Question 1

Does this come in a box with the heat sink?

Accepted Answer

Yes, comes packing in a little box form fitted so it doesnt get damaged.
Comes with an aluminum heatsink that has a thermal pad applied already, all you have to do is line it up and press it down on the chip. 
Works Great!

Question 2

Will this work with Pi OS's?

Accepted Answer

No. The OS's available for the Tinkerboard are buggy and discouraging to use unless you are really familiar with Linux and even then they're still frustrating. I put my Tinkerboard in a desk drawer and ordered the new PI 3+ Hopefully it wont end up in the same drawer.

Question 3

Windows?

Accepted Answer

You can run Win10 IoT Core on these, just like on a Pi.  Like Thomas P, I've not played with it at all yet, but it has to work.  Unsure what it will look like and feel like compared to actual Win10.

Question 4

Is this affected by meltdown and spectre?

Accepted Answer

Most likely yes, But from what I have read Kernel 4.14 and later has been patched against Meltdown so upgrading the kernel on what ever distro you plan to use will protect against Meltdown, and I assume they are working on patching against Spectre as well.

Question 5

Will this fit in a Raspberry Pi case?

Accepted Answer

Yes, it is the same form factor as the Raspberry Pi 3. The only cases that don't work are aluminum cases with points designed to contact the Pi's SoC and Wireless chips. They are in different locations on the Tinker Board.

Question 6

What are the power requirements? Can it be set up to boot directly from USB Hard Drive's without the use of SD Card? What about Overclocking and the Power requirements?

Accepted Answer

For power, this SoC is honestly too much for a micro-USB connector, I would recommend using the GPIO pins for power if you're going to push it performance wise.  The amperage isn't thew problem so much as voltage.  Get a 5.25 V adapter if at all possible.

With an addon board and some patience this can boot from a SPI flash and any media (netboot, usb, etc), but out of the box and without a lot of experience it is stuck with SD.

Overclocking the RK3288 is possible, however the included heatsink won't let you enjoy any performance benefits because it frankly isn't good enough to keep the processor from throttling in stock form.  Google around and look into larger heat sinks (20x40 mm or so, with a small fan).

Question 7

Is this 64 or 32 bit?

Accepted Answer

32 bit

Question 8

With the ASUS supplied O.S., will anything found in the repository work on this ARM CPU? Specifically the software found in the synaptic packet manager. I only ask because I tried to install some software from there and was not successful. My impression was that the packet manager would only contain software that is built for that specific iteration of Linux (Debian ARM in this case). I wonder if software contained in synaptic was built for different hardware. Thanks

Accepted Answer

The short answer is yes, you want to find an OS that is compatible with the board you are using. You cannot/should not for example use a Pi OS with the Tinkerboard. Problems can anything from bootloader issues, hardware compatability errors, to myriad other reasons why it wont work.

Brand	ASUS
Model	Tinker Board
Combo Type	Motherboard / CPU / Memory Combo

CPU	Rockchip Quad-Core RK3288 processor
Memory	2GB Dual-Channel DDR3
Color	Black

LAN Chipset	RTL GB LAN
LAN Speed	10/100/1000Mbps
Max LAN Speed	1Gbps
Wireless LAN	WiFi IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth	Bluetooth V4.0 + EDR

HDMI	1 x HDMI
USB 1.1/2.0	4 x USB 2.0
Audio Ports	1

ASUS SBC Tinker Board RK3288 SoC 1.8 GHz Quad-Core CPU, 600 MHz Mali-T764 GPU, 2GB

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Item#: N82E16813119002