Asus Tinker Board 3N Is NUC-Sized
Asus today launched a new entry in its range of Tinker Board computers, promising more performance on a board that is now the size of a NUC.
The last time Asus launched a Tinker Board was the 2S back in 2021, which was extremely similar in size to a Raspberry Pi. However, for the Tinker Board 3N(Opens in a new window), Asus has expanded the board to be a similar size to those found inside a NUC (4-by-4-inches).
The 3N is powered by a 64-bit Rockchip RK3568(Opens in a new window), which combines a quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 CPU and Arm Mali-G52 GPU. The board also supports up to 8GB of dual-channel LPDDR4X memory and up to 64GB of eMMC storage (expandable with a MicroSD card). There's dual LAN ports, HDMI, LVDS, eDP, USB 3.2, USB 2.0, support for Wi-Fi 5/6, and slots to allow 4G or 5G modules to be added.
In terms of performance, Asus is promising a significant upgrade. Compared to the Tinker Board 2S, Asus says we can expect 7%-higher CPU performance, 17%-higher GPU performance, and huge gains in memory speed (54% faster writes, 275% faster reads).
This is a board aimed at the Internet-of-Things market, but it's ready to run Linux (Debian 11), Android 12, or Yocto, so it could act as a small PC just like a Raspberry Pi. Asus intends to offer three versions of this new board (Tinker Board 3N, Tinker Board 3N LITE, Tinker Board 3N PLUS) with varying levels of onboard storage and RAM, but pricing has yet to be revealed. For reference, the Tinker Board 2S costs $125.
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