Hardkernel Introduces Odroid Computing Board With Intel’s x86 Soc

Hardkernel has announced the arrival of the Odroid H2, the company’s first computing board with an x86 processor. Maker Hardkernel considered using an AMD Ryzen chip, but ultimately chose Intel.

The Odroid H2 includes an Intel J4105 quad-core at 2.3GHz, a processor based on Intel’s Gemini Lake platform for budget systems. The cooling is passive. There are two slots for up to 32GB DDR4 and a PCI-E connection for an SSD. There are also two gigabit Ethernet ports, two sata 600 connections and hdmi 2.0 and display port 1.2 for outputting video signal.

The dimensions of the Odroid H2 are 110x110x43mm and the weight is 320 grams, including cooling block, two strips of RAM and an m2 NVME SSD. Hardkernel will start production in a few weeks and the first batch of the computing board should be available by the end of November.

It is the manufacturer’s first product with x86 processor, but there have already been two previous projects for this. Hardkernel started in 2015 with a computing board with Intel Cherry Trail x5-Z8500 but problems with that soc led to too high costs. A project with an Intel Braswell N3160 followed in 2016, but when that prototype was ready in 2017, Intel’s successor in the form of Apollo Lake was already there, making a Braswell system uncompetitive.

For the Odroid H2, the manufacturer actually considered using the AMD Ryzen 5 2500U. “The performance was impressive, but the price of the CPU was also impressive,” the company writes.