The ODROID H-series is growing with three brand new models

Again, the new generation is more powerful and offers higher performance. 
It also delivers key new IO that will please many users.

Introducing the ODROID-H4, H4+ and H4 Ultra

Hardkernel is introducing the ODROID-H4, H4+ and H4 Ultra, which is equipped with higher performance and richer interfaces.

 

The major characteristics of the ODROID-H4 series compared to the ODROID-H3 series are:

1. Faster CPU architecture Alder Lake N vs. Jasper Lake. Plus AVX2 extensions.
2. Faster DRAM interface DDR5 4800 MT/s vs. DDR4 2933 MT/s.
3. Higher base and boost CPU frequencies and more powerful iGPU.
4. The increase from 2 to 4 SATA ports allows connection to a greater number of storage devices, ODROID-H4+ and ODROID H4 Ultra only.
5. An additional DisplayPort added allows the simultaneous use of up to 3 monitors.
6. Low cost ODROID H4 for compute and graphics applications (e.g signage, robot, factory automation,..)
7. Flagship H4 Ultra doubling the number of CPU cores, from 4 to 8 cores.

We also implemented little details following the ODROID-H3 feedback we receive from all of our users, this means you. Examples: 

1. Dual BIOS: If the BIOS is corrupted due to a power outage during update, etc., you can boot into the backup BIOS and recover by moving the jumper next to the DC jack. This feature is only available on ODROID-H4+ and ODROID H4-Ultra.
2. The new H4 cases format has been improved so that a cooling fan can be mounted inside the case.
3. A Mini-ITX kit for seamless integration with generic ITX PC cases.

Let’s look at the detailed table shown below.

	ODROID H2+   (‘2020 Jun)	ODROID H3   (‘2022 Oct)	ODROID H3+   (‘2022 Oct)	ODROID H4   (‘2024 Apr)	ODROID H4+  (‘2024 Apr)	ODROID H4 Ultra   (‘2024 Apr)
Processor
CPU (Intel)	Celeron J4115	Celeron N5105	Pentium N6005	Processor N97	Processor N97	Core™ i3 Processor N305
Code name	Gemini Lake	Jasper Lake	Jasper Lake	Alder Lake-N	Alder Lake-N	Alder Lake-N
Launch date	Q4’17	Q1’21	Q1’21	Q1’23	Q1’23	Q1’23
Microarchitecture	Goldmont Plus	Tremont	Tremont	Gracemont	Gracemont	Gracemont
Cores / Threads	4C4T	4C4T	4C4T	4C4T	4C4T	8C8T
Cache	4 MB	4 MB	4 MB	6 MB	6 MB	6 MB
AVX2 (Advanced Vector Extensions)	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
TDP	10W	10W	10W	12W	12W	15W
Single Thread Burst Frequency (GHz)	2.5	2.9	3.3	3.6	3.6	3.8
Memory
Max. Memory address space (GB)	32	64	64	48	48	48
Max. Memory Speed (MT/s)	DDR4-2400	DDR4-2933	DDR4-2933	DDR5-4800	DDR5-4800	DDR5-4800
iGPU (Intel UHD Graphics)
Burst Frequency (MHz)	750	800	900	1200	1200	1250
Execution Units	12	24	32	24	24	32
Video outputs
HDMI	1	1	1	1	1	1
DisplayPort	1	1	1	2	2	2
PCIe (via NVMe slot)
Generation	Gen 2	Gen 3	Gen 3	Gen 3	Gen 3	Gen 3
Lanes	4	4	4	4	4	4
Compatibility with optional 4-ports 2.5GbE  Net Card	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IO ports
USB 2.0	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports
USB 3.0	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports
2.5GbE	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports	1 port	2 ports	2 ports
SATA III	2 ports	2 ports	2 ports	No	4 ports	4 ports
24pin IO Expansion ports	I2C x 2	I2C x 2	I2C x 2	I2C x 2	I2C x 2	I2C x 2
	USB 2.0 x 1	USB 2.0 x 3	USB 2.0 x 3	USB 2.0 x 3	USB 2.0 x 3	USB 2.0 x 3
	UART x 2	UART x 1	UART x 1	UART x 1	UART x 1	UART x 1
	HDMI-CEC x 1	HDMI-CEC x 1	HDMI-CEC x 1	HDMI-CEC x 1	HDMI-CEC x 1	HDMI-CEC x 1
	Ext. Power Button x 1	Ext. Power Button x 1	Ext. Power Button x 1	Ext. Power Button x 1	Ext. Power Button x 1	Ext. Power Button x 1
Others
Optional Cooling Fan	92 mm 5 Volt mini 4pin connector	92-25 mm 12 Volt standard PC 4-pin	92-25 mm 12 Volt standard PC 4-pin	Slim 92-15 or thick 92-25 mm 12 Volt standard PC 4-pin Slim fan fits inside the new cases.	Slim 92-15 or thick 92-25 mm 12 Volt standard PC 4-pin Slim fan fits inside the new cases.	Slim 92-15 or thick 92-25 mm 12 Volt standard PC 4-pin Slim fan fits inside the new cases.
Dimensions	110x110mm (4.3×4.3 in)	110x110mm (4.3×4.3 in)	110x110mm (4.3×4.3 in)	120x120mm (4.7×4.7 in)	120x120mm (4.7×4.7 in)	120x120mm (4.7×4.7 in)
Recommended Power Supply 1	60W	60W	60W	60W	60W	60W
Recommended Power Supply 2 for supporting booting with 3.5″ hard disks	133W	133W	133W	133W	133W	133W
Unlimited Performance Mode	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Security (TPM 2.0)	Couldn’t be supported	fTPM enabled (Will run Windows 11 out of the box)
Hardkernel H-series cases	DIY assembly Translucent Blue Acrylic	DIY assembly The cases are made of solid and sturdy PCBs.		DIY assembly The cases are made of solid and sturdy PCBs. A classic GameCube-style case will be released in May or June separately.
Certifications	FCC/CE/KC/RoHS	FCC/CE/KC/RoHS	FCC/CE/KC/RoHS	FCC/CE/KC/RoHS	FCC/CE/KC/RoHS	FCC/CE/KC/RoHS
Pricing	$119	$129	$165	$99	$139	$220

