Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC?

# Radxa Dragon Q8B: A Laptop Cosplaying as an SBC? - bret.dk Source: [https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/) The Radxa Q6A was Radxa’s first Qualcomm\-based SBC release last year, and even though we’re still deep in the midst of RAMageddon, Radxa are announcing the Dragon Q8B today, the very same day you’re reading this\. Even I don’t know how I’ve managed that in 2026\. At its core, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoC running at 3GHz provides the horsepower, and provide it does\. Well, in a sense\. If you’re wondering whether this is the same chip that we saw in laptops a couple of years ago, wonder no more, it’s the same one, and oh boy, it’s a ride\. Want the TL;DR? It brute forces its way to the top of the comparison list in this review, leaving the Raspberry Pi 5 in its dust, and also takes the top spot \(for now\) over on sbc\.compare for a large number of tests, so I think Radxa might be on to something? Has this blossoming partnership finally produced an SBC without compromise?\! If you want a bit more than a TL;DR though, buckle up, I’m bringing the waffley ranty first look of yesteryear back, and on the bench we have the 32GB RAM model \(I should really increase the valuation on the contents insurance after this\) and I’ll be comparing numbers against a range of Radxa’s range, the industry “standard”, and the \(previous\) number one over on the sbc\.compare leaderboards\. A quick word before we get stuck in, mind\. This board is only being announced today, and the sample on my bench is an early one running OS builds that are still being tweaked\. So this is more of a first look with some initial benchmarks and my early thoughts than a board I’ve lived with for months\. The numbers are a snapshot in time, and I’d expect them to shift a touch as the software settles, though I wouldn’t expect anything to change dramatically, it’s mostly a case of polishing what’s already here\.s\. Sample number 6\.\. The early bird \(me\) gets the worm \(32GB RAM\) but at what cost?***Disclaimer\!**To get it out of the way nice and early, Radxa supplied this board ahead of launch for testing \(it’s an early sample, and the OS images are still a work in progress, so do bear that in mind throughout\) but no money exchanged hands, there was no obligation for a review, and I’m writing this because I want to\. As always, all words are my own \(nobody would be dumb enough to claim them\) and Radxa have had no editorial say before, or after publishing\.* - [What Is the Radxa Dragon Q8B?](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#What-Is-the-Radxa-Dragon-Q8B) - [Radxa Dragon Q8B Specifications](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Radxa-Dragon-Q8B-Specifications) - [Meet Today’s Competition](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Meet-Todays-Competition) - [Setup and the State of the Software](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Setup-and-the-State-of-the-Software) - [What’s Not Quite Working \(Yet\)](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Whats-Not-Quite-Working-Yet) - [Benchmark Methodology](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Benchmark-Methodology) - [Radxa Dragon Q8B Benchmarks](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Radxa-Dragon-Q8B-Benchmarks)- [CPU Performance](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#CPU-Performance) - [Storage and I/O](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Storage-and-IO) - [Graphics and the Adreno GPU](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Graphics-and-the-Adreno-GPU) - [Power Consumption and Thermals](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Power-Consumption-and-Thermals) - [Radxa Dragon Q8B Pricing and Availability](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Radxa-Dragon-Q8B-Pricing-and-Availability) - [Closing Thoughts](https://bret.dk/radxa-dragon-q8b-a-laptop-cosplaying-as-an-sbc/#Closing-Thoughts) ## What Is the Radxa Dragon Q8B? To get straight to the point, the Dragon Q8B is packing a laptop SoC in an SBC form\-factor, which is great for performance, as the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoC still has plenty in the tank \(4x Cortex\-X1 cores at 3GHz, and 4x Cortex\-A78, at 2\.4GHz\), and packs one hell of a punch\. Radxa’s Qualcomm steam train seems to have no sign of stopping, and it’s great to see boards actually being launched in the current climate\. Heck, they even announced they were working on consumer NAS products based on Qualcomm SoCs this week… Where things get a little dicey for the Dragon Q8B is software support, annoyingly\. The Snapdragon SoC was used primarily for Windows on Arm laptops, and Linux support can be patchy and hacky, but we got there in the end with the help of Armbian \(shout out to Meco from[sbcwiki\.com](https://sbcwiki.com/)for working on that\!