Radxa Rock 3A

Overview

The Radxa Rock 3A is a compact and affordable single-board computer powered by the Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 SoC with a Mali-G52 GPU and a 1 TOPS NPU. It is available with 2 GB, 4 GB, or 8 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, making it versatile across price points from budget IoT deployments to moderate desktop use.

Storage options include an onboard eMMC socket and a microSD card slot for the operating system, plus an M.2 slot and PCIe interface for expansion. Unlike many Radxa boards, the Rock 3A does not include onboard WiFi or Bluetooth — connectivity is wired via a Gigabit Ethernet port. A USB-C port provides data and power (5 V), and a barrel-jack input accepts 12 V for heavier loads. USB 3.0 Type-A ports handle peripherals, and the 40-pin GPIO header offers extensive I/O for HATs and custom hardware.

Armbian provides well-maintained images with both mainline (6.18) and vendor (6.1) kernels for Desktop and minimal/IoT use cases. The Rock 3A is a strong choice for wired server, NAS, or embedded Linux deployments where WiFi is not required.