This is a new series of articles focusing on RISC-V single board computers running Linux. One set of articles will focus on the OrangePi RV2, a cost-effective RISC-V development board with Ky X1 8-core RISC-V AI CPU, providing 2TOPS CPU fusion of general-purpose computing power to support rapid deployment of AI model algorithms.
The Orange Pi RV2 is a low cost RISC-V single board computer designed to be an affordable option for those interested in exploring RISC-V technology. We write a lot about open source software. But open source hardware is just as exciting. I’m testing the 4GB RAM model which is available for around £37. Impressive considering the feature set of the board.
For this article in the series, I’ll focus on the power consumption of the Orange Pi RV2. I’ll see how the Orange Pi RV2 compares to a few other mini PCs which cost considerably more (even taking into account the cost of a case and power supply).
The chart below shows the power consumption of the Orange Pi RV2 (“RV2“) compared to the Raspberry Pi 5 (“RPI5”), as well as a few Intel mini PCs with the following CPUs (“N95”, “N100”, and “i7-1360P”).
Let’s start with power consumption when the computers are idle.
As the chart above shows, the Orange Pi RV2 draws the least power when idling. In fact, it’s amazingly frugal compared to the other machines. This might be a crucial factor if, for example, you’re going to use the RV2 as a home server machine such as a backup server.
The chart needs explanations to put the results into context.
- The chart measures the power consumption of each system (not only the CPU). It doesn’t include the power drawn by a monitor.
- All the machines have onboard graphics only.
- None of the machines have power management functionality built into the BIOS.
- The DreamQuest and Intel Mini PCs are using the Power Saver CPU governor. Both the Orange Pi RV2 and Pi 5 are using their default settings with no underclocking. When idle the Pi 5 runs at 1500 MHz. The Orange Pi RV2 runs at 1600 MHz
- WiFi and Bluetooth are enabled on all machines. It’s possible to shave a little off the results but most users will probably want the standard settings enabled.
- The RV2 is running Ubuntu 24.04.2 (Noble Numbat) The Pi 5 is running the Raspberry Pi OS (which is based on Debian 12). The other machines are running Ubuntu 25.04.
Next page: Page 2 – Power Consumption With Light Usage
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Power Consumption With System Idle
Page 2 – Power Consumption With Light Usage
Page 3 – Power Consumption With CPU Stressed
Page 4 – Electricity Costs / Specifications
All articles in each series:
| Orange Pi RV2 | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the RV2 |
| Benchmarks | Benchmarking the Orange PI Single Board Computers (Processor and Memory) |
| Power | I compare the RV2's power consumption to other machines |