\) and after my initial testing, Radxa had an Ubuntu 26 build available\. Before we get to the meaty part of the review, let’s quickly confirm the specifications of the Radxa Dragon Q8B, as I think people will be pleasantly surprised\. ## Radxa Dragon Q8B Specifications From speaking to others and seeing public results in places like the Geekbench Browser, we know there are 8, 16, and 32GB SKUs available, all of which offer the same I/O and features overall\. 2x USB 3\.2 Gen 2 Type\-C connectors with DP Alt Mode is rather nice, and packed in a relatively small footprint is a lot of powerful hardware\. You get 2×2\.5GbE RJ45 ports, a further 2 USB 3\.2 Gen 2 ports, this time in Type\-A format, 2 M\.2 M\-Keys on the underside, and a UFS connector for a small, fast, replaceable storage option\. Not seen in this Radxa photo on the underside, is the switch to choose between 12V and 20V USB\-PD for the input\. You can see the pads for it above the USB 2\.0 Type\-A ports, along with the silkscreen text, but on the actual board, it looks like this\. PSU only does 12V? No problem\!## Meet Today’s Competition I’ve decided to keep it an \(almost\) all Radxa affair for testing and bring in the[Dragon Q6A](https://sbc.compare/47-radxa-dragon-q6a-6gb), the[ROCK 5B\+](https://sbc.compare/17-radxa-rock-5b-plus-16gb/), CIX P1\-powered[Orion O6N](https://sbc.compare/101-radxa-orion-o6n-32gb), and for good luck, a[Raspberry Pi 5\.](https://sbc.compare/1-raspberry-pi-5-8gb) I’m hoping they’ll cover all of the bases for comparison, but to quickly justify my choices, the Dragon Q6A is the less powerful sibling of the Q8B, the ROCK 5B\+ has one of the most popular SBC SoCs in the Rockchip RK3588, the Orion O6N is one of the most powerful ARM SoCs available in boards like this, and it has 32GB of RAM\. The Raspberry Pi 5 gets a spot at the table because, well, everyone knows what it is, and given the pricing at the moment, people are definitely looking alternatives more and more\. Do we approve? ## Setup and the State of the Software At the time of launch we have an Ubuntu 26 build from Radxa directly, and it’s fair to say things are still moving quickly, the builds were being updated even as I was testing\.though it only comes in a desktop flavour\. Armbian will have you covered if you’d prefer Debian, or server/CLI builds, though it’s not an officially supported OS just yet and you’ll need to build it yourself\. All of my testing was done on a Debian 13 build of Armbian, and I cross\-checked against Ubuntu and saw nothing out of the ordinary\. A week after completing my testing, Radxa also released Debian 13 \(Trixie\) builds with Gnome/KDE options, and these booted just fine\. It’s not a particularly new SoC, however, and I know others have alternatives like Arch Linux running already, so I imagine we’ll see other distros become available shortly, and once Armbian \(hopefully\) gets official support, you’ll see a range of pre\-installed software options too\. I suppose I do also have to mention that Windows 11’s Windows on ARM \(WoA\) will work out of the box with this, and this is really what the Qualcomm SoC sees as its bread and butter given than this chip found itself in a range of Windows laptops a few years ago when it came onto the scene\. Performance is around what you’d expect from laptops with the same chip, though I imagine Meco on sbcwiki will be checking out Windows and gaming in a little more details, so keep an eye out for his piece too\. Will you have as much support for things as the Raspberry Pi? No, but then again nearly no SBC has it\. If you’ve dealt with any of the alternatives before, you’ll have no problem here, and with Armbian, you can be up and running incredibly quickly, with an interface and base that you’re used to if you’ve used it before\. It’s nice hardware and it’s been around for a few years now \(the SoC that is\), we just have to hope that we can get the most out of it\. There’s mainline Linux support for the chip, so let’s see? ## What’s Not Quite Working \(Yet\) I should quickly