Considering buying and question on the PCIe slot

[Arglebargle]

I've tried a few pcie devices in mine and only the Intel nic (I350-T4) seemed to work. I'm not sure what's going on with the Mellanox cards I tested but not a single one was detected by the kernel.

[MobileJAD]

the PCIe slot is only x4 long. Most GPU are far longer. the only ones that would fit are PCIe x1. Alternatively you would need a m.2 adapter to PCIe x16 slot to fit a GPU.

Not to be rude, but this is not true. Yes, it is only PCIex4, but the slot on the ROCK64 is open-ended, so it can fit longer cards.

Plus there's also a plethora of pcie ribbon cables and slot adapters, if I were to build a system using the Rock Pro 64, I wouldn't necessarily cram a full size GTX 1080ti with a three slot wide gaming cooler on it, and crush the poor SBC underneath it. I could mount the GPU to the side of the SBC in a small pcie chassis like the ones those egpu kits use and run a pcie ribbon cable to the Rock Pro 64.
Right now I just want to know what the Rock Pro 64 would do if a Nvidia or AMD graphics card were plugged into its pcie slot.

Done!  Now to install some drivers. This was done in Arch Linux. 

Can it output video to the video card? Without any displays hooked up to the SBC?

I am testing that now. I need to reconfigure my image.

[/quote]

Any luck?
I just purchased a Rockpro64 kit, I'm very curious what PCIe cards will work using drivers included with the Linux kernel and what devices will work but only after some extra work.

[Arglebargle]

Any luck? 

I just purchased a Rockpro64 kit, I'm very curious what PCIe cards will work using drivers included with the Linux kernel and what devices will work but only after some extra work.

Right now the big problem seems to be getting the rockpro64 pcie driver working for most cards. There's really no way to test anything other than a handful of cards that work for unknown reasons right now.

The only cards I've seen mentioned that function (are seen with lspci, pcie bus starts successfully) are some sata and nvme boards and an Intel I350-T* nic. I've tested with 3 separate Mellanox 10Gb cards and none of those function at the moment. I have a couple more HP 4x1Gb nics that I can test sometime this week, one is a rebadged Intel I340 so I suspect it'll work and the other is a Marvell chip.

[joe2gaan]

Not to be rude, but this is not true. Yes, it is only PCIex4, but the slot on the ROCK64 is open-ended, so it can fit longer cards.

Plus there's also a plethora of pcie ribbon cables and slot adapters, if I were to build a system using the Rock Pro 64, I wouldn't necessarily cram a full size GTX 1080ti with a three slot wide gaming cooler on it, and crush the poor SBC underneath it. I could mount the GPU to the side of the SBC in a small pcie chassis like the ones those egpu kits use and run a pcie ribbon cable to the Rock Pro 64.
Right now I just want to know what the Rock Pro 64 would do if a Nvidia or AMD graphics card were plugged into its pcie slot.

Done!  Now to install some drivers. This was done in Arch Linux. 

Can it output video to the video card? Without any displays hooked up to the SBC?

I am testing that now. I need to reconfigure my image.

Any luck?
I just purchased a Rockpro64 kit, I'm very curious what PCIe cards will work using drivers included with the Linux kernel and what devices will work but only after some extra work.
[/quote]

I have been on vacation. I will be getting back to work on it this week. So far a GTX 1050 has been recognized by the OS Bionic and Arch Linux but no video output. I am looking at options to compile drivers for it.  If anyone has any suggestions let me know..

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Another thing that I have noticed is that sometimes it takes multiple tries to boot with the card in. It gets hung with error -2 loading firmware..

[Josh2003]

Plus there's also a plethora of pcie ribbon cables and slot adapters, if I were to build a system using the Rock Pro 64, I wouldn't necessarily cram a full size GTX 1080ti with a three slot wide gaming cooler on it, and crush the poor SBC underneath it. I could mount the GPU to the side of the SBC in a small pcie chassis like the ones those egpu kits use and run a pcie ribbon cable to the Rock Pro 64.
Right now I just want to know what the Rock Pro 64 would do if a Nvidia or AMD graphics card were plugged into its pcie slot.

Done!  Now to install some drivers. This was done in Arch Linux. 

Can it output video to the video card? Without any displays hooked up to the SBC?

I am testing that now. I need to reconfigure my image.

Any luck?
I just purchased a Rockpro64 kit, I'm very curious what PCIe cards will work using drivers included with the Linux kernel and what devices will work but only after some extra work.

I have been on vacation. I will be getting back to work on it this week. So far a GTX 1050 has been recognized by the OS Bionic and Arch Linux but no video output. I am looking at options to compile drivers for it.  If anyone has any suggestions let me know..

---

Another thing that I have noticed is that sometimes it takes multiple tries to boot with the card in. It gets hung with error -2 loading firmware..
[/quote]

If you're not using a powered PCIe riser, power consumption could be your issue. The GTX 1050 uses up to 75W of power, more than even the entire output 12V 5A power supply (60W). In the description of the NAS enclosure for the RockPro64, the customer is asked to use the 5A adapter due to SATA drive power consumption, leading me to believe that the board itself already uses close to 3A (36W). That leaves probably 2.5A (30W) of power for peripherals at the most, nowhere near enough to power a 1050. That figure might explain the error you're getting on bootup, when the board is active and drawing more current. You might be getting some voltage sagging or increased rippling, leading to instability. However, the peak power consumption of the GT 710 is a much more comfortable 19W, approximately 1.6A at 12V. Have you had any better luck with it?

[zener]

So I imagine the greatest interest in this SBC is the PCIe slot, so what have people used that slot for yet?
Are there any good drivers out there in the ARM world yet that people who aren't pro Linux programmers and kernel compilers can use?

I'm was hoping to use mine with my new PCIe based XTRX SDR (Software Defined Radio). But at first attempt the driver did not compile on arm64. So it seems like some debugging is required. But at least it's detected:

Code:

root@rockpro64:~# lspci
00:00.0 PCI bridge: Rockchip Inc. RK3399 PCI Express Root Port Device 0100
01:00.0 Memory controller: Xilinx Corporation Device 7012

[MisterA]

I also did not have much success testing out different PCIe cards.
I tested three different SATA cards, none of them work.


One card (http://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=p...uct_id=722) needs a couple of resets before it is seen by doing lspci. I notice this as wel during boot: most of the time the card's leds fade out during boot, I then reset the board and after a few tries the leds stay on and I can see some general information using lspci. In this case however the card still doesn't work.

I'm not sure if this also a powerconsumption problem. Anyone have a link to a good powered pcie riser?

All in all: don't expect the pcie slot to just work when buying this board. At least that's my experience...

[Bullet64]

The pine64 pcie nvme card & pcie sata card works both fine here.

Experience with other pcie cards is bad. I don't get any card to run.

[MobileJAD]

Does anyone know what the maximum power the Rockpro64 is capable of providing in the PCIe slot?
It looks like the gtx 1030 can run at below 50 watts of power, can the Rockpro64 handle that?

[tllim]

Does anyone know what the maximum power the Rockpro64 is capable of providing in the PCIe slot?
It looks like the gtx 1030 can run at below 50 watts of power, can the Rockpro64 handle that?

The ROCKPro64 PCIe 12V rail directly connected to +12V DC jack input. This means it is up to power supply wattage and how much current that DC jack can handles. In general, the DC jack can handles 6A and this yields to handles 72 watt (12x6) power input. The ROCkPro64 board itself consumes around 8-11 watts in average operation.

You can try out using the 12V 5A power supply and may works.

Not advise to pump more than 8A thru DC jack connector and for sure getting hot.