Hardkernel Odroid M1 with 8GB RAM

The ODROID-M1 is a single board computer with a wide range of useful peripherals developed for use in a variety of embedded system applications. The CPU has four ARM Cortex-A55 processors with low power consumption and high efficiency operation at 2Ghz. The CPU and GPU performance is quite similar to our ODROID-C4. This is the larger 8GB of LPDDR4 DRAM Memory while there is also a 4GB model for reduced cost. Petitboot pre-installed into the on-board 16MiB of SPI-Flash Memory helps manage various OS and kernel versions easily and supports booting from microSD, eMMC, NVMe, SATA, and USB storage devices.

In addition, since on-line OS installation using a network is possible, the cumbersome procedure of downloading and flashing an OS image is dramatically reduced. A standard size 22mm x 80mm M. 2 NVMe storage device can be directly installed on the ODROID-M1 board. The M. 2 connector has PCIe 3.0 2-lane configuration which can deliver a blazing fast 1600MB/sec of sequential access performance. Note that M. 2 SATA storage devices can not be used. The M. 2 slot supports only a PCIe interface (M-Key). A single native (non-USB) SATA 3.0 port is provided for use with a 2.5 inch HDD or SSD NAND Memory storage device.

This SATA interface delivers near 500MB/s of sequential access. The SATA Mount and Cable Kit contains a SATA Data cable, a SATA Power cable, and a mount plate with some support screws. However, since the SATA power port doesnt have a 12Volt power rail, a separated external 12Volt SATA power supply is required to use a 3.5 inch HDD. A sleek and cool blue M1 Metal Case Kit is an available option to protect your ODROID-M1 board. The metal cover is made with aluminum extrusion that has an abrasive blasted surface texture and anodized blue finish.

It can be securely docked to the ODRID-M1 heatsink frame via sliding slot. The front and rear side covers were made with gold plated PCBs.
Power consumption and heat characteristics: Without any external peripherals connected, the M1 power consumption is about 4.5W att with a very heavy computing load. It could be as low as 1.3W att in the idle state. Thanks to the huge heatsink frame, the thermal characteristics look quite good with very heavy CPU computing load. The CPU core temperature was near 50°C with a heavy computing load at a relatively high 35°C ambient temperature. This is very far from the thermal throttling trigger point, and the ODROID-M1 can run in various embedded application environments without noisy active cooling.
Analog audio output sound quality: There is a 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack on the M1 board. It presents an on-board high quality 384Khz/32bit stereo audio output. Dynamic range and SNR is near 100dB and Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise is lower than 0.006 %. You can enjoy Hi-Fi sound quality without an expensive external audio DAC. We have measured the sound quality with Audio-Precision equipment as usual.