mention a few things to look out for if Radxa announce, and release this board for sale shortly after\. As of Friday 29th May \(2026\) the Radxa OS builds do not have functioning RJ45\. At the time of testing, only a build of Arch Linux that Sophon at Radxa kindly supplied me had the Qualcomm Ethernet ports in a functioning state, but that means that it shouldn’t be too long before we see things ported over to the Radxa OS builds\. The Dragon Q8B also unearthed something in my Linpack testing in the sense that it found a way to draw 50W, almost cook itself, and then hard crash each time\. After some digging, I realised that I’d been using the more intensive OpenBLAS algorithm, and I build for all of the optimisations I can detect for the SoC\. This has worked fine on over 100 SBCs, but none of those had been laptop SoCs in a small SBC layout\. This meant that the PMICs had a really, really bad time, cooked \(not in a good way\) and gave up after 10s each time\. Not even an industrial Noctua fan and a big ol heatsink could keep things under control The BIOS currently has the USB ports disabled due to bugs, so the only way to access the BIOS options is via serial\. Perhaps Radxa already have an update that handles that that I couldn’t get my hands on in time\. Finally, I was unable to get UFS to be detected on any of the OS builds I tested, and whilst Radxa list UFS and normal OS builds for download on their GitHub repository for the Q8B, it’s not detected when you try to boot from it and it throws you into the BIOS\. Again, I want to stress that this is nitpicking, this is not meant to be an in\-depth 6 month in review, but I thought it may be interesting for some to see what the cycle is like during these types of launches/announcements\. ## Benchmark Methodology Into the heart of things we go, and let’s have a quick run down of how the testing is going to go down\. All testing was done over on[sbc\.compare](https://sbc.compare/)in a controlled environment with everything set up for maximum performance\. The performance CPU governor is in use, the stock cooler was blasting its fan at 100%, and a Noctua industrial fan was blowing across it for good measure too\. A few caveats, if I may\. Ollama doesn’t really handle big\.LITTLE setups very well, and it’s CPU\-only, so take the LLM tests with a pinch of salt as always, though they give us a good enough rough idea\. We also have some wildly different RAM configurations on show, and performance may vary slightly depending on your particular work loads, so bear that in mind\. Power was measured using a TC66C USB\-C power monitor, with power being delivered by a 21V5A capable USB\-C power supply to ensure we had enough juice to give this sneaky laptop in an SBC\. ## Radxa Dragon Q8B Benchmarks We’ll kick off with the CPU\-focused benchmarks \(oh, I’m also using new graphs for this review, do we like? Do we hate? Please tell me in the comments\.\.\) and it’s mostly as you’d expect\. The 12 cores of the CIX\-powered Orion O6N give it an edge in multi\-core workloads, but there’s not much in it\. Single core workloads on the other hand are ahead by nearly 27% in Geekbench 6, and the pattern continues throughout\. Nice\. ### CPU Performance Geekbench 6 Higher Scores are Better Single\-Core  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 1,682Best  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 1,32779%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 1,18070%  Raspberry Pi58GB 90254%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 81348% Multi\-Core  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 6,954Best  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 6,89799%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 3,21546%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 2,94442%  Raspberry Pi58GB 2,18831% 7\-Zip Benchmark Higher Scores are Better Single\-Core Combined  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 4,373 MIPSBest  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 3,867 MIPS88%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 3,829 MIPS88%  Raspberry Pi58GB 3,334 MIPS76%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 2,883 MIPS66% Multi\-Core Combined  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 35,576 MIPSBest  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 33,823 MIPS95%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 17,401 MIPS49%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 15,470 