Eben Upton and the end of the shortage?

AB> Yes, the Rock 5B and other RK3588 based boards seem to be trickling out AB> now, not cheap though.

Keep yer eye on the Orange Pi 5 - RK3588 @ $60; pre-order only ATM @ AliX.

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Yes, the Rock 5B and other RK3588 based boards seem to be trickling out now, not cheap though.

A quick look at CPU comparison sites suggest the RK3588 is as powerful as my Desktop PC (Intel 2500k), 10 Years old, but no slouch. Indeed, I have put off buying a new PC because modern performance advantages seem slight, many recent NUC style PCs are still slower than the 2500K.

Is the RK3588 really that impressive, i.e. a genuine desktop replacement candidate?

Seems worse than ever at the moment.

In November last year I was able to get a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and in April this year I got a Pi 4 1GB to use as a web server.

I had to look hard for a week or two in each case but I just never see anything available in the UK now. Not even the Raspberry Pi 400 that was for a long time by far the easiest Pi to get.

Perhaps it depends on your workload. My last three home-desktop CPUs have been, from oldest to newest:

• Core 2 Quad Q6600, purchased in 2008
• Core i5 4690K, probably purchased around 2014-2015
• Ryzen 7 3800X, purchased in 2020

Each upgrade has been a significant performance boost over its predecessor that has significantly reduced time needed to (for instance) transcode video or compile software. Perhaps a less strenuous workload would still be within reach of the older chips (I donated the Core 2 Quad to my employer, who continued using it daily until around 2018 or 2019), but I kinda like having a computer that can boot to the desktop in under 10 seconds*. :)

• Not counting POST, though that adds maybe 3-4 seconds. I just rebooted my Framework Laptop (with a Core i7-1165G7) to see how long it'd take. From GRUB to the login prompt took about 7 seconds, and from hitting Enter on my password to the KDE desktop was maybe a bit under 2 seconds more.

All of those are faster than any of the computers that I currently use at home, so I guess it depends on something. But then I'm well aware that a Pi4, and many other SBCs, have been plenty fast enough for my usage for years, so that's no longer really a point of note.

you are may be aware that using SSD or NVMe in recent years boosted the boot time, right? So I wonder why you did not mention what disk you used inside.

In fact a x386 Geod (333Mhz CPU) from 2007 here boots in 10secs from a CF card and consumes at max. 12W. I couldn't find replacement. I tried Orange PI with two network cards. It turned out the second one is connected to the USB bus and with pure debian stable it stops working for unknown reason after 1-2 days. I now ordered one more expensive based on intel.

So it actually depends on the use case. Well you can still buy Bently and keep it in the garage or drive it 30km/h, or even once a month go and drive

Is it the Lattepanda 3 Delta? That one seems interesting if just a bit expensive for an impulse buy (so, not for me at the moment). And it's a shame the embedded microcontroller isn't a bit more powerful.

SSDs boost the speed of just about everything. I even managed to get one running in an ancient G4 Mac mini to some small benefit, though the bigger benefit is arguably the removal of a mechanical device subject to breakage. As SSDs were becoming cheaper (and more common), I saw how they were squeezing more life out of older computers by keeping them usable a little bit longer.

As for the aforementioned Framework, it uses a 1TB SK Hynix Gold P31. I didn't mention it because computers have shipped with SSDs as standard equipment for several years. The Framework replaced a six-year-old Dell Latitude 7370, and even that shipped with an M.2 SSD (SATA, though I replaced it with a larger NVMe stick fairly early).

I replaced the hard drive with an SSD on my old Acer Aspire 5741G laptop which has made a big improvement - absolutely worth doing to improve performance and keep older PCs going for longer.

well SSDs have advantages and disadvantages.

1. if it dies, most likely you can not recover any data out of it
2. the price is a factor. I calculated recently the benefit of replacing the WD Red spinning disk with SSDs (2 TB in RAID pairs). The conclusion was that the power saved does not rectify the replacement - the price of the SSD is still too high. So I just left the spinning rust inside. Some of them are running for 8-10y already

So no, I do not think it is always best choice. I have a problem with SSDs in single mode. It depends highly on the use case, but if using SSD in single mode one should take care of (more) regular backups.

It was even less favourable when I compared it with my array of second hand 2TB 3.5" SAS drives.

For flat out performance there's nothing to beat a mirror of high end NVMe SSDs like the ones outfits like EMC put in their most expensive storage servers - but you need at least a 10gb backbone and probably 25gb to see the full advantage across a LAN - oh and a pretty fruity server to host them. If price matters don't go anywhere near this.

BG> In November last year I was able to get a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and in BG> April this year I got a Pi 4 1GB to use as a web server.

I still haven't been able to score a Pi Zero 2 W. Sure, I don't scour the interwebs to find one, but... I really wanna take a look at them.

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Me too. Handy devices