Q8B: Powerful Raspberry Pi 5 rival comes with up to 32GB RAM, 4K120 and Snapdragon

The Radxa Dragon Q8B is a new single-board computer and therefore competes with the Raspberry Pi 5, though Radxa is likely targeting a different audience with this model, including users who need a system for industrial or professional applications that can provide relatively high AI performance locally. Real-time object detection, for example, would be conceivable.

The Dragon Q8B comes with a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, with AI performance listed at up to or even over 29 TOPS, though this apparently refers to the performance of the overall system and not just the NPU. Up to 32GB of LPDDR4X memory is supported. For installing mass storage, two M.2 2280 slots are available, one with two PCIe 3.0 lanes and one with four PCIe 3.0 lanes. Universal Flash Storage (UFS) can be used, and a microSD card slot is also included. Network connectivity is possible via two Ethernet ports with data transfer rates of up to 2.5 Gbps. M.2 2230 cards can be used for wireless networking. Display output is supported via HDMI 2.1 and two USB Type-C ports at up to 120Hz and 4K resolution.

This SBC measures 3.8 x 3.0 inches and comes with a pin header that is more or less mandatory for single-board computers. It has 40 individual pins and supports GPIO, I2C, and SPI, among other things. PCIe 3.0 with one lane can also be connected for expansion cards via an FPC connector. At Arace Tech, the model with 8GB of RAM is currently listed for roughly $210. Shipping is scheduled to start in late July, the Raspberry Pi 5 alternative is also listed on Amazon, but not orderable there at the time of writing.