Libre Computer's Renegade Elite Offers USB-C With DP, PCI-E x4, 4GB LPDDR4, 6 Cores

[LoveRPi]

The device has two full speed USB 3 Type C ports that can both be used for DisplayPort alternate mode although not simultaneously. There is a Type C laptop planned.

[L_A_G]

Lol did you see the article? USB 3.0 generates so much interference that it goes airborne and kills wifi performance on the same device if not properly shielded in the design stage.

I didn't bother bringing that up as that's just a design screw-up any moderately skilled electrical engineer should be able to avoid.

You're making no sense. Each USB 3.0 needs to be able to provide full watt so you MUST be able to provide a full watt to each port at the same time if you want to comply to spec. Shitty boards like raspi 2 and 1 (probably also 3) blew their power distribution with power-hungry USB 2.0 devices man.

Yes and there's nothing stopping the people who design and make the boards from keeping to just two (or one) USB3.0 ports as such a thing as a USB hub does kind of exist...

blah blah... Layout and traces

At what point did I imply running the traces and making sure interference isn't an issue wasn't part of the layout process? Because that's probably the bigger benefit of less ports, you can place things more freely when you have less to worry about the traces. However even at that boards with around dozen layers aren't that expensive to make anymore.

It's almost like you're making things up in your own mind at this point...

No, the issue is physical size.

These boards have the size of a biscuit, you can't separate traces as well as you can on a PC motherboard. And there is a limit on how much layers you can add to the board before it becomes stupid expensive for a consumer product.

Eh? From what I can see from the pictures on the IndieGoGo page the board presented in the article is about the same size of an RPi Model B which in turn is about the same size as the ODroid XU4 that I brought up as a point of comparison. If the ODroid can have two USB3.0 ports, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, microSD, eMMC5.0 and a USB2.0 port then I don't think signal noise is really an issue on a well designed board even at that form factor.

[Dedale]

If that board is bought by anyone in the EU expect it to be taxed to death. Import taxes plus local V.A.T. Usually high in the EU, the V.A.T.

[mzs.112000]

Great! This is exactly the kind of device I was waiting for, if you saw my other posts on this forum...
Well, still not exactly though, since it's not Mini-ITX form-factor...

[AdrianBc]

I've never really understood why the people who make SBCs even bother with USB2.0 ports when they have 3.0 ports on the board. It's not just this board and it's precursor, the ODroid XU4* has two USB3.0 ports and a USB2.0 port and from what I've seen (went trough a lot of boards last year looking for a board with fast storage-usable and network IO) pretty much all SBCs with USB3.0 do this.

*Which I've used for a process monitor that, per customer request, needed to be able to display data from weeks-months ago and am using right now as a small fanless in-office Git server.

Unless you use such a board just for an embedded project, you must use a keyboard and mouse with it, for which you need precisely the 2 USB 2.0 ports provided by it.

On boards with limited space it is a pity to waste USB 3.0 ports for keyboard and mouse. Using an USB hub for keyboard and mouse is not pleasant as most hubs have a similar size to these boards, so instead of doubling the size in an inconvenient form, you would better use a larger computer since the beginning.

Even for embedded use, there are many USB 2.0 peripherals that might be needed, e.g. RS-422/RS-485 interfaces and many others.

[L_A_G]

Unless you use such a board just for an embedded project, you must use a keyboard and mouse with it, for which you need precisely the 2 USB 2.0 ports provided by it.

On boards with limited space it is a pity to waste USB 3.0 ports for keyboard and mouse. Using an USB hub for keyboard and mouse is not pleasant as most hubs have a similar size to these boards, so instead of doubling the size in an inconvenient form, you would better use a larger computer since the beginning.

I've never had any issues using a USB hub with a SBC and I have a hard time imagining this being true for other people as well seeing how the additional clutter isn't even that big. You'll have the mouse, keyboard, power and other cables running across your desk anyway and reducing the amount of peripheral-related cables going to the actual board down to one may actually reduce the clutter. These things are after all meant for embedded and uses that size constrained, but not size constrained enough to prevent a small USB hub from being used.

Even for embedded use, there are many USB 2.0 peripherals that might be needed, e.g. RS-422/RS-485 interfaces and many others.

AFAIK USB3.0 is completely compatible with 2.0 so any serial interfaces should work without any problems whatsoever.

[AdrianBc]

> for just dollars more than the Rasberry Pi
> set to start at $99 USD

Reeeeaaallllyyy...