Noteworthy Features

Why the N97 instead of the N100?

Bigger numbers aren’t always better. INTEL naming may be deceiving.

We chose the N97 because its Maximum Turbo Frequency is 200MHz higher than the N100, respectively 3.60GHz vs. 3.40GHz. In addition, the GPU Max Dynamic Frequency is a whopping 450MHz higher, respectively 1.2GHz vs. 750MHz.

The TDP value of the N97, which is therefore faster than the N100, is higher, but there is almost no difference in power consumption at idle state. Although the N97 is more expensive, we chose it for its higher performance.

Single-Channel Memory

This is a decision made by Intel. The Alder Lake N processors only offer one single-channel of memory. However, the DDR5 speed of 4800 MT/s as well as the Dual Rank (r2x8) option largely compensate for the double-channel of DDR4 with the H2 and H3 series. The DDR5 4800 MT/s of the H4 series leaves the DDR4 2933 MT/s and DDR4 2400 MT/s of the H3 and H2 series in its rear mirror.

Note: While the Intel ARK pages specify the Alder Lake N max. memory to be 16GB, we validated that 32 and 48 GB DDR5 SO-DIMMs 4800 or 5600 MT/s work as well. The 5600 MT/s will run at 4800 MT/s. The Intel specifications for the H2 and H3 processors were limited as well, but many users were able to (respectfully) pump up the max. memory to 32 and 64 GB.

How many SATA ports and video outputs?

Compared to the previous generation Gemini Lake or Jasper Lake, the design flexibility of the new Alder Lake-N’s high-speed signal interface has been significantly reduced. To enable SATA ports inside the SoC, a choice arose: reducing the number of PCIe lanes for NVMe from 4 to 2 or find another way. In order to avoid compromising the speed of NVMe, it was inevitable to add an external, expensive SATA controller.

Thanks to a controller that supports four SATA ports, the requirement to connect many storage devices has been resolved. As the performance of CPU, GPU, and DRAM increases, it has become possible to drive a large number of displays. Therefore, in addition to the one output each for HDMI and DisplayPort in the existing H series, the new H4 series is equipped with an additional DisplayPort, allowing a total of three 4K monitors to be connected simultaneously.

Because there are more connectors with relatively large footprints, the form factor has changed from 110x110mm to 120x120mm, and the area has increased by about 20%. As a result, form factor compatibility with the existing H2/H3 series has unfortunately disappeared. However, this affects only the case compatibility. Accessories such as the Net Card work on H2, H3 and H4 series.

Which H4 model is the best for you?

To allow you to use a high-performance platform at a relatively low cost, we removed all SATA functions, the second Ethernet port, and the Dual-BIOS feature to create a basic H4 model that focuses on cost-effectiveness. Therefore, it is suitable for application to embedded systems such as digital signage or factory automation or robot control.

On the other hand, the H4+ is equipped with four SATA ports, a second Ethernet port, and Dual-BIOS feature, making it the best choice for users who need mass storage for high-performance NAS and/or use it for routing capabilities.

