Radxa X2L: Low-cost x86 SBC with RP2040

I bought the 8gb Model from RS for £69 with free 24 hr shipping. No heatsink though but installed windows 11 on a crucial 500gb M.2 drive and it never got above 50 degrees C. I think a small chipset heatsink with a fan off an old motherboard should suffice for light duties such as a media centre

I just wish you computer guys be obsessed or fascinated by external digital to audio converters as much as you're fascinated by GPUs and CPUs.

I love that! If I could afford one, I would like to get the 2gb model, a small drive for it and run an OS that noone else would use: FreeDOS. I would be awesome to find an sbc that is Windows 98 or XP compatible.i spend loads of time in FreeDOS. Thank you EC for lettin me know of this gem.

Another great review :)

I have a peculiar use case for this.
I wonder if the board could be fitted in a laptop case.
I have an Lenovo E480 for which I bought a third motherboard.
If it fails like the first two (very poor thermals for E480) I am considering using a slim board like this one in the case.
Use the LCD display and keyboard at least.
If I can also use the battery that would be great.

One requirement for this is to have a slim board with most / all IO on one side .

I’m guessing the heatsink is mandatory, unlike the Pi, yes? Also, can SATA be connected directly to M.2 via an adapter?

Also, I've tested a type C PD that only does max 9v and it booted fine, but it's recommended 12v. I won't risk it on trying 5v.

It's crazy how some people are conditioned to think you can't have less than 16 GB RAM these days. An OS and/or applications would have to be pretty bloated or working with some pretty heavy data loads to need that much. I think the marketing is getting to them. Maybe a bit of an echo chamber effect as well since they hear it from others and assume it's true and start repeating it.

how to make it portable?

Another great SBC video. Many thanks.

Just Setting Up My GeekomA7 Lot Of Money But Watching Your Video With No Sub Station Hum Vibration From Fans Nice And Quiet With No Big Metal Box Taking Up Space Thank You Very Much

Just curious about the power supply. Is it a USB C PD type power supply that provides 12v or is it just 12v over a USB C cable? I've seem both but have no experience with Radxa.

"Radxa" and "low-cost" are two terms I did not expect to hear together anytime soon! XD

Nice if you need the GPIO and do it from an X86.

I wish there where less expensive...
For a desktop computer replacement it is way too under-powered and overpriced considering that you also need a case and a power brick for the usb connector.
For the same price you can get a used Lenovo thinkcentre tiny or similar Dell elitedesk tiny.

So for the same price, if you just need a cheap computer, you get:
- 6 USB 3 instead instead of 2
- 1 or 2 M.2 for NVME
- 1 Sata port
- 2 display out (often 1 DP + 1 HDMI). Some unit come with an extension of an extra port (Can be any of the 3 main type, DP, HDMI or VGA). No port are in the "micro/mini" format so no adapters required.
- Some units come with Bluetooth+wifi (else it can be added)
- CPU is usually 8500T +, some of them are 6500T but it's still 2 to 3 time faster than this bottom of the barrel celery J series CPU.
- CPU can be upgraded
- RAM can be upgraded (most model support up to 64GB)
- The price include the case, the power brick, the cmos battery, 8 or 16GB worth of RAM and usually it come with 128GB worth of sata or nvme storage.

I have multiple negatives with this board. Nothing is included, not even a SSD mounting screw. It's even worse than with a pi. You don't have a low-cost device if you need to buy a power supply, an obligatory cooler, a battery. I would classify this as a rip-off even if they point out that you need to buy this needed stuff separately.

It's always fun to see new boards showing up with already discontinued CPUs on them.

why don't you use affiliate links or patreon?

Dimensions are almost identical as the youyeetoo X1. Plus the youyeetoo X1 has better CPU, more RAM options (Max 16gb) and EMMC (Max 256GB) more ports (6 USB). Its slightly more expansive though and the GPIO is 6pin

This seems like it would be a perfect DVR for sub streams on Windows or Linux.

Finally found a time to watch. Expected yet another unfinished product and I found great x64 SBC with Pico as a GPIO coprocessor and proper power input. A good relief after Pi5 and its stupid 5V5A input. This one you can power even from a cheap charger from blue/yellow furniture shop 😀
Also software support is way ahead of ARM especially in a GPU department.
I like that SWD header is exposed (I think you missed it?) - pretty exciting for C++ development and debugging RP2040 using second RP2040. And a good thing is that when you burn GPIO the chip can be replaced and is dirt cheap

1 million subscribers, hooray 🎉
Congratulations!

