Raspberry Pi alternative SBC arrives with affordable pricing and 8-core ARM CPU, dual Gigabit Ethernet

A brand-new SBC (single-board computer) has arrived, dubbed the DShanPi-A1. The board is already available for purchase from the digital shelves of AliExpress, with prices set around $83 for a mid-tier variant. Pricier variants with more memory and storage are also available.

At its core, the DShanPi-A1 is powered by the same SoC as the Bit-brick K1 Pro which we covered a few days earlier. The Rockchip RK3576 is found in plenty of SBCs, packing an 8-core setup consisting of four Cortex-A72 and four Cortex-A53 cores. An onboard Mali-G52 MC3 iGPU and 6 TOPS (INT8) NPU is also present. Performance should be quite respectable, since the RK3576 SoC often scores well above 1,200 points (multicore) in Geekbench 6.

That said, the RK3576 is still no match for the RK3588 found in boards such as the OrangePi CM5 (currently $129 on Amazon), which scores over 3,000 points in the same test. 

Multiple storage and memory configurations are available

In the base variant, memory requirements are taken care of by 6 GB of LPDDR4 memory, but there is no storage. Higher-tier variants are available with 8 GB of memory, and 64 GB of eMMC storage. Lower tier variants with 2 GB and 4 GB memory options are also sold by third-party retailers. The I/O on offer is as follows:

• 40-pin GPIO header
• HDMI 2.1, 4-lane MIPI DSI, mini HDMI input, dual 4-lane MIPI CSI
• Dual USB 3.0 Type-A, USB-C (with DP)
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet
• 3.5 mm audio

Interestingly, the mini HDMI input port allows the SBC to function as a video stream capture device as well. A microSD slot is also present, which is definitely welcome. To know more about the DShanPi-A1 SBC, interested customers are requested to refer to its official Wiki page.