlay battery-powered portable display can convert it into a 2-in-1 laptop, and the Mind Graphics eGPU into a high-end gaming station. Khadas Mind specifications: SoC – Intel Core i7-1360P 12-core/16-core Raptor Lake processor with 4 performance cores @ up to 5.0 GHz, 8 efficiency cores @ up to […]

Linux 6.4 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.4 release

Linux 6.4 has just been released by Linus Torvalds on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): Hmm. Final week of 6.4 is done, and we’ve mainly got some netfilter fixes, some mm reverts, and a few tracing updates. There’s random small changes elsewhere: the usual architecture noise, a number of selftest updates, some filesystem fixes (btrfs, ksmb), etc. Most of the stuff in my mailbox the last week has been about upcoming things for 6.5, and I already have 15 pull requests pending. I appreciate all you proactive people. But that’s for tomorrow. Today we’re all busy build-testing the newest kernel release, and checking that it’s all good. Right? Released around two months ago, Linux 6.3 brought us AMD’s “automatic IBRS” Spectre defense mechanism, additional progress on the Rust front with User-mode Linux support (on x86-64 systems only), the NFS filesystem (both the client and server sides) gained support for […]

Khadas VIM4 Amlogic A311D2 SBC gets 3.2 TOPS NPU

Khadas VIM4 Amlogic A311D2-N0D SBC

First introduced in 2022, the Khadas VIM4 SBC will now sell with an Amlogic A311D2-N0D Cortex-A73/A53 processor equipped with a 3.2 TOPS NPU, and the version without AI accelerator will be phased out. I reviewed the Khadas VIM4 with both Android 11 and Ubuntu 22.04 last year, and really liked the user experience notably thanks to the OOWOW system that makes it really easy to try different operating systems downloaded from Khadas servers, although some features like support for GPU acceleration still needed to be worked on at the time. One thing missing compared to the previous generation Khadas VIM3 SBC was an on-chip NPU to accelerate AI workloads, and the latest revision of the Amlogic A311D2 processor (with N0D suffix) fixes that on the Khadas VIM4. “Khadas VIM4 with NPU” specifications: SoC – Amlogic A311D2-N0D octa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A73 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz and 4x […]

Khadas VIM1S (Amlogic S905Y4) SBC review with Android 11

Khadas VIM1S Android 11 review

We’ve previously tested Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM1S Amlogic S905Y4 SBC, so we’ll switch to Android 11 in the second part to check out the user experience and benchmark the system under Android. Installing Android 11 on Khadas VIM1S board with OOWOW We’ll basically follow the same procedure as with Ubuntu to flash the Android OS. Press and hold the Function button, press the Reset button, and release the Function button. to enter the OOWOW Wizard, and if an Ethernet cable is not connected, select Network to configure Wi-Fi as the installation process requires downloading an image from Khadas servers. This time, we’ll select the latest Android 11 image namely vim1s-android-11-v221020.raw.img.xz At just 525 MB in size (when compressed), the Android 11 image for Khadas VIM1S board is fairly compact. Installing Android with OOWOW is really easy with the interface downloading and flashing the image to the eMMC flash without […]

Khadas VIM1S review – Ubuntu 22.04 tested on an Amlogic S905Y4 SBC

Khadas VIM1S review

In this review of Khadas VIM1S SBC, we’ll install Ubuntu 22.04, and report our experience testing the performance such as memory speed and eMMC flash performance, and 3D graphics capabilities. Installing Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM1S Just like Khadas VIM4 and Edge2, the Khadas VIM1S SBC ships with the OOWOW firmware that allows easy installation of operating systems by downloading the images, and flashing them directly to the eMMC flash.  You need just to connect a monitor and a USB keyboard and have an Internet connection through either LAN or Wi-Fi. Let’s start by installing Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM1S together. If no OS is installed, OOWOW will boot automatically, but if there’s already another OS installed, you can press and hold the Function button, press the Reset button, and release the Function button. After a few seconds, the OOWOW Wizard as shown in the picture below should show up. […]

SBC Case Builder 2.0 released with GUI

SBC Case Builder 2.0

SBC Case Builder 2.0 tool to create enclosures for single board computers has been released with a customizer graphical user interface, additional cases & SBCs, support for variable height standoffs, and more. We wrote about the SBC Case Builder tool to easily generate various types of 3D printable enclosures using OpenSCAD earlier this year. The SBC Model Framework used in the solution was focused on ODROID boards, and you had to type the parameters in a configuration file.  SBC Case Builder 2.0 software changes that with a convenient-to-use graphical interface allowing for the dynamic adjustment of any of the case attributes. The new version of the software also supports variable height standoffs, multi-associative parametric accessory positioning, and offers 8 “base cases”, namely shell, panel, stacked, tray, round, hex, snap, and fitted. The solution works with 47 SBCs defined in the latest version of the SBC Model Framework. The following SBCs […]

Khadas Edge2 review with Android 12

Khadas Edge2 Android 12 review

We’ve already reviewed Khadas Edge2 Pro with Ubuntu 22.04, and I’ve now had time to test the ultra-thin Rockchip RK3588S SBC with Android 12, so I’ll report my experience checking out the features, running some benchmarks, playing videos and games, etc… Flashing Android 12 to Khadas Edge2 board Our board was running Ubuntu 22.04, so in order to enter OOWOW firmware system, I had to keep pressing the function key (middle), then shortly press the reset button, before releasing the function key and entering the OOWOW interface. We can see the Android 11 image from the list we saw last month is gone for good, and a new Android 12 image dated September 20, 2022 is available. I selected that one, and OOWOW downloaded the files and flashed it to the board. Within five minutes, Android 12 was up and running on the board. As somebody who had spent several […]

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