MIPS43%  Raspberry Pi58GB 12,000 MIPS34% High Performance Linpack Higher Scores are Better Performance  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 137\.16 GFLOPSBest  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 44\.15 GFLOPS32%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 38\.66 GFLOPS28%  Raspberry Pi58GB 36\.60 GFLOPS27%  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB No Data Performance/Watt  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 3\.83 GFLOPS/WBest  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 3\.52 GFLOPS/W92%  Raspberry Pi58GB 3\.16 GFLOPS/W82%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 2\.30 GFLOPS/W60%  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB No Data UnixBench Higher Scores are Better Single Core  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 1,756Best  Raspberry Pi58GB 1,65494%  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 1,38679%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 1,31075%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 1,28073% Multi Core  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 10,730Best  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 9,74291%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 6,07657%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 5,30049%  Raspberry Pi58GB 4,92046% PassMark PerformanceTest Higher Scores are Better CPU Score  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 7,269Best  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 6,27786%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 3,52548%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 2,77838%  Raspberry Pi58GB 2,39433% RAM Score  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 2,354Best  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 1,95383%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 1,87179%  Raspberry Pi58GB 1,37458%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 1,34657% CPU Mining \(cpuminer\-multi\) Higher Hashrates are Better Single Core  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 6\.46 kH/sBest  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 5\.07 kH/s78%  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 4\.84 kH/s75%  Raspberry Pi58GB 3\.86 kH/s60%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 3\.64 kH/s56% Multi Core  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 45\.49 kH/sBest  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 42\.99 kH/s95%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 26\.25 kH/s58%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 21\.43 kH/s47%  Raspberry Pi58GB 15\.43 kH/s34% ### Storage and I/O What you’ll immediately see here is that the 4 lanes of PCIe Gen 3 connectivity given to one of the M\.2 slots on the Q8B give it a massive advantage, and providing you’re lucky enough to have a drive laying around to make the most of that without bankrupting you right now, you’re going to have a good time\. If you have a fast M\.2 device that can use the 4 lanes of Gen 3, make sure you select the right connector\!UFS as an alternative is a great option \(on the Orion O6N this is connected via a USB bridge, hence the not so great performance for comparison\) but the modules aren’t as readily available, and larger capacities can also be quite expensive in this day and age\. Its connector is also hidden by 1 of the 2 M\.2 slots if a 2280 NVMe is installed in the Gen 3 x2 slot, so if both are in use, they could get a little toasty\. Well, when support is added for them that is\. Storage Performance \(FIO\) Higher is Better 4K Sequential Read M\.2 NVMe Radxa Dragon Q8B — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 1,136\.0 MB/sBest Radxa Orion O6N — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 925\.6 MB/s81% Raspberry Pi 5 — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 866\.5 MB/s76% Radxa Dragon Q6A — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 645\.5 MB/s57% Radxa ROCK 5B\+ — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 621\.4 MB/s55% UFS Radxa Dragon Q6A — Radxa UFS 128GB 493\.4 MB/sBest Radxa Orion O6N — Radxa UFS 128GB 37\.7 MB/s8% microSD Raspberry Pi 5 — Raspberry Pi 64GB 38\.8 MB/sBest Radxa Dragon Q8B — Raspberry Pi 64GB 26\.1 MB/s67% Radxa Dragon Q6A — Raspberry Pi 64GB 22\.6 MB/s58% Radxa ROCK 5B\+ — Raspberry Pi 64GB 19\.1 MB/s49% 4K Sequential Write M\.2 NVMe Radxa Dragon Q8B — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 