ASUS PRIME J4005I-C Gemini Lake Mini-ITX Motherboard is Selling for around 80 Euros

Slowly but surely we are starting to see some Intel Gemini Lake products for sale / pre-order such as Intel June Canyon NUC Mini PC/Kits, or Jumper EBook X1 laptop, and if are based in Europe, it’s now possible to purchase ASUS PRIME J4005I-C mini-ITX motherboard for under 80 Euros. The motherboard is equipped with an Intel Celeron J4005 dual core processor, two U-DIMM slots for up to 8GB RAM, SATA and mSATA for storage, HDMI/RGB/LVDS ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and more. ASUS PRIME J4005I-C specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4005 dual core processor @ 2.0 / 2.7 GHz with Intel UHD Graphics 600 up to 700 MHz; 10W TDP System Memory –  2x U-DIMM sockets up to 8GB DDR4 2400/2133 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory Storage 2x SATA 6Gb/s ports 1x M.2 Socket with M Key, type 2260/2280 storage devices support (PCIe mode) 128 Mb Flash ROM for UEFI AMI BIOS […]

GIGABYTE MZGLKAI is an Industrial Mini-ITX Motherboard Powered by an Intel Gemini Lake Processor

Last month, we got news of Gemini Lake motherboards by ASRock, and GIGABYTE. The former provided decent technical details about their boards, but the latter basically published a more-or-less useless press release about their upcoming J/N motherboards (e.g. J4005N D2P) with very few technical details. The company has now introduced MZGLKAI industrial mini-ITX motherboard featuring an Intel Celeron J4105 core Gemini Lake processor, dual Gigabit Ethernet, five SATA ports, plenty of COM ports, and more. GIGABYTE MZGLKAI (9MZGLKAINR-S) specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4105 quad core processor @ 1.50/2.5 GHz with 12EU Intel UHD Graphics 600 up to 750 MHz; 10W TDP System Memory – 2x DDR4 1.2V SO-DIMM slots up to 2400Mhz, 8GB max. Storage – 5x SATA III 6Gbps including 4x via Marvell 88SE9230, 1x from J4105 with SATA DOM support; 3x SATA power connectors Video Output / Display I/F HDMI 2.0a port up to 3840×2160 @ 60 Hz […]

AAEON RICO-3399 Pico-ITX Board is Powered by Rockchip RK3399 / OP1 Processor

We now have a fair amount of boards powered by Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with Firefly-RK3399, Rockchip Sapphire, VideoStrong VS-RD-RK3399, the upcoming 96boards compliant Rock960, among others. But AFAIK, none of those are designed to fit in a standard enclosure. AAEON will soon change that with an update of their RICO-3288 pico-ITX board, called RICO-RK3399 featuring Rockchip OP1/RK3399 processor combined with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet and more. AAEON RICO-3399 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 (OP1) hexa-core processor with two Cortex A72 cores up to 1.8 GHz, four Cortex A53 cores, and an Arm Mali-T860MP4 GPU System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, micro SD card slot Video Output / Display HDMI 2.0 port up to 4K UHD @ 60Hz eDP connector for LCD display up to 4K UHD @ 60 Hz I2C/USB header for touch panel Audio – Via HDMI, 2.5W (by 4Ω) speaker/ […]

ASRock Unveils J4105-ITX & J4105B-ITX Gemini Lake Mini-ITX Motherboards

We’ve already seen several Intel Gemini Lake mini PCs at CES 2018 from companies such as ZOTAC, MeLE or ECS, but if we exclude LattePanda Delta development board, I had not seen any motherboards with the latest low power Intel processors. But today I found out ASRock had listed at least two Gemini Lake mini-ITX motherboards  on their website, namely J4105-ITX & J4105B-ITX, both powered by an Intel Celeron J4105 quad core Desktop processor. Both motherboards have similar specifications, except for some connectors and features: SoC –  Intel Celeron J4105 quad core processor @ 1.50/2.5 GHz with 12EU Intel UHD Graphics 600 up to 750 MHz; 10W TDP System Memory – 2x DDR4-2400/2100 SO-DIMM slots up to 8GB (2GB per module not supported) Storage 2x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors, support NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug 128Mb NOR flash for AMI UEFI BIOS with GUI support J4105-ITX only – 2x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s […]

