ODROID-HC4 with OLED (G201014154360) Hardkernel

ODROID-HC4 is new Home-Cloud platform based on the same ARM CPU as the ODROID-C4. We adopted a 12nm fabricated energy efficient 1.8Ghz Cortex-A55 quad core processor with faster 4GB DDR4 RAM. A 16MiB SPI flash chip exists on the board for the useful Petitboot feature.

 

Technical information at WiKi : https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-hc4/odroid-hc4

 

 

We adopted a 12nm fabricated energy efficient 1.8Ghz Cortex-A55 quad core processor with faster 4GB DDR4 RAM. A 16MiB SPI flash chip exists on the board for the useful Petitboot feature.

We decided to drop the use of USB3.0 to SATA bridge solutions (quirks, additional IO layer, etc) for the ODROID HC4. We are therefore using a more native and reliable PCIe to SATA direct bridge solutions. In doing so the HC4 board provides two SATA storage docks.

A 5.5mm DC power jack, UHS-1 compatible micro-SD slot, USB 2.0, HDMI 2.0 and 1GbE port are available on the rear side of the transparent shell case.

 

 

Circuit Board

A	CPU (Amlogic S905X3)	H	2x System LED indicators
B	DDR4 memory (2GiB or 4GiB)	I	1x UART for system console
C	2x SATA ports	J	1x IR receiver
D	1x RJ45 Ethernet port (10/100/1000)	K	5x GPIO pins (for optional OLED display)
E	1x HDMI 2.0	L	1x Micro SD slot
F	1x USB 2.0 host port	M	1x Cooling fan
G	1x DC power jack (Outer diameter : 5.5mm, inner diameter 2.1mm)	N	1x Boot switch

 

The toaster form factor ODROID HC4

accepts 2 x 3.5” or 2 x 2.5”” mechanical or SSD disks. You can obviously also use one mechanical and one SSD. See two examples shown below. Thanks to Linux LVM or mdadm you can combine two disks in RAID 0, RAID 1 or optimize IO with a large disk using one mechanical drive and an SSD for disk caching (LVM, bcache, etc).

 

Two 12TB high performance HDDs on the HC4

 

Two Samsung SSDs on the HC4

 

 

Block diagram

 

Dow

 

Thermographics

When the ambient temperature was 33°C, the HDD surface temperature was up to 45°C. 

Once we used the same system at a normal 25°C room temperature, the HDD surface was lower than 40°C.

 

Power Consumption

Note 1: ST2000DM006 spin-down power consumption is 0.75W per HDD. Therefore, the HC4 idle mode power consumption is about 4W.

Note 2: Power consumption in Active state is tested while copying huge files through SAMBA service.

Note 3: Wake-up sources for the Suspend mode: Wake-on-LAN, IR remote receiver and RTC Alarm.

 

Software Support

Petitboot can find the OS on the SD card, the HDD or the SSD. So even if you do not have an SD card but you have a plugged-in HDD or SSD that has an OS installed, Petitboot will boot the HC4 using the OS from the HDD or SSD. Debian/Ubuntu OS can run with the Hardkernel’s preinstalled OS image or Debian/Ubuntu Netboot Installer which you can obtain from the ODROID forum.

Supported Linux kernel versions are:

1. 4.9.230 or newer (Hardkernel stock OS version)
2. Mainline kernel 5.8 or newer (Unofficial version from ODROID forum)

Specifications

FORM FACTOR	Board Dimensions: 84mm x 90.5mm x 25.0mm Heatsink Dimensions: 40mm x 32mm x 10mm Weight: 280g including heatsink, fan and case
PROCESSOR	Amlogic S905X3 Processor L1 instruction cache: 32 KB, 4-way set associative (128 sets), 64 byte lines, shared by 1 processor L1 data cache: 32 KB, 4-way set associative (128 sets), 64 byte lines, shared by 1 processor L3 data cache: 512KB , 16-way set associative (512 sets), 64 byte lines, shared by 4 processorsQuad-Core Cortex-A55 (1.800GHz) ARMv8-A architecture with Neon and Crypto extensions Mali-G31 MP2 GPU with 4 x Execution Engines (650Mhz)
MEMORY	DDR4 4GiB with 32-bit bus width Data rate: 2640 MT/s (PC4-21333 grade) 1.2Volt low power design
STORAGE	1x Micro SD slot (DS/HS mode up to UHS-I SDR104)
NETWORKING	1 x GbE LAN ports (RJ45, supports 10/100/1000 Mbps) – Realtek RTL8211F (Ethernet transceiver) – LED indicators * Green LED: Flashing by data traffics at 100Mbps connection * Amber LED: Flashing by data traffics at 1000Mbps connection
VIDEO	1 x HDMI 2.0 (up to 4K@60Hz with HDR, CEC, EDID)
AUDIO	1 x HDMI digital output
COOLER	1 x Passive heatsink ( 40x32x10 mm ) on the CPU of PCB board 1 x Hydraulic Bearing FAN – Rated Voltage : 5V – Rated Current : 100mA – Max Speed RPM : 4,000 – Air Flow CFM : 4.3 – Air Pressure (In H2O) : 0.053 – Noise Level(dBA) : 23.9 – Dimension : 40 x 40 x 10.6 mm – Wire & Connector : 80mm, 4 pin 1.25mm pitch
EXTERNAL I/O	1 x USB 2.0 host port 1 x Debug serial console (UART) 2 x SATA Connectors
OTHER FEATURES	IR receiver for remote controller System LED Indicators: – Red (POWER) – Solid light when DC power is connected – Blue (ALIVE) – Flashing like heartbeat while Kernel is running.
POWER	1 x DC jack : outer (negative) diameter 5.5mm, inner (positive) diameter 2.1mm DC input : 14.5V ~ 15.5V – DC 15V/4A power adaptor is recommended. Sold separately. Power consumption with two ST2000DM006 HDDs : – IDLE(with HDD in spin-down) : ≃ 5.88W – Active(using SAMBA): ≃ 15.59W – Suspend: ≃ 0.29W