1,110\.3 MB/sBest Radxa Orion O6N — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 654\.2 MB/s59% Raspberry Pi 5 — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 604\.9 MB/s54% Radxa ROCK 5B\+ — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 479\.3 MB/s43% Radxa Dragon Q6A — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 456\.4 MB/s41% UFS Radxa Dragon Q6A — Radxa UFS 128GB 274\.3 MB/sBest Radxa Orion O6N — Radxa UFS 128GB 35\.2 MB/s13% microSD Raspberry Pi 5 — Raspberry Pi 64GB 35\.6 MB/sBest Radxa Dragon Q8B — Raspberry Pi 64GB 10\.8 MB/s30% Radxa ROCK 5B\+ — Raspberry Pi 64GB 7\.7 MB/s22% Radxa Dragon Q6A — Raspberry Pi 64GB 6\.7 MB/s19% 4K Random Read M\.2 NVMe Radxa Dragon Q8B — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 1,119\.1 MB/sBest Raspberry Pi 5 — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 866\.5 MB/s77% Radxa Orion O6N — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 863\.6 MB/s77% Radxa Dragon Q6A — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 608\.5 MB/s54% Radxa ROCK 5B\+ — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 581\.8 MB/s52% UFS Radxa Dragon Q6A — Radxa UFS 128GB 475\.1 MB/sBest Radxa Orion O6N — Radxa UFS 128GB 16\.3 MB/s3% microSD Raspberry Pi 5 — Raspberry Pi 64GB 22\.0 MB/sBest Radxa Dragon Q8B — Raspberry Pi 64GB 20\.4 MB/s93% Radxa Dragon Q6A — Raspberry Pi 64GB 17\.4 MB/s79% Radxa ROCK 5B\+ — Raspberry Pi 64GB 16\.4 MB/s75% 4K Random Write M\.2 NVMe Radxa Dragon Q8B — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 1,090\.9 MB/sBest Radxa Orion O6N — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 640\.7 MB/s59% Raspberry Pi 5 — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 590\.6 MB/s54% Radxa ROCK 5B\+ — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 466\.3 MB/s43% Radxa Dragon Q6A — Crucial P5 Plus 1024GB 437\.4 MB/s40% UFS Radxa Dragon Q6A — Radxa UFS 128GB 254\.9 MB/sBest Radxa Orion O6N — Radxa UFS 128GB 20\.4 MB/s8% microSD Raspberry Pi 5 — Raspberry Pi 64GB 15\.1 MB/sBest Radxa Dragon Q6A — Raspberry Pi 64GB 13\.9 MB/s92% Radxa Dragon Q8B — Raspberry Pi 64GB 12\.5 MB/s83% Radxa ROCK 5B\+ — Raspberry Pi 64GB 11\.1 MB/s74% ### Graphics and the Adreno GPU I was unable to get the Q6A to play ball in time to publish this initially, though in the coming week or so I’ll be going back to add that\. Overall, however, the story is much the same\. If you compare these boards over on sbc\.compare you’ll be able to see the drivers that are in use, because it’s a bit of a mixed bag between what Armbian bundle, and OS vendors themselves\. GLMark2 goes the way of the CIX P1, but vkmark has the Q8B absolutely trouncing the competition\. GLMark2 \(OpenGL ES\) Higher Scores are Better 1080p  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 1,717Best  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 1,49987%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 94755%  Raspberry Pi58GB 65738%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB No Data 4K  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 632Best  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 47575%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 27944%  Raspberry Pi58GB 15024%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB No Data VKMark \(Vulkan\) Higher Scores are Better 1080p  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 5,281Best  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 1,40527%  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 90217%  Raspberry Pi58GB 4068%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB No Data 4K  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 1,400Best  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 43531%  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 30922%  Raspberry Pi58GB 937%  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB No Data ## Power Consumption and Thermals We already know about the CIX P1’s bruteforce approach to power consumption, as in, just throw everything you have at the SoC and keep it running as fast as you can\. This works well for the Dragon Q8B because it’s much faster in nearly every test, and does it whilst consuming less power across fewer CPU cores\. No Linpack power results here because of the earlier mentioned instability\. I could get it to run on the 4 X1 cores, but I wasn’t going to add that data to the database and confuse things\. Power Consumption Lower is "Better" Idle Power  