Radxa Orion O6N Review: The Powerful and Silent ARM64 Beast

So we had the chance to review the OrangePi 6 Plus a few months back, equipped by the very impressive CIX P1 SOC , developed on a 6nm process. It also features a very decent integrated GPU, the Mali-G720-Immortalis. And turns out that OrangePi is not the only company that has access to this hardware - Radxa has also developed 2 boards using this SOC, and their newer, and smaller board, the Orion O6N, is a good option to consider.

As you can see, the board comes with a active cooling system that covers most of the board, in a similar fashion to the Orange Pi 6 Plus.<br>Let’s see what the specs look like first.

Specs

There’s a lot of ports on this device and no lack of connectivity both up and down.

Component<br>Specification

SoC<br>CIX P1 (6nm TSMC process)

CPU Architecture<br>4× Cortex-A720 (Up to 2.6 GHz) + 4× Cortex-A720 (Up to 2.4 GHz) + 4× Cortex-A520 (Up to 1.8 GHz); 12MB L3 Cache

GPU<br>Arm Immortalis-G720 MC10 (Hardware Ray Tracing, Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL ES 3.2 support)

NPU (AI)<br>Up to 45 TOPS (System-wide); Standalone NPU with INT4/INT8/INT16/FP16/TF32 support

RAM<br>8GB / 16GB / 24GB / 32GB / 48GB / 64GB LPDDR5 (128-bit, 5500 MT/s)

Storage<br>2× M.2 2280 slots (PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe), 1× Pluggable UFS module connector

Networking<br>Dual 2.5GbE (2500Mbps) Ethernet ports

Wireless & Cellular<br>1× M.2 Key-E (2230) slot for Wi-Fi 6/7 & BT 5.4, 1× M.2 Key-B (3042) slot for 4G LTE with 1× Nano SIM slot

Video Output<br>1× HDMI 2.0 (4K@60Hz), 1× DP 1.4 with MST (4K@120Hz), 1× USB-C (DP Alt Mode up to 4K@60Hz)

Video Codec<br>Decode: Up to 8K@60fps (AV1/H.265/H.264/VP9), Encode: Up to 8K@30fps (H.265/H.264/VP9)

USB Ports<br>2× USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (10 Gbps), 3× USB 2.0 Type-A, 1× USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (with DP Alt Mode)

Camera (MIPI)<br>2× MIPI CSI interfaces (Configurable as 2-lane or 4-lane per port)

Expansion<br>40-pin GPIO header

Other Interfaces<br>1× Power button, 1× 4-pin CPU fan header (PWM & TACH), 1× RTC battery header

Power Supply<br>12V DC input via 5.5 x 2.5 mm (5525) barrel jack OR 4-pin internal connector (≥65W recommended)

Dimensions<br>120mm × 120mm (Nano-ITX Form Factor)

One of the interesting choices is the last of USB-C for power supply.

Here Radxa went for a barrel jack connector, which is a weird choice in a world where most laptops and mobile devices now use USB-C standard by default.

Feature<br>Specification

SoC Model<br>CIX CD8180 / CD8160 (Codename: CIX P1)

Architecture<br>Armv9.2-A (64-bit)

Total CPU Cores<br>12 Cores (Tri-cluster configuration)

Big Cores<br>4× Cortex-A720 @ Up to 2.8 GHz (Performance)

Medium Cores<br>4× Cortex-A720 @ Up to 2.4 GHz (Mainstream)

Little Cores<br>4× Cortex-A520 @ 1.8 GHz (Efficiency)

L3 Cache<br>12MB Shared L3 Cache

GPU<br>Arm Immortalis-G720 MC10

Graphics Features<br>Hardware Ray Tracing, Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0

NPU (AI Engine)<br>Arm-China Zhouyi: 30 TOPS (Dedicated); ~45 TOPS (Total System AI)

AI Precision<br>INT4, INT8, INT16, FP16, TF32

VPU (Video)<br>Linlon V8: 8K@60fps Decode (AV1/H.265/VP9), 8K@30fps Encode (H.265)

Memory Interface<br>128-bit LPDDR5 / LPDDR5X (Up to 5500 MT/s)

Memory Bandwidth<br>Up to 96 GB/s (Theoretical peak)

PCIe Support<br>PCIe Gen4 (Supports x8, x4, and x2 configurations)

System Security<br>Integrated Security Engine (Standard Arm SystemReady / ACPI support)

The board follows a nano-ITX standard, which is a square of 12cm by 12cm. It’s definitely a little bigger than the OrangePi 6 Plus, but it’s not entirely a bad thing: you get to have a larger fan, and while the OrangePi 6 Plus was relatively quiet, the Radxa Orion O6N is almost silent. You can see below the difference in footprint in the below picture, the Radxa model being on the left and the OrangePi’s on the right.

During operation, you can see the fan turning fairly often, but it makes no noise at all. Apart from brute forcing the board into a state of 100% CPU usage, it’s very hard to get the temperature to rise under normal usage conditions.

No.<br>Description<br>No.<br>Description

USB Type-C Port (Supports DP Video Output)<br>13<br>USB 2.0 Type-A

4-Pin Fan Header (PWM & Tachometer)<br>14<br>Power Button

40-Pin GPIO Header<br>15<br>5V / 12V Power Port

MIPI CSI Interface (4-lane)<br>16<br>M.2 M Key 2280 Slot

LPDDR5<br>17<br>M.2 B Key 3042 Slot

M.2 E Key 2230 Slot<br>18<br>Nano SIM Card Slot

MIPI CSI Interface (4-lane)<br>19<br>CIX P1 SoC

M.2 M Key 2280 Slot<br>20<br>SPI Nor Flash (BIOS)

12V DC Power Input (5525)<br>21<br>UFS Module Interface

10<br>Standard DP Port<br>22<br>RTC Battery Connector

11<br>Standard HDMI Port<br>23<br>2x 2.5G Ethernet

12<br>2x USB 3.0 Type-A<br>24<br>2x USB 2.0 Type-A

One important detail is that board does not come with a Wireless device. So you’ll need to get your own M2 wireless dongle to get Wifi and Bluetooth. A minor inconvenience, really, but if you are use to having OrangePi bundle all of this on the SBC, well this one gives you a little more work.

Software Support

Desktop Experience

Radxa OS (i.e. Debian 12 Bookworm)

In this Debian Bookworm build we get a desktop running the 6.6.89-3-sky1...