Orange Pi 5: Excellent RK3588S Octa Core SBC

Orange Pi 5 SBC review, including hardware specifications, with demos running Ubuntu and Debian, and applications that include Chromium, GIMP, LibreOffice, Blender and Kdenlive. There is also discussion of the differences between an RK3588 and RK3588S system on a chip (SoC), with tests to show the implications for the speed of an M.2 NVMe SSD.

The Orange Pi 5 featured in this video was purchased on pre-release from AliExpress in November 2022 for £53.03 plus taxes and shipping, which came to £74.35 delivered. At the time of making this video (in the second week of January 2023) the 4GB model with no accessories included was selling on AliExpress for $75.00. But as I say in the video, Orange Pi prices seem to change very regularly, and the board is sold in a lot of different packages.

Please note that the above is not an affiliate or otherwise sponsored link, and that I have no association with Orange Pi.

My previous review of the Rock 5B is here:

My previous review of the Orange Pi 800 ARM keyboard computer is here:

If you are interested in comparing the RK3588 and RK3588S SoCs, you can review information as follows:

RK3588 datasheet:

RK2588S Datasheet:

For additional ExplainingComputers videos and other content, you can become a channel member here:

More videos on computing and related topics can be found at:

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:50 Unboxing & Specs:
07:19 Ubuntu
12:05 NVMe Speed Test
14:55 Debian & Applications (inc Kdenlive render test)
20:33 Wrap

#OrangePi5 #RK3588S #explainingcomputers

[JeffGeerling]

The main thing Orange Pi is doing that *could* differentiate themselves from the rest of the Pi clone crowd is maintaining their own Orange Pi OS.

I wish them luck, and hope that the OS is well maintained. Having a first party OS that "just works" would be a huge advantage compared to the "here are 6 OSes that all work... more or less (usually less)" which is the status quo in the space :(

[Chris.Wiley.]

Thanks for demonstrating the difference between the RK3588 and RK3588S. That is very helpful!

[antoniosandoval]

Love when you call Mr. Scissors, brings me calm feelings, like if I was watching a Mr. Rogers episode. Great show! Love your content!

[andrewd]

I have a 16GB version and have been very impressed. I added a USB wifi dongle and that sorted the lack of onboard allowing an nvme drive to be used. I run Ubuntu. I was also impressed by the online manual. As always excellent video. Thanks

[anthonyfmoss]

I realise this is a somewhat off the wall comment. In times past, countless English people used to go to Evensong at church and hear the vicar dressed in black intone the familiar words of the service. They knew the exact form of the words and where they would come. This was a source of great comfort to many. Nowadays, I an Englishman - and many others across the world - go to YouTube on a Sunday evening to watch and listen to a man dressed in black, with a serious face and glasses intone very familiar words each week. We know whereabouts in the liturgy they come, especially the "blessing" at the end of the "service": "Thats it for soon". Am I the only one to find this very comforting? I particularly like the "sermons" on SBCs Rev Barnatt. Good one tonight vicar!

[TheGregEgg]

I was really disappointed to see the board isn't orange in color.

[climbeverest]

Great hairstyle! What a lovable guy! Thanks! Love the knowledge you disseminate, I love your intonation!

[perrymcclusky]

Once again, another Orange Pi product that is impressive with it’s early software not being disappointing! I like the way SBC, s are heading, Really looking forward to your “Raspberry Pi 4 Alternatives” video. I’m very interested in how software development has improved on some of the boards you have reviewed in the past. Looking forward to your next video!

[david]

I know Raspberry does off-production making of their chips to keep costs down. But, they had better consider the repercussions of having the Pi out of the retail(?) environment for so long. There are dozens of "Raspberry Pi" alternative videos out already and I have moved on to a board that is powered directly by 12v, mostly because I am NOT going to pay $260 from scalpers for a Pi and directly powered by 12v makes what I am doing easier on me. Pi will still have its following, but a lot of others have moved on. Even printer companies have started making their own powered by 12/24v to make installation easier. Raspberry is not going to have the following they had for so long the longer this keeps being the norm.