Finally, although it is more expensive, we have also designed the H4 Ultra model, which can take advantage of powerful performance with twice the number of CPU cores (from 4 to 8) and more GPU execution units. Thanks to its many cores and fast clocks, the H4 Ultra model shows computing performance that can be twice as high as the H4 and H4+ models, based on multithreaded computing benchmarking results.

If you are very sensitive to power consumption, the H4 model would be the most desirable option. This is because the power in idle state is about 1 Watt lower than the H4+ model.

Performance

Thanks to the Intel Alder Lake-N Gracemont architecture, the higher frequencies of the N97, for the H4 and H4+, and N305, for the H4 Ultra, coupled with DDR5 4800 MT/s, the H4 and H4+ in UP mode are on average around 36% more performant than the H3+ in UP mode. The increased performance jumps to around 83% for the H4 Ultra, again compared to the H3+ in UP mode. This is what we witnessed while running 206 mostly non-synthetic benchmarks. We review these benchmarks further down. We will also see that the increased performance climbs to even higher numbers for multi-threaded applications.

Versatility

For the last 4 years, We acquired a lot of experience and feedback from users, meaning you, first with the H2 series, then with the H3 series. We have seen and still see an incredible broad range of applications.

Some users pushed their ODROID to the max with as much memory as possible, disks, discrete graphics cards, additional SATA ports cards or high-bandwidth network cards.

Conversely, other users made their ODROID as frugal as possible, chasing the last tenths of Watt that could be saved. In this matter, see section Power Consumption Characteristics, we worked on many aspects to make significantly low idle power consumption possible, as well as documenting and enabling users to know how to reach idle power that is not at all high compared to ARM series
boards. We believe this is essential, especially for European users where the cost of electrical energy has been rising for years, to which you add the goal of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions, as targeted by the EU, while running 24×7 systems.

These two extremes, and everything in the middle, are possible because the H series boards can be widely customized. We believe the success of the ODROID H-series is in part due to its original DIY design goal with boards that do not restrict you to one kind of application, e.g. TV box.

The ODROID H4 series doubles down on versatility by adding the low cost H4, with stripped down hardware, on one side of the H4+, and the 8-core H4 Ultra flagship on the other side of the H4+.

The table shown below details the H4 series user-level customizations:

Design	An SBC design that makes sense: all the connectivity is on the rear side, simplifying case design and reducing footprint on a desk.
H-series Net Card	Using the NVMe port, provides 4 additional 2.5 GbE ports, thus tripling the number of 2.5 GbE ports to 6 ports.
Do It Yourself	The ODROID H-series offers you a lot of freedom. You are free to chose: 1. The amount and brand of memory. No soldered memory. 2. The size of the eMMC (including not using one). No soldered eMMC. 3. The size of the NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSD, including not using one(*). 4. To transform the NVMe slot into a PCIe Gen 3 x4 slot for using PCIe cards via optional adapter cable(*). 5. The size of the 1 to 4 SATA III hard disks or SSDs, including not using them (H4+ and H4 Ultra only). 6. A case among 4 (soon to be 5) types of Hard Kernel cases or use a custom one you design or another user designed or use a mainstream Mini-ITX case thanks to the ODROID H4 Mini-ITX kit. 7. Hard Kernel cases allow the usage of an optional silent fan for optimal thermal performance. 8. Any x86-64 flavor of Windows, Linux or BSD operating systems, etc. 9. To upgrade the hardware later with larger memory, more NVMe or SSD or hard disk space. 10. To maximize performance or to minimize power consumption thanks to well documented BIOS and OS options. (*) PCIe Gen 2 on the H2/H2+.

Summary

Note: This summary compares the UP versions of the H3+, H4, H4+ and H4 Ultra because we did not run all the benchmarks on the H3+ non-UP. We ran a total number of 206 benchmarks/cases using the UP configurations.

The major facts about these benchmarks are:

• The H4 and H4+ UP are on average around 36% more performant than the H3+ UP.
• With the H4 Ultra UP, the average climbs to around 83%!
• The H4 and H4+ UP can be up to twice faster than the H3+ UP for particular tests.
• The H4 Ultra UP can be up to three and a half faster than the H3+ UP for particular tests.
• The H4 Ultra UP is on average around 36% more performant than the H4 and H4+ UP.
• The H4 Ultra UP can be more than twice faster than the H4 and H4+ UP for particular tests.
• Not too surprising, with 8 cores vs. 4 cores, the H4 Ultra UP top performance occurs with multi-threaded applications
  (e.g. Compilation, Java, Imaging, Stargate, MemCached, OpenSSL, Video Encoding,…) without being kneecapped by thermal throttling, thanks to Unlimited Performance and active cooling.

 

Demo video

This demo video shows the PS2 and GameCube emulation games on Linux Vulkan GPU driver with Fractional-Scaling technology. We used Batocera.linux x86_64 version 39 for the emulation.

