Originally published at: Rock64: Cheap and rock solid // Review - MickMake - Live. Learn. Make.
It’s been a while since the Rock64 was released into the wild for hackers, but 8 months on, how good is this board looking? Let’s find out.
The RockPro64 is the one I’m really looking forward to. RK3399, Mali-T860 (supporting full OpenCL - mining/hashcat!), PCIe, USB-C, NVMe possible! 40 GPIOs.
I wish it was smaller.
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It certainly is. There seems to be more support for it generally as compared to the AllWinners.
But not sure how speedy it’d be as a miner.
Talking about the RockPro64, is it worth buying? Would you recommend that one or the rock64 or even other makers for a NAS and torrenting and amule server and maybe a VPN
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The RockPro64 certainly looks promising, but as for whether it’d be worth buying… I’m not sure yet. I’d really need to have it in my hands to know.
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Hi Mick,
so any recommendations for best value SBC to run OpenMediaVault with few Docker containers ?
There are right now lots of new rk3399 SBCs, which run also OpenMediaVault and have 4x PCIExpress lines, but probably Rock64 is still best value - for 45$ you get 4GB version, which will run super duper fine with some HDD/SDD over usb 3.0 OpenMediaVault and few containers for home use like PlexServer, Motion, VPN + home assistant. Let me know what you think, I am really interested what is your opinion 
I took into consideration also:
- NanoPi M4 --> but you have to pay 100$ for 4GB version
- NanoPi NEO4 --> only 45$ for rk3399 board, but only 1GB ram - will run OpenMediaVault - but there is not enough RAM for other containers like PLEXServer --> anyway probably no need for fast rk3399 in NAS
- ROCK64Pro ~100$
- odroid-h2 = not in production yet = might be interesting with intel J4105 CPU and 2xDDR4 slots (possible 32gb) - but TDP is much higher - CPU TDP 10W --> probably whole board will take much more power
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Hi… the new board should be available, but what isn’t clear just yet is the price. Computing that is for most purposes is now available incredibly cheaply. So increasingly manufacturers are competing, not on features, but budget.
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