Raspberry Pi clone Rock Pi 4 starts at just $39 but with powerful RK3399 chip

Single-board computer maker Radxa has announced what looks to be the cheapest board to date using the popular Rockchip RK3399 chipset.

The Rock Pi 4 is the latest RK3399-based board on the market, joining the recently launched NanoPi NEO4, the Pine64, Renegade Elite, and the NanoPi M4.

All of them offer a more powerful alternative to the $35 Raspberry Pi, but until now none has come close to matching its price.

The RockPi 4 with 1GB of RAM will cost $39, undercutting the NanoPi NEO4 by $10, and bringing it within range of the Raspberry Pi. Many other boards with the six-core RK3399 cost over $100.

Radxa has closely followed the design of the Raspberry Pi and uses the same 40-pin GPIO header, so that buyers can take advantage of the large hardware ecosystem built around the Raspberry Pi's design.

The Rock Pi 4 measures 85mm x 54mm and is available in two variants, dubbed Model A and Model B. The difference between the two is that the Model B has power over Ethernet (PoE) support with the help of Raspberry Pi's PoE HAT, as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

Both models are available with 1GB, 2GB or 4GB of RAM and feature a Gigabit Ethernet port capable of 940Mbit/s speeds, according to the specs sheet.

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The RockPi 4 features an M.2 connector that supports up to 2TB M2 NVME SSD storage, and an eMMC module that supports up to 128GB storage.

The HDMI 2.0 port can display at 4K/60Hz, and the board has a 3.5mm headphone jack, two USB 3.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 ports, as well as a USB Type-C port for power.

SEE: Inside the Raspberry Pi: The story of the $35 computer that changed the world (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

The 2GB and 4GB versions of the Model A cost $49 and $65, respectively. The Model B with 1GB costs $49, while the 2GB and 4GB variants cost $59 and $75, respectively.

The Rock Pi can run Android 9.0 while Debian and Ubuntu are officially supported, but other Linux distributions will have community support.

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