ODroid XU4Q passive cooling

12/04/2018: since today, the XU4 board is sold WITHOUT the 5V 4A recommanded PSU.

A ultra-powerful fanless nano computer working under Linux or Android

The ODroid-XU4Q is proprelled with the same processor than ODroid XU4, the powerful ARM® big.LITTLE™ technology and HMP solution (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing).

ODROID-XU4Q and XU4 are a new generation of IT peripheral offering more power, an hardware with higher efficiency-power yield and a very compact form-factor.
Thanks to open-source software, the board can execute several version of Linux operating system, including the an Ubuntu version (16.04), Android 4.4 KitKat, Android 5.0 Lollipop, Android 7.1 Nougat.
As it also support the technologies eMMC 5.0, USB 3.0 & Gigabit Ethernet, the ODROID-XU4 board raise the speed transfert to an impressive rate level.
Those hardware improvements offers a great user experience, higher treatment speed, and more especially a better boot time, an improved navigation flow while using internet browser, better network performance et even great time while playing 3D games.

The XU4Q use a passive heatsink to sink out the processor heat. So, there is no rotating fan, so no unpleasant noise generation. However, keep in mind that passive cooling is not as efficient than active cooling (with a fan), so XU4Q may have more difficulties to keep low temperature (compared to XU4). So you should place it into a well ventilated area.
Hardkernel recommend to reduce the CPU frequency to max 1.4 GHz if the system does overheat to easily (which depend on the CPU charge, so the needs of the various software running on the OS).

The XU4 is fully comptable with the XU3 (from software point og view)!
The XU4 is more compact and more scalable than a XU3.

Main features:

• Processor: 8 cores! Samsung Exynos5422 ARM® Cortex™-A15 4 cores @ 2.0GHz + Cortex™-A7 4 cores @ 1.4GHz. Plus d'info sur le site de Samsung.
• 3D Accelerator: Mali™-T628 MP6 OpenGL ES 3.0 / 2.0 / 1.1 et OpenCL 1.1 "Full profile"
• Memory: 2Gbyte LPDDR3 RAM PoP stacked (750Mhz, 12GB/s memory bandwidth , 2x bus 32 bit)
• Audio: digital audio output via HDMI. Optical SPDIF output (optional, via an USB module)
• Display: HDMI 1.4a with Type A connector
• Storage (Options for storing data):
  
  • eMMC module connector: eMMC 5.0 flash storage (up ti 64GByte)
  • microSD card connector (up to 64GByte)
• USB 3.0 Host: standard SuperSpeed USB  type A, 2 port connector
• USB 2.0 Host: standard HighSpeed USB type A, 1 port connector
• Network: Ethernet 10/100/1000Mbps (also Gigabit), RJ-45 connector, Auto-MDIX support. Realtek RTL8153 controler.
• Optional - WiFi: you can add WiFi support by adding an external WiFi module  - USB IEEE 802.11b/g/n 1T1R WLAN with antenna.
• Optional - Hard drive, wire and HDD/SSD on the board with external USB 3.0 SuperSpeed to Serial ATA3 (sata3) for 2.5"/3.5" hard-drive and storage on SSD
• Power Supply: 5V 4 Amps!
• Operating systems:
  
  • Ubuntu 16.04 + OpenGL ES + OpenCL on Kernel LTS 4.14
  • Android 4.4.2 with kernel LTS 3.10
  • Android 5.1 & 7.1 Nougat availables as development plateform (community driven OS development).
  • Source code available on Odroid's GitHub.
• Size: 82 x 58 x 30 mm (approximatively)
• Weight: 76 grammes

For the Makers

• UART, serial data - take care to use a compatible USB-Serial module, logique 1.8 Volts.
• 30 GPIO pins : GPIO / IRQ / SPI / ADC
• 12 GPIO pins : GPIO / I2S / I2C
• Wiring-Pi wiring (please, see the Odroid wiki)
• Logic @ 1.8 Volts, take care! you can use the shifter-shield.

Content

• ODROID-XU4Q board
• Actif fan (already assembled on the heatsink)

A 5V 4Amp power supply and a microSD card or eMMC module (initialized with an operating system) is required to boot up your ODroid XU4 board.
We do recommend to use a eMMC module to store the operating system.

Keep high performances on your XU4

ODroid XU4 vs Raspberry-Pi

The Pi-2 & Pi-3 are so popular than HardKernel create a comparative chart of Raspberry-Pi et ODroid.
Keep in mind that Rapsberry-Pi and ODroid doesn't share the same technology so comparing them is not necessarily suitable. It is like comparing a super plane and a wonderful car... they are not used on the same "territory".

By the way, the comparison chart is available here.

Videos

Here some interesting videos about the ODroid-XU4... and previous version (the XU3).

• ODroid-XU4 Hardware introduction (youtube, english)
• Ubuntu 15.04 with MATE desktop (youtube, english)
• Web Browsing and XMBC on Linux (youtube, english)
• Robot OS: OpenNI and OpenCV (youtube, english)
• Minecraft on 42" tablet (youtube, english)
• Android-XU3 : Android portrait mode (youtube, english)
• MotionEye OS (oCam + oDroid XU4) (youtube, english)
• ARUCO + ogre3D (oCam + oDroid XU4) (youtube, english)