Asus Tinker Board

The Asus Tinker Board is a single-board computer launched by Asus in early 2017. Its physical size and GPIO pinout are designed to be compatible with the second and third-generation Raspberry Pi models. The first released board features 4K video, 2 GB of onboard RAM, Gigabit Ethernet and a Rockchip RK3288 processor running at 1.8 GHz.

ASUS's intent to release a single-board computer was leaked shortly after CES 2017 on SlideShare. ASUS originally planned for a late February 2017 release, but a UK vendor broke the embargo and began advertising and selling boards starting on 13 February 2017, before ASUS's marketing department was ready. ASUS subsequently pulled the release; the Amazon sales page was changed to show a 13 March 2017 release date, but was later removed entirely. However, as of 24 March 2017, the Tinker Board again became available on Amazon. ASUS assured reviewer websites that the board is now in full production.

In January 2017 tests showed the Tinker Board has roughly twice the processing power of the Raspberry Pi Model 3 when the Pi 3 runs in 32-bit mode. Because the Pi 3 has not released a 64-bit operating system yet, no comparisons are available against a Pi 3 running in 64-bit mode.

In March 2017 benchmark testing found that while the WLAN performance is only around 30 Mbit/s, the Gigabit Ethernet delivers a full 950 Mbit/s throughput. RAM access tested using the mbw benchmark is 25% faster than the Raspberry Pi 3. SD card (microSD) access is about twice as fast at 37 MiB/s for buffered reads (compared to typically around 18 MiB/s for the Pi 3) due to the Tinker Board's SDIO 3.0 interface, while cached reads can reach speeds up to 770 MiB/s.

• ASUS Tinker board product page
• Official support page for kernel and OS distribution download
• ASUS Tinker Board site