This is a series looking at the Radxa ROCK 5T single board computer. It’s billed as an elegant single board computer (SBC) with 8K + 4K dual display. The SBC is based on the Rockchip RK3588(J) SoC in a compact form factor packed with a wide range of class-leading functionality, features and expansion options. The RK3588 is a low power 8-core 64-bit processor that is ARM-based.
For this article in the series, I’m looking at the power consumption of the Radxa ROCK 5T single-board computer (SBC).
I’ll see how the computer (“ROCK 5T”) compares to a variety of SBCs. They are 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”), the Raspberry Pi 5 (“RPI5”). I’ve also included a few Intel mini PCs with the following CPUs (“N95”, “N100”, and “i7-1360P”).
Let’s start with the power consumption at idle. The results are captured in the chart below.
As you can see the Rock 5T’s power consumption is slightly higher than the other ARM boards, but it’s still very low power and half the power consumption of the Intel N95 machine.
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.
- 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. The 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 Radxa ROCK 5T runs at 408 MHz, Firefly AIBOX-3588S runs at 400 MHz, 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.
- The Radxa ROCK 5T is 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 12). 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 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
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Radxa ROCK 5T | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the ROCK 5T |
| Benchmarks | Benchmarking the ROCK 5T |
| Power | I compare the Rock 5T's power consumption to other machines |