Thanks to the H4’s significantly improved CPU, GPU, and DRAM performance, we can enjoy SD-quality classic masterpiece games in HD quality graphics now.  To play games with this level of graphics on the H3 board, we had to connect an external video card.

Board Description

• A. CPU (Intel N97 or N305 )
• B. 1 x DDR5 SO-DIMM slots (Single channel memory support)
• C. 1 x M.2 PCI Express Module Socket (NGFF-2280)
• D. 1 x eMMC (Embedded Multimedia-Card) Socket
• E. 4 x SATA Power Connectors (2.5mm pitch, JST-XH compatible connector)
• F. 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Data Connectors
• G. 1 x DC Power Jack
• H. 2 x USB 3.0
• I. 2 x USB 2.0
• J. 1 x HDMI 2.0
• K. 2 x DisplayPort 1.2
• L. 2 x RJ45 Ethernet Ports (10/100/1000/2500)
• M. 5 x System LED Indicators
• N. 1 x Peripheral Expansion Header (24-pin)
• O. 1 x Power Switch
• P. 1 x Reset Switch
• Q. 1 x Backup Battery Connector (2-pin)
• R. 1 x Active Cooling Fan Connector (4-pin)
• S. 1 x Audio out, 1 x Audio in, 1 x SPDIF out

Specifications

Processor	Intel 4-Core N97 for ODROID-H4 and H4+ Intel 8-Core i3 N305 for ODROID-H4 Ultra
Memory	1 x DDR5 SO-DIMM slots Single Channel, up to 4800 MT/s. Note: Dual rank r2x8 are better. Max memory capacity 48GB DDR3/DDR4 are not supported
Storage	1 x eMMC connector (bootable and selectable on BIOS) Various eMMC modules can be purchased at Hardkernel store 4 x SATA3 6Gbps  1 x M.2 slot (PCIe 3.0 x 4, supports NGFF-2280 cards)
Networking	2 x 2.5 GbE LAN ports (RJ45, supports 10/100/1000/2500 Mbps) Intel I226-V Supports Wake-On-Lan LED indicators (Green: Link, Amber: Traffic)
Video	2 x DisplayPort 1.2 (up to 4K@60Hz) 1 x HDMI 2.0 (up to 4K@60Hz) Triple simultaneous display support
Audio	1 x Audio out (3.5mm jack) 1 x Audio in (3.5mm jack) 1 x SPDIF out (ALC662, HDA codec) * HDMI & DP have audio output too.
External I/O	2 x USB 3.0 Host ports 2 x USB 2.0 Host ports 1 x Peripheral Expansion Header (24-pin, 2.54mm pitch) – 1 x DC 5V, 1 x DC 3.3V, 5 x GND – 1 x UART (TXD/RXD/RTS/CTS 3.3Volt IO) – 2 x I2C (SCL/SDA 3.3Volt IO) – 1 x External Power Button – HDMI CEC, 5VA+, D+,D- ( To use the HDMI-CEC function, an additional external adapter board must be installed ) – 3 x USB 2.0
Other features	Passive Heatsink Dual BIOS on H4+ and H4 Ultra BIOS Backup Battery ( All H series models include a backup battery by default ) – Maintains system time and BIOS settings Power Button Reset Button System LEDS Indicators: – Red (PWR) – Solid light when DC power is supplied – Blue (left, SLEEP) – turns off only when the system enters into suspend mode – Blue (right, PMIC) – turns on only when the major power rails are working – Amber (SATA) – Flashes when SATA data transfers – Green (NVMe) – Flashes when NVMe data transfers Active Cooling Fan Connector (12V 4-pin, PWM input + TACHO output) – Active Cooling Fan is optional – Connector (4-pin, 2.54mm pitch)
Power	DC jack : outer (ground) diameter 5.5mm, inner(positive) diameter 2.1mm DC 14V ~ 20V  — DC 15V/4A power adapter is recommended if you don’t use 3.5″ HDDs — DC 19V/7A power adapter is recommended if you use more than one 3.5″ SATA HDDs together Power consumption: — Headless Idle : 2.0 ~ 2.9 Watt — Desktop GUI Idle : 4.6 ~ 6.2 Watt  — CPU + GPU stress test : 19 ~ 22 Watt  — Power-off :  0.2 Watt — Suspend to RAM :  0.9 ~ 1.2 Watt
Form Factor	120mm x 120mm x 47mm Approx.

For the distinction between ODROID-H4, H4+, and H4-Ultra refer to the figure below

WIKI : https://wiki.odroid.com/odroid-h4/start

More Information : https://www.hardkernel.com/product-category/odroid-board/x86/

 

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