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 2\.50WBest  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 3\.50W71%  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 9\.30W27%  Raspberry Pi58GB No Data  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB No Data Load Power  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 6\.40WBest  Raspberry Pi58GB 6\.50W98%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 8\.60W74%  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 21\.70W29%  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 23\.70W27% Ollama Max  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 7\.50WBest  Raspberry Pi58GB 10\.80W69%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 14\.30W52%  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB 28\.10W27%  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 33\.90W22% Linpack Max  RadxaDragon Q6A6GB 10\.10WBest  Raspberry Pi58GB 11\.60W87%  RadxaROCK 5B\+16GB 19\.20W53%  RadxaOrion O6N32GB 39W26%  RadxaDragon Q8B32GB No Data ## Radxa Dragon Q8B Pricing and Availability OK, so we’ve been through all of the data, we’ve looked at everything, but given the announcement was today, where can we buy one and how much will they cost? So far I could only find them listed on Arace, and their UI doesn’t really let you click around and see the prices of each SKU, just the default one, but in the page source we have all of the data, and it’s a mixed bag\. VariantSKUPrice \(USD\)Radxa Dragon Q8B 4GBRS782\-D4S32W0$149\.00Radxa Dragon Q8B 8GBRS782\-D8S32W0$209\.00Radxa Dragon Q8B 16GBRS782\-D16S32W0$329\.00Radxa Dragon Q8B 32GBRS782\-D32S32W0$569\.00Heatsink for Radxa Dragon Q8BAE038$3\.90The heatsink pricing is good, though I’d probably have liked for it to be included in the price of the boards themselves and at least bundled together, if not pre\-installed\. You’re going to want cooling for this, and not everyone’s going to have something that fits perfectly, if at all\. Arace were also doing their usual “pay $5 to get a $50 coupon” type of deal, though at the time of writing/publishing, this was sold out already\. I’m not sure if they’ve actually gone on sale yet, or if they did sell out quickly, but if you’re lucky enough to get your hands on one then the middle\-ground models with $50 off don’t look like too bad value given the current climate\. Heck, it’s great value actually when you look at the performance you’re getting\. The question will just be when they’re going to be available, as there doesn’t seem to be a date given yet, and these things tend to be announced a month or so \(at least\) before they’re made available, and will all SKUs be available? ## Closing Thoughts Even at this early stage, the Radxa Dragon Q8B impresses and takes the number 1 spot in nearly every test on[sbc\.compare](https://sbc.compare/116-radxa-dragon-q8b-32gb)\. With the pricing we now have, it’s a pretty damn compelling purchase, especially if you’re going to be able to get the most out of all of the hardware\. Dual 2\.5GbE RJ45, powerful X1/A78 cores, and plenty of high speed I/O make it a great option for routers, a NAS, a teeny browsing machine, or even some light gaming\. Radxa are drinking all of the Qualcomm Kool\-Aid, and the releases are coming thick and fast \(there was also a Radxa Dragon Q5E announced today, though sadly I don’t have one to show results for yet\!\) I can’t complain about what’s not working just yet, as it was an early sample and development is still ongoing, but honestly? It’s not far off\. I think in the next release or two of their builds, we’ll have full functionality in Radxa OS, and Armbian won’t be far behind\. Powerful hardware, software we’re all used to? What’s not to \(potentially\) love\. What are you guys thinking about the wave of Qualcomm\-based SBC releases, we saw the[Arduino UNO Q](https://sbc.compare/96-arduino-uno-q-2gb)towards the end of last year on the lower\-end \(in terms of raw performance at least, it wasn’t about that\) and Radxa seem to be doing their best to flaunt everything Qualcomm has to offer, be it SBCs, NAS, you name it, Radxa will probably try and launch it\.\. If you’ve made it this far, thank you, and congratulations, I’ll go back to my hole now\. Bye\! **Related Posts** - [Raspberry Pi 5 Review](https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/) - [Intel N100, a Challenge to ARM](https://bret.dk/intel-n100-a-challenge-to-arm/) - [ROCK 5B Review](https://bret.dk/radxa-rock-5b-review-powerful-rk3588-sbc/)