The Radxa ROCK 4D single-board computer has the Rockchip RK3576 or RK3576J SoC which provides an octa-core CPU (4x Cortex-A72 + 4x Cortex-A53), Mali-G52 GPU, and 6 TOPS NPU. It’s targeted at makers, IoT enthusiasts, hobbyists, PC users, industrial applications, and more.
For this article in the series, I’m looking at the power consumption of the Radxa ROCK 4D.
I’ll see how Radxa ROCK 4D (“ROCK 4D”) compares to various small computers. They are the Radxa Rock 5T (“ROCK 5T”), the Firefly AIBOX-3588S (“AIBOX-3588S”), the Orange Pi 5 Max (“Max”), the Orange Pi RV2 (“RV2”), the Orange Pi R2S (“R2S”), Banana Pi BPI-F3 (“BPI-F3”), and the Raspberry Pi 5 (“RPI5”). I’ve also included a few Intel mini PCs with the following CPUs (“N95”, “N100”, “i7-1360P” and “Core Ultra 7 255H”), as well as an AMD mini PC, the Minisforum AI X1 Pro (“Ryzen AI 9 HX 370”).
Let’s begin with power consumption at idle. The results are captured in the chart below.
The ROCK 4D’s power consumption of 2.7W at idle is one of the lowest out of the machines tested. The AIBOX-35822S and Orange Pi 5 Max’s 1.3W and 2.4W respectively at idle still impresses me.
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 with the exception of the Orange Pi R2S which has no video output.
- The Intel and AMD Mini PCs are using the Power Saver CPU governor. The Radxa ROCK 4D, Radxa ROCK 5T, Firefly AIBOX3588S, Orange Pi 5 Max, the Orange Pi RV2, Orange Pi R2S and Raspberry Pi 5 are using their default settings with no underclocking. At idle the Firefly AIBOX-3588S runs at 400 MHz, both the Radxa Rock 5T and Orange Pi 5 Max runs at 408 MHz, Pi 5 runs at 1500 MHz. The Orange Pi RV2, R2S and Banana Pi BPI-F3 run at 1600 MHz.
- WiFi and Bluetooth are enabled on all machines with the exception of the Orange Pi R2S and the Firefly AIBOX-3588S which don’t have either.
- Both the Radxa ROCK 4D and Radxa ROCK 5T are running Radxa OS (a customized Debian 12 with KDE Plasma), AIBOX-3588S is running Debian 12 (Bookworm), the Orange Pi 5 Max is running Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish), while the RV2 is running Ubuntu 24.04.2 (Noble Numbat). The Orange Pi R2S is running Ubuntu Server 24.04. The Pi 5 is running the Raspberry Pi OS (which is based on Debian 13). The Banana Pi BPI-F3 is running Bianbu OS 24.04. The other machines are running Ubuntu 25.04.
Next page: Page 2 – Power Consumption With CPU Stressed
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Power Consumption With System Idle
Page 2 – Power Consumption With CPU Stressed
Page 3 – Electricity Costs / Specifications
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Radxa ROCK 4D | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the ROCK 4D |
| Benchmarks | Benchmarking the ROCK 4D |
| Power | I compare the ROCK 4D's power consumption to other machines |
| Radxa OS | A Debian-based Linux distribution with KDE Plasma |