PICO-APL3 Apollo Lake Pico-ITX Board Comes with an Optional TPM 2.0 Module

AAEON has launched another industrial Pico-ITX board powered by Intel Celeron/Pentium Apollo Lake processors with their PICO-APL3 Pico-ITX single board computer featuring either Celeron N3350 or Pentium N4200 processor together with 2 to 4GB soldered DDR3L memory, and 16 to 64 GB eMMC flash. The company explains that one of key differences against other similar board is the option for a TPM module / hardware security that would allow applications such as payment processing for retailers or on the go. AAEON PICO-APL3 board specifications: SoC Intel Celeron N3350 dual core Apollo Lake processor @ up to 1.10/2.40GHz with 12EU Intel HD Graphics 500; 6W TDP Intel Pentium N4200 quad core Apollo Lake processor @ up to 1.10/2.50GHz with 18 EU Intel HD Graphics 505; 6W TDP System Memory – 2GB DDR3L on-board (Option to 4GB) Storage – 16GB eMMC flash (32/64 GB as option), 1x SATA III port (5V/12V power), […]

Top 5 Most Powerful Arm SBCs & Development Boards in 2017 / Early 2018

Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, and NanoPi boards among others are all great and inexpensive Arm Linux development boards that do good enough job for many tasks, but they may not cut it if you have higher requirements either in terms of CPU power, GPU capabilities and performance, I/O bandwidth, and in some cases software and support. So I’ve decided to make a list of 5 single board computers or development boards that I consider to be the most powerful in 2017, early 2018. I have limited the price to $1,000 maximum, the board must be easy to purchase for most people (e.g. you don’t need to be a tier-1 automotive supplier, or operate your own datacenter), and in case the board is not quite available yet, the likeliness of actual launch must be reasonably high. Those criteria for example exclude Intrinsyc Open-Q 835 development kit since it costs $1.149 and […]

Colorful C.J1900A-BTX Plus V20 Bay Trail Motherboard Takes 8 Graphics Cards for Cryptocurrency Mining

Intel Bay Trail processors are mostly found in tablets, 2-in-1 hybrid laptops, and mini PCs, and they’ve often give placed to Cherry Trail processors, and in some cases Apollo Lake ones. x86 compatibility, low cost and low power are the main selling points of the Bay Trail processor family. Colorful has found a different use case, as they designed a motherboard with 9 PCIe x16 slots, one for a card powered by an Intel Celeron J1900 processor, and 8 to add graphics card in order to mine cryptocurrencies. The blue PCI slot takes a PCI CPU card with an the following specifications: SoC –  Intel BayTrail J1900 quad core processor @ up to 2.42 GHz with 2M Cache, integrated Intel HD graphics; 10W TDP Memory – 1×DDR3L SO-DIMM, DDR3L 1333MHz/1066MHz Storage – 1x mSATA slot, 1x SATA 3.0 connector, 1x 4-pin SATA connector Video Output – HDMI Connectivity – Dual […]

CHUWI LapBook 14.1 Laptop Manufacturing Changes – Hardware at Launch vs Several Months Later

Products may evolve over time due to parts becoming phased out (EOL), so company often issues PCN (product change notices) to the company for example to replace eMMC flash that’s not manufactured anymore by a new one. They won’t change any advertised features, so the product specifications should remain the same. Reviewers normally get product from one of the first batch of production, and if you purchase the product a few months later, after carefully reading reviews, you may end up with a device slightly different. But in some cases, the company makes major changes, while still delivering the same advertised hardware specifications. That’s apparently the case for CHUWI LapBook 14.1 laptop. The photo below shows how it looked internally for the sample I reviewed. If you zoom on the photo, you’ll find an M.2 slot on the bottom of the right PCB, potentially allowing you to add an SSD […]