Beelink GTR5 Review – An AMD Ryzen 9 mini PC tested with Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04

Beelink GT5 Review AMD Ryzen 9 mini PC

Beelink’s GTR5 is their most powerful mini PC to date and has been released as part of their ‘GT’ series of slightly larger mini PCs that are notable for expandable storage configurations together with multiple ports and characterized by the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner. Featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 mobile processor with Radeon Graphics, Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu. Hardware Overview The Beelink GTR5 physically consists of a 168 x 120 x 39mm (6.61 x 4.72 x 1.54 inches) rectangular metal case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses AMD’s ‘Zen 3’ Ryzen 9 5900HX processor which is an eight-core 16-thread 3.3 GHz mobile processor boosting up to 4.6 GHz together with Radeon Graphics. The front panel has an illuminated power button, a ‘CLR CMOS’ button, a USB 3.1 port, a Type-C USB 3.1 port, and a […]

Android 13 virtualization lets Pixel 6 run Windows 11, Linux distributions

Android 13 virtualization Pixel 6 Linux

The first Android 13 developer preview may have felt a bit underwhelming, but there’s a hidden gem with full virtualization possible on hardware such as the Google Pixel 6 smartphone. What that means is that it is now possible to run virtually any operating system including Windows 11, Linux distributions such as Ubuntu or Arch Linux Arm on the Google Tensor-powered phone, and do so at near-native speed. Android & web developer “kdrag0n” tested several Linux distributions compiled for Aarch64 on the Pixel 6 with Ubuntu 21.10, Arch Linux Arm, Void Linux, and Alpine Linux using “the KVM hypervisor on Pixel 6 + Android 13 DP1”. He/she further explains: As far as I can tell, we can pretty much get full EL2 on production devices now. Protected KVM is optional and can be enabled on a per-VM basis, but for non-protected VMs, it looks like full KVM functionality is available. […]

Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS sells with metal enclosure for $35.99

Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS metal enclosure

Shenzhen Xunlong Software previously launched the Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS router board powered by Rockchip RK3328 quad-core processor last November for $27.99 on Aliexpress. As expected, albeit with some delays, the company has now introduced a metal enclosure for the Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS board transforming it into a complete router or gateway. You can get it as part of a kit for $35.99 plus shipping, or if you’ve already purchased the board previously, get the enclosure only for $9 plus shipping. Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS router/gateway specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-450MP2 System Memory – 1GB LPDDR3 RAM Storage – MicroSD card slot, 16 MB SPI flash Connectivity 2x Gigabit Ethernet via YT8531C Ethernet PHY and RTL8153B USB 3.0 to Ethernet chip; both tested by the company up to 945 Mbps Tx and 963 Mbps Rx On-board WiFi is not […]

NanoPi R2C Plus dual GbE router board adds 8GB eMMC flash

NanoPi R2C Plus

NanoPi R2C Plus is a variation of NanoPi R2C dual Gigabit Ethernet SBC powered by a Rockchip RK3328 processor that adds an 8GB eMMC flash for storage and replaces a 10-pin 2.54mm pitch I/O header with an 8-pin 1.25mm pitch header. FriendlyELEC introduced the NanoPi R2C last August as a lower-cost version of NanoPi R2S replacing Realtek RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet transceiver with a Motorcomm YT8521S chip for availability and pricing reasons. NanoPi R2C Plus is just an evolution of the original design. NanoPi R2C Plus specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-450MP2 System Memory – 1GB DDR4 RAM Storage – 8GB eMMC 5.1 flash, MicroSD Slot, SPI flash footprint Connectivity 1x Gigabit Ethernet (WAN) up to 941 Mbps (measured) via MotorComm YT8521S Gigabit Ethernet transceiver 1x Gigabit Ethernet (LAN) up to 941 Mbps (measured) via Realtek RTL8153B USB 3.0 to Ethernet controller USB – […]

Fitlet3 is a compact, fanless Elkhart Lake mini PC for IoT and industrial applications

