PINE64 Quartz64 Model B availability and pricing announced ahead of April shipments
PINE64 has finally announced pricing and availability for the Quartz64 Model B, a single-board computer (SBC) that it unveiled in April 2021. To recap, the Quartz64 Model B measures 85 x 56 mm, marking it out as a potential Raspberry Pi competitor. Correspondingly, the SBC has a 40-pin GPIO header for connecting HATs and other peripherals.
Moreover, the Quartz64 Model B has a Rockchip RK3566 SoC that contains a quad-core processor made entirely of ARM Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2 GHz. Also, Rockchip includes a Mali-G52 2EE GPU, which PINE64 supports with LPDDR4 RAM and M.2 slot for including an NVMe SSD. Like the QuartzPro64, the Quartz64 Model B remains in an 'early development stage'. As such, PINE64 only considers the SBC suitable for developers or advanced users 'wishing to contribute to early software development'.
PINE64 notes that mainline and Rockchip's BSP Linux fork have been booted on the Quartz64 Model B, but that it could be months before people can reliably deploy it. Currently, the Quartz64 Model B starts at US$59.99 with 4 GB of RAM. Alternatively, the company will offer an 8 GB version for US$80. Both versions will come with Gigabit Ethernet, among other ports, and a built-in modem that supports Bluetooth 5.0 and 802.11 ac Wi-Fi connectivity. Quartz64 Model B units will begin shipping in April 2022.
Source(s)
PINE64 via Liliputing