It's not like it's terrible for the price, but when it costs nearly 3x the price, it's bound to have some improvement. At that price level, though, it's not really a significant improvement over competitively-priced x86 boards. Apparently it's also got a 15W TDP, putting it in the same power envelope, too. And adding $50 for a 128GB eMMC board? SSDs are a better value. And I'm still trying to figure out if it comes with a power adapter. It's more interesting for ARM tinkering, rather than the specs.

Calling it "libre" is also a stretch given that Panfrost just barely started showing progress on the Mali-T860 two days ago. Seems more like another Indiegogo cash grab than anything else.

I do not know what makes you believe that it has 15 W TDP.


If you look at the power supplies for such boards, you must not forget that they must also provide power for the USB peripherals, i.e. 2.5 W for each USB 2.0 ports and 4.5 W for each USB 3.0 port.

So for this board, the power supply must provide at least 16.5 W over the power consumption of the board.


RK3399 has a 6 W TDP, like most smartphone SoCs with large Cortex-A cores and like the lower TDP available for Atom processors. The Intel Atom processors are available in 2 TDP variants: 6 W and 10 W. All boards smaller than an Intel NUC, e.g. the UP boards, use 6 W Atoms, which have similar performances to RK3399, but which are more expensive and whose GPUs may have worse encoding/decoding support for certain video formats (RK3399 was designed for TV top boxes, so it has good support for many video formats).


It does not have "some" improvement over the cheaper Raspberry Pi 3. It is much faster and has much more possibilities for connecting high-performance peripherals. Each Cortex-A72 core is 3-4 times faster than a Cortex-A53 core from Raspberry Pi and even the RK-3399 Cortex-A53 cores are faster due to higher clock frequency. The memory interface (64-bit DDR 1866) is much faster and the GPU is also much faster. Also the native Gigabit Ethernet is much faster. If you pay extra for an adapter, you can put an NVMe M.2 SSD, much faster than any storage that you can connect to a Raspberry Pi 3.

RK3399 has public datasheets and is fully supported by mainline Linux.


There are many boards with RK3399, so depending on your purpose, this might not be the best of them, but there is no doubt that the boards with RK3399, even at their higher prices between $65 and $200 (the price depending strongly on the quantity of included DRAM and flash) offer much better performance per dollar than the $35 Raspberry Pi 3 or clones.

I have used Cortex-A53 based boards, both Raspberry Pi 3 and Dragonboard 410. They are good for embedded computer tasks, but when used as a personal computer they become quickly annoying.

The much faster boards based on Cortex-A72 or Cortex-A73 offer a much more pleasant experience.

[pal666]

Yes and there's nothing stopping the people who design and make the boards from keeping to just two (or one) USB3.0 ports as such a thing as a USB hub does kind of exist...

so user who wants to attach keyboard to this device will have to buy powered usb 3.0 hub? its price is of same level of magnitude as price of device
usb 3 is 10 times faster, this means its controller is more power hungry. so when you plug your keyboard into usb 2 slot, you will conserve power of possibly battery-powered device

[pal666]

the GPU is also much faster.

gpu has zero speed due to missing driver atm

RK3399 has public datasheets and is fully supported by mainline Linux.

if you define fully as partially

There are many boards with RK3399, so depending on your purpose, this might not be the best of them, but there is no doubt that the boards with RK3399, even at their higher prices between $65 and $200 (the price depending strongly on the quantity of included DRAM and flash) offer much better performance per dollar than the $35 Raspberry Pi 3 or clones.

does it flash led faster? if performance is enough, improving it makes no sense

[L_A_G]

so user who wants to attach keyboard to this device will have to buy powered usb 3.0 hub? its price is of same level of magnitude as price of device
usb 3 is 10 times faster, this means its controller is more power hungry. so when you plug your keyboard into usb 2 slot, you will conserve power of possibly battery-powered device

Umm... Not sure where you've gotten this idea into your head, but you don't need a powered USB hub for a few simple peripherals like a keyboard and a mouse. You generally need to go for a powered one once you start moving into things like external HDDs, optical drives and multiple USB drives at the same time, but those are typically beyond what the standard USB2.0 spec can support anyway.

Hence any additional power consumption will be negligible, if there's a difference at all considering USB3.0 controllers are probably going to be manufactured on newer process nodes and may consume an equal or lower amount of power.