Fitlet3 mini PC

Fitlet3 fanless mini PC based on a choice of three Atom or Celeron Elkhart Lake processors is an upgrade to the Compulab Fitlet2 mini PC introduced in 2017 with Apollo Lake processors. Designed to be used as a fanless industrial mini PC or an IoT gateway, Fitlet3 comes with up to 32GB RAM, supports SATA and NVMe storage, offers two 4K video outputs, up to four Gigabit Ethernet ports, optional WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, and/or 4G/5G cellular connectivity, as well as a wide range 7V to 42V power input. Fitlet3 specifications: Elkhart Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Atom x6425E quad-core processor @ 2.0 GHz / 3.0 GHz (Boost frequency); TDP: 12 W Intel Celeron J6412 quad-core processor @ 2.0 GHz/ 2.6 GHz;  TDP: 10 W Intel Atom x6211E dual-core processor @ 1.3 GHz / 3.0 GHz ; TDP: 6 W System Memory – Up to 32 GB DDR4 […]

CHUWI LarkBox X mini PC is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U mobile processor

Chuwi Larkbox X

CHUWI LarkBox X is an affordable mini PC based on a 15W AMD Ryzen 7 3700U mobile processor coupled with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 4K video output, and more. Contrary to the earlier Celeron-based LarkBox and LarkBox Pro palm-sized mini PCs, the LarkBox X comes with a larger form factor providing additional ports and possibly better cooling for the more performant AMD processor. LarkBox X specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen 7 3700U quad-core/eight-thread processor @ 2.30GHz / 4.0GHz (Turbo) with Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics; 15W TDP System Memory – 8GB DDR4, dual channels via 2x 260-pin DDR4 SO-DIMMs (upgradeable up to 32GB RAM) Storage – 256GB NVMe M.2 2280 SSD (PCIe 3.0) upgradable up to 2TB Video Output 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60 1x DisplayPort up to 4Kp60 1x USB Type -C up to 4Kp30 with DisplayPort Alt. mode Three independent displays […]

Beelink GTi11 modding – PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 slot, tweaking power limits, and eGPU

Beelink gti11 egpu

Previously I reviewed Beelink’s new GTi11 Intel Tiger Lake mini PC running Windows 11 and Ubuntu 20.04, so in this final part of the review, I’ll cover in more detail some of the features only briefly highlighted before. Specifically, I’m going to look at the PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 slot, dabble in ‘overclocking’ and explore eGPU options. Hardware Recap The GTi11 is a 168 x 120 x 39mm (6.61 x 4.72 x 1.54 inches) actively cooled mini PC and the review model has an i5-1135G7 Intel Tiger Lake quad-core 8-thread 2.50 GHz Core processor boosting to 4.20 GHz with Intel’s Xe Graphics. The review model also included a 500GB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe Gen 3.0 SSD drive with Windows 10 Pro installed, two sticks of 8GB DDR4 3200 MHz memory, a soldered WiFi 6 (or 802.11ax) Intel AX201 chip, and dual 2.5Gb Ethernet ports. Interestingly there are another two key […]

JetHome JetHub D1 is a Linux automation controller based on Amlogic A113X SoC

JetHub D1 & H1 automation controllers

I discovered JetHome Jethub D1 and Jethub H1 Linux automation controller based on respectively Amlogic A113X and S905X SoCs in Linux 5.16 changelog, as both platforms got upstreamed to mainline Linux. I had never heard of JetHome, a Russian company based in St. Petersburg, nor their products before. Both Jethub D1 & H1 will run either an Armbian-built Ubuntu operating system or Home Assistant Operating System (formerly HassOS), and support Home Assistant (Z2M), Home Assistant (ZHA), and ZIgbee2MQTT. Jethub H1 looks like a TV box with a Zigbee module, while Jethub D1 is a DIN Rail automation controller with plenty of I/Os. Let’s focus on the latter. JetHub D1 specifications: SoC – Amlogic A113x quad-core Cortex A53 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz System Memory / Storage configurations 512MB RAM and 8 GB flash 1GB RAM and 16 GB eMMC flash Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet RJ45 port Dual-band WiFi 5 and […]

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