In June/July we heard that the Orange Pi 6 was on the way, and units have been making their way around the world to reviewers, developers, and enthusiasts alike. I’m not sure which category I fall into these days (definitely not a developer), but Orange Pi sent a 16GB model, along with the official case over for me to look at, and I’m going to walk you through what you get for your $359.

Note that this isn’t meant to be a full review, more of my initial thoughts and an overview of what you get, what the software situation is like, and an extract of the benchmark data available over on sbc.compare. As usual, there was no obligation to create content, Orange Pi have no editorial input (before or after publishing) and all rambling is my own.

Everything is much the same here as the Orange Pi 6 Plus, though we drop down to a maximum of 24GB of RAM, and dual 2.5GbE RJ45 instead of 5GbE. The SoC is the same, so we have the same 12 CPU cores, Immortalis-G720 GPU, and the 28.8/45 TOPS (depending on how you calculate it..) NPU.

Out of the Box

The packaging is a little stripped down in comparison to the 6 Plus too, though not necessarily in a bad way. The Apple-esque cardboard box has made way for a plastic box with foam inserts which is perfectly fine in my opinion, if we ignore the cardboard/plastic environmental debate. You just don’t get the satisfying whoosh of air as you open it :( For what it’s worth, too, the case came in the same type of box/packaging.

Included in your $359 outlay is an active cooler, which is made up of a fairly substantial metal plate, with a fan exhausting air out of a set of fins on the back.

There’s a lot going on on this board, and whilst it’s bigger than a Raspberry Pi 5-sized board, its 90x90mm footprint doesn’t feel too bulky.

Quick Tests

Let’s run through some of the numbers. From the test environment below you’ll see we’re only getting a Debian 12 (Bookworm) image, with CIX’s 6.6 Linux kernel, which isn’t the latest they offer, but perhaps there’s a reason for that that I’m unaware of. “Luckily” for us, it’s the same that the 6 Plus was tested on, so that’s nice for comparisons I guess?

As always with my testing, I’m using Noctua industrial fans to blast the crap out of the boards to ensure no thermal throttling occurs, so these numbers are best case scenarios, not necessarily what you’ll see in your specific situation depending on ambient temperatures etc.

I’m only going to cover Geekbench 6, PassMark, and Linpack in this piece, though full Orange Pi 6 benchmark results are available on sbc.compare if you fancy it (you’ll find more CPU, RAM, GPU, and networking results over there!)

There are also results for the latest Geekbench 7 release, but we’ll start with GB6 here so that it can be compared.

Final disclaimer before we get into it, we also need to take into account that the 6 Plus has 32GB of RAM, whereas the 6 has 16GB.

“Interesting” Findings

Not everything is plain sailing when it comes to these SBCs, so here’s what I found during my initial testing.

An Ollama Reboot

You’ll notice in the last graph regarding power consumption that the Ollama Max Power value is missing, and that’s for a strange reason.

Whilst it would always complete the Deepseek R1 1.5b model just fine, when it came to the 8b variant, I’d get DDR/memory controller DFI-related errors in the kernel logs before the board shut itself down each time. Linpack hits the CPU/RAM incredibly hard and didn’t trigger anything, however.

If other Orange Pi 6 owners see this and want to try running the same tests, do let me know, I can help with the test scenarios!

1440P Trolling

When it came to installing Ubuntu I was pulling (what’s left of) my hair out wondering why I couldn’t get any video signal over USB-C, HDMI, or DP to either of the monitors on my desk. That is until it hit me that both of them were 1440P displays.. In testing I’d had a dummy HDMI adapter working at both 1080P and 4K, and that tidbit came back into my head far too late for me to get the 30 minutes or so of my day back :(

Others mentioned similar stories in the Orange Pi Discord server, with some saying they had to go all the way down to 1024×768 to get things working, though I’m not sure if that was because that’s all they had available, or it was all that would work.

The Official Case and What It Costs You

Moving onto our final section, the official Orange Pi 6 case. Honestly? It’s a decent looking case. The metal feels a little thinner than I’d have expected, but it doesn’t feel cheap, and it doesn’t feel weak.

There are grilles for the intake on top, and the exhaust on the back, with cutouts for all of the I/O on the front of the board, as well as the microSD, LEDs, and power button on the side.

The top of the case is held in place by 4 magnets, which is quite nice, and the bottom (where you’d need to access the M.2 slots for NVMe/WiFi options) is held in place by a single screw.

What’s a little “meh” is that the power button is too far back within the cut out to be able to push it with your fingers. One on hand it prevents accidental presses if moving it around, on the other, you have to find something that fits in there to perform any power operations.

Anyway, overall, the case is nice and doesn’t impact the cooling side of things too much. The below shows the Pi 6 on its own (well, with its stock active cooler), and then again with it in the case. There’s around a 7 degree Celsius jump once it’s in the case. This may or may not be a problem, depending on where you live and your ambient temperature.

I’ll be keeping it in the case once testing is finished, as it will likely go onto my test agent shelf as a Windows on Arm target!

Early Verdict

So, these are early numbers and it’s a quick snapshot of how it’s been released rather than a longer-term review (I’m sorrrry, I really want to get back to those but life is getting in the way) but hopefully there’s enough here for you to see where you stand if you want to part with your money.

The stock cooling provided with the Orange Pi 6 does a great job, and feels like it’s quieter than the one found on the 6 Plus. It’s mostly just the whoosh of air coming out rather than fan noise itself though. Under normal use, it’ll blend into the background on your desk. If it’s underneath or elsewhere, you’re going to be fine.

The reboots relating to the DDR/RAM controller are a little bit worrying, though I’m not sure if that’s my unit playing up, or if it’s a general issue with this SBC.

Is there a specific test that I haven’t covered over on sbc.compare that you’d like to see done? I’ll do my best to do some adhoc tests if requested, or if the test looks promising enough, I may look at adding it to the overall test suite!

Finally, should you buy one? Should you be considering this over the 6 Plus?

It’s a tough one, as at the risk of sounding like a broken record in so many of these posts, it’s going to come down to your potential use case(s). Do you have a network capabale of feeding 5GbE? Do you need it if the answer is yet? Is 24GB of RAM not enough for you? If so, congratulations, high baller that can afford 32GB of RAM in this economy.

At $359 for 16GB, my brain tells me it’s not exactly cheap, however if we look at the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 coming in at around $300 (and that’s a bare board, no cooling etc) then it starts to look like a compelling deal. Unless of course you value a more mature software ecosystem and a wealth of board-specific documentation. In which case.. You should consider your options..

Related Links

Orange Pi 5 Plus Review
Raspberry Pi 5 Review
Radxa Dragon Q8B Review