[chriskaye]

Dear Chris, I really like your content and delivery, it brings back memories of the BBC when it used to provide amazing programming like Tomorrow’s World many years ago.

[merthyr]

Interesting choice to ship Debian AND Ubuntu, especially with both using XFCE.

As for performance, I'm very impressed! My Raspberry Pi 4B costed upwards of £100 just to get the 8GB model (before we consider heatsinks and external peripherals) and runs Plex Media Server, Sonarr, Radarr, Qbittorrent, Nextcloud all concurrently with no issues using DietPi Linux (Which I think you should do a video on sometime, Chris! it's a beast beginner homeserver OS).

This is cheaper and is a big step up in CPU performance out of the gate. Even without GPU acceleration it could easily become a homebrew netflix setup without making a peep of sound from cooling (the main downside of x86 boards is their noisiness and power draw imo). Looking forward to more RISC-V and ARM excellence this year!

[ulrichcordes]

Thank you for your demonstration of Orange PI 5. I have RebornOS installed on my PI4 (4G) and searched now a good replacement for my old laptop computer. Your Video helped me to decide to purchase a 8GB Orange PI 5 from AliExpress with a big cooling fan heat sink. I will try to install RebornOS, which is also available for the Orange PI 5 an will install it on a NVMe drive. Go on with you videos, I am impressed of your detailed work. Thank you 👍. Greeting from good (c)old Germany.

[lesliedeana]

Jumped out of bed to be here with everybody! Keep your eyes averted!

[thewiirocks]

Thanks for reviewing this board Chris! I do think you should have highlighted the different memory configurations a bit more. Having a 16GB version available for such an incredibly low price is a real game changer. In many ways, I think this is far more important for real-world use than having a faster NVMe drive. There's a point past which more NVMe performance doesn't do anything useful if the rest of the system can't keep up.

Altogether, I love the starch out of this board. It's fantastic out of the box with excellent software support. Community support is ramping up quickly with Armbian providing their own OS image *with* 3D acceleration support. The system has enough grunt to be a daily driver desktop, but also makes an excellent server platform with some truly impressive thermals despite the incredible power of the system!

At times like this, I'm reminded of how the quad core Banana Pi was simply uncoolable, managing to burn myself on my attempts. Apparently they have a giant heatsink for the tiny board now that I'd like to try out. But you compare that to the Orange Pi 5 which is software decoding Youtube without a heatsink or fan. That is *impressive* to say the least!

[dang]

Nice. They keep getting better.

And when you mention Audacity, it reminded me of a project I did in college. We took a song, adapted it and I really like the result.

[sylvainlathuy]

I own an Orange Pi 5. It is now November 2023 and I tested the following Linux images: Orange Pi OS, Debian, Ubuntu. Here is what I found out: None of these are 100% functional right after install. The best right now is the Debian because it is the most fluid interface with GPU acceleration properly enabled and it makes a huge difference on my 4K display. The best environment is XFce and best browser Chromium. Gnome and Firefox are painfully slow in comparison. I tested the power consumption: around 7W when browsing the web with many tabs and videos open. ~10 Watts when recording 2 HD streams (set at 15fps) from v4l USB 4K cameras with "motion" + watching youtube at the same time. Impressive! Perfectly usable as an every day computer if you are not afraid to fix a few configuration issues yourself...

[amcadam]

Living near Cambridge, I want to support the raspberry Pi foundation by sticking with the "official" pi SBCs, but given they've messed around home users for so long now and not kept the technology up with demand, allowing competitors to pull ahead, my allegiance is sliding to any company that can provide good products and this one looks great.

[drummindog]

Thanks for your awesome content. I was watching on a phone and got a chuckle. Those apples looked like green peppers. Keep up the good work, sir!

[horseradishpower]

Thanks for this video. Your Raspberry Pi alternative video is one I am looking forward to. I am sure you will give us some very thought provoking alternatives to consider.

[brianwood]

Great video Chris. I know where not playing spot the difference, but the item you pictured @ 17:28 was a Green Pepper (Not an apple). Ha Ha. These comparisons are really helpful. Thanks for sharing