For those interested in the disk performance, with a new Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB nvme SSD on Windows 11 Pro on the 8GB Radxa X2L, I got the following on CrystalDiskMark: reads: 1703 MB/s, 1021 MB/s, 134 MB/s, and 52 MB/s. Writes: 1447 MB/s, 995 MB/s, 75 MB/s, and 69 MB/s. Also, Speedtest shows 16 ms ping and 953 Mbit/s down, 38 MBit/s up, which is just shy of my 1 Mbit/s down cable internet, so the nic is providing full bandwidth. Setup for Windows 11 from a USB 3 thumb drive took about 30 minutes. The only thing I haven't got working is the Wifi card. Windows did not recognize it during setup.

What a nice concept, a PC that combines a microcontroller. It seems to have a good combination of price, power consumption and speed, too. Nice little machine.

I want this board! This is better than a PI

The Radxa nio 12l is a little computer which is a game-changer for my home theater setup. Dual displays and smooth 4K streaming with the genio 1200 - amazing value.

Hello brother . I have a question: Which single board computer allows using Google Play Store same as smartphone because I would like to download photography app such as Filmic Pro or Cinema FV-5 ?

!=8)

Definitely interested in seeing some benchmarks for the NIO. How does it compare to other popular SBCs?

There is no doubt that it is an excellent alternative to the Raspberry Pi 5, more powerful and versatile, but it is still beaten by far by refurbished products from HP or Lenovo, such as an HP EliteDesk 705 G4 that we can buy for less than 200 euros (which is what they cost more or less this X2L or Raspberry Pi 5 fully equipped. And putting a RP2040 only costs us 5 eu. more. Only the 4K video output is a plus.

There was only one really important question here to answer. It WAS touched on quickly in a tongue and cheek fashion when discussing how long the manufacturer expects to make this board... but seriously, it is the ONLY thing that is really important here. In the world of desktop and laptop computing, processors only stay active in the market for an average of two years. Technology moves so fast in this area, that within two years, somebody (maybe even the same CPU manufacturer) has introduced a better processor for the same or lower money. The processor used in this product came out in late 2019 - 4.5 years ago. That it can even be purchased still is pretty amazing, but rest assured, unless it has become a "Darling" in the Embedded Community, it's days are numbered. WHY then, would a company come out with a brand new product using a CPU that has been in the market for 4.5 years, and whose manufacturer (Intel) has already put it in the Discontinued List?

The channel is like the 80s 😁 like it so much 👍

Holly molly! I want one NOW!

Did you have to pay import duties or was this handled by allnet? Cheers

No csi-2 connector, no camera, no computer vision

I buy it! Thx for recommendation

TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP

Finally an affordable x86. This board is perfect for a NAS - I wouldn't trust any ARM board for the near future there.

What do you think about the potential backdoor/safety issues on Chinese brand SBCs? The prices of these Chinese SBCs are very very competitive but I hesitate buying them.

Chris I find it amusing that every time I watch your videos when my mother is around her reaction is like "He kinda looks like John Lennon" I always just chuckle and reply to her "He is British".

Onto the SBC. I was expecting a bigger performance gap between the J4125 and the N100 and your Kdenlive test showed that it wasn't that much. Other benchmarks I've been vetween the two processors indicate around 2x the performance of the J4125, but I was just surprised by your results.

i remember the first itx boards with integrated celeron cpus,they where cheap but the powerbrick was very expensive and you had to buy laptop ram for them,i used it with dynamic dns to have a box with network tools for work,i think this board is more value for money all you have to add is the cooler and a disk,beats renting a linuxbox somwhere since wont really eat up the powerbill.

Thank you Christopher for another fantastic review of more project hardware. and sorry for the late chime. It's a nice piece of versatility, especially for the price!

What power supply do you use?

Nice Review! looking forward to the Radxa X4

Can you take a raspberry pi Poe top hat and plug onto this sbc and work?

Radxa X2L for me is a big mess.....boots constatntly in shell> , EFI shell version 2.70 [5.13]
map:: Cannot find required map.......tried everything including radxa website , wiki , all you setups for this board which sums up to 2 channels......not great for radxa.....let me tell you guys !!!

Been thinking about making my own steam deck, trying to decide which board to use. I think this may be what I'm looking for. I don't need an incredible gaming machine. My build will be used mostly for playing Elder Scrolls Morrowind on the go

another great video 👍