PlanetPC XR ARM-based Desktop Linux Computers | Hacker News Reader

PlanetPC XR ARM-based Desktop Linux Computers

store.planetcom.co.uk

10 pointstype026 comments

It’s fantastic to see more arm / RISC options on the desktop these days, however I’d be hesitant to buy another planet computers product. I have the pocket Gemini and from day one its software support was horrific. Now, despite being a premium device, it is nothing more than a paperweight as it’s Debian fork is so out of date and unmaintained, and if you choose to use its android option - you can’t upgrade it past Android 8.

In my case it’s my fading eyesight that made me realize I can’t use the form factor any more. These devices are supposed to run mainline Ubuntu, though, so you wouldn’t be dependent on Planet for software. The pricing is just ludicrous, however.

Yeah that’s really big money for something that doesn’t come with a screen.

RK3588 SBCs are widely available for a fraction of the price.

Yes, e.g. a motherboard with 16 GB DRAM and 256 GB of eMMC can be found at $150. Adding a case and a WiFi card for a complete computer increases the cost to $190. If one is content with much less memory, e.g. with 4 GB, a complete computer can be bought for slightly more than $100.

RK3588 has about the same speed as the previous generation of Intel Atom CPUs, i.e. Jasper Lake and Elkhart Lake.

When one is willing to spend more than $200 on a complete computer, then there are no ARM computers that can compete in price with the very cheap computers that use the current generation of Atom CPUs, i.e. the Intel Alder Lake N CPUs, e.g. N100 or i3-N305. All the ARM computers which match or exceed the performance or features of the Alder Lake N computers (e.g. those with NVIDIA, Qualcomm or MediaTek CPUs) are several times more expensive than the computers with Intel CPUs.

When one is willing to spend more than $400 for a small computer, the best deals are those with AMD CPUs.

M1 Mac Minis. Give Asahi Linux another year or so to stabilize, or OpenBSD.

Mac Minis are nice, but they do not compete in performance per dollar with the computers using AMD, Intel or cheaper ARM CPUs.

They also do not compete in dimensions for the applications where a small computer is desired, e.g. for being easy to carry.

I consider 16 GB of DRAM as the right amount of memory for a computer with the price between $100 and $400. For a computer whose price is $1000 or more, I consider mandatory 64 GB DRAM and at least one 2 TB SSD. The amounts of memory provided in a Mac Mini of reasonable price are pathetic.

Don’t forget to factor the power brick when assessing portability.

Totally agree on the puny RAM.

Why they haven’t picked the RK3588 is a mystery to me. These seem way overpriced for what they are specced.

Umm why is this thing so expensive?

(Very) low volume production.

I would suspect supply and demand is the short version, but them bothering to put a useless "integrated colour touchscreen" isn't helping matters. If my understanding of computer architecture is correct, putting a VGA port also complicated the design. Trying to blaze trails by having a custom molded case is also just $$$ that does me no good

They allege the XR2 goes up to 32GB of RAM but no price given for that

In contrast, while searching to see what that ARM Rockchip 3588 CPU was, I found https://www.firefly.store/goods.php?id=171 which is $375 for 16GB LPDDR4. No fancy LCD, or vanity case, though; how every shall I live

https://www.firefly.store/goods.php?id=165 may be closer to a traditional desktop, accepting SSDs, shipping with WiFi6, and a cool transparent lid, but $799

This is an RK3588 with 16GB ram option for only $149.

https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Pi-Rockchip-Computer-Developme...

Cheap aluminum cases for it are also available.

Right?

Planet's other offerings are handhelds in unobtainable form factors where I'd expect to pay a massive premium because designing and manufacturing that kind of portable device is obscenely expensive, and there are essentially no competitors - and honestly, their gadgets are quite reasonable for the segment they occupy. These are desk boxes with Rockchip RK3588 parts in them, there is competition in that space.

Yes, the fancy case with a touchscreen front is fancy and legitimately a more expensive thing, they've done some neat integration, and the IO looks extensive, so I expect it to be quite a bit more than an SBC... but an Orange Pi 5 Plus is an RK3588 board, and configured with 8GB of RAM and 64GB of EMMC those are like $120. Firefly has a couple RK3588 systems in less fancy chassis where the 8/64 configs are $3-400 depending on the IO... and the PlanetPC XR2 in the 8/64 configuration is $922.

It's all just a bit ridiculous because it's an SBC SoC with basically those kinds of specs -- onboard flash for storage, etc. but dressed up like it's a desktop computer. "nVME SSD via USB" -- ehhh. No thanks.

I want an ARM workstation. This isn't it. It's a step above a Raspberry Pi, but not much of one.

> I want an ARM workstation. This isn't it.

The RK3588 is actually a pretty decently spec'd SoC. It's a dual cluster with 4xA76 (P-cluster) and 4xA55 (E-cluster). Neoverse-N1 is nearly identical to an A76 and it what most cloud vendors offer and it's performance is generally decent. It's only four P cores but it's no slouch by any means.

It’s half the speed of a 4 year old iPhone 11. So yes, a total slouch, like all the non-phone ARM SOCs, only useful in low-power embedded applications.

Sure, but the iPhone 11 [1] is also 17% faster in single core Geekbench 5 scores than the Intel i9-9880H [2] that Apple was using in their top of the line MacBook Pros back then too, so "a four year old iPhone" is not exactly some old and unusably slow processor. Apple's mobile SoCs were (and largely still are) in a performance class of their own.

Half as fast single core on the RK3588's P-cores is still perfectly usable for workstation activities, in fact that's about what you'd get on an i5-8210Y MacBook Air from 2018 [3] which I'm sure a few people here are using as their daily driver.

[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/21459716

[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/21459261

[3] https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/21415175

The issue is the lack of real PC-quality I/O interfaces.

The SoC does have 4xPCIe 3 lanes and 1xPCIe 2 lanes. The lack of IO is purely a board design issue, you can open KiCad and fix this problem right now.

All the more reason why this product is so garbage. They could have made what they're advertising (a PC) by doing that... but instead they just slapped a SBC barely better than an RPi in a case and marked the price way up.

Disappointing.

Try this, but it’s very expensive at nearly $3K:

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/ampere-altra-max-wind...

This kind of generic OS support should be mandatory on all ARM SBCs, otherwise its just adding to more e-waste.

I believe this is because ARM doesn’t have a standardized hardware interface like x86 does so every chipset vendor does it’s own thing, mostly closed source for no good reason.

Yeah, for this price level I rather buy a mac mini instead, get my UNIX experience, alongside a proper desktop development stack, and the tools to be able to target both mobile OSes.

I thought these are VR/AR devices.

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