Radxa's X4 Packs an Intel N100 Processor and 2.5-gig-Ethernet Into a Raspberry Pi 5-Like Footprint
Four 64-bit cores, up to 8GB of RAM, four-lane PCI Express Gen. 3 on board, and a 40-pin GPIO header: the X4 ticks a lot of boxes.
Embedded electronics specialist Radxa has unveiled a Raspberry Pi 5-like single-board computer with a difference: it's powered by an Intel "Alder Lake N" N100 processor, rather than an Arm-based system-on-chip, with a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller along for the ride.
"Credit card size, big performance," Radxa promises of its X4 single-board computer "Intel N100 and RP2040 inside. M.2 M-key connector with PCI Express 3.0 4-lane. More peripheral connectivity. 40-pin GPIO [General-Purpose Input/Output] header."
At first glance, the Radxa X4, brought to our attention by CNX Software, looks a lot like a Raspberry Pi 5. There's that familiar 40-pin GPIO header, a single Ethernet port, two two-stack USB connectors, a pair of micro-HDMI connectors, and USB Type-C for power. There's also a 3.5mm analog audio in/out jack, though, and an M.2 slot compatible with 2230-footprint devices — delivering four PCIe Gen. 3 lanes, up from the single PCIe Gen. 2 lane available on the Raspberry Pi 5's flat flexible circuit (FFC) connector. There are also three USB 3.2 connections, with only one of the board's four ports limited to slower USB 2.0 devices.
Missing from the top side of the board is any sign of a processor. Flip it over, and you'll see the Intel Processor N100, delivering four 64-bit x86 cores running at up to 3.4GHz turbo and with integrated Intel UHD Graphics running at up to 750MHz. To this, Radxa has added a choice of 4GB or 8GB of LPDDR5 memory, a 2.5-gigabit-Ethernet controller with optional Power-over-Ethernet support, and a radio module offering Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5 — upgraded to Wi-Fi 6 on the 8GB model.
Intel Processor N100-based single-board computers are a popular choice for those who need x86 compatibility or high performance, but are typically priced higher than their Arm-based equivalents and usually like expansive GPIO connectivity. That's where the Raspberry Pi RP2040, a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, comes in — handling the 40-pin GPIO header.
In short, Radxa is aiming to dethrone the Raspberry Pi 5 — and it's doing so with aggressive pricing, listing the new board on its AliExpress store at $60.63 for the 4GB model and $79.96 for the 8GB model, both excluding shipping.
The company has also teased a yet more powerful version based on Intel's Amston Lake platform, which would increase the core count from four to eight, increase the power of the graphics processor, and add Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) support — but pricing for this model had not been disclosed at the time of writing.
More information is available on the official product page.