RISC-V OrangePi RV2 Linux SBC

In April 2025, I’ve ordered two OrangePi RV2, as soon as they announced Ubuntu 22.04 support, they are running 24x7 since then.

The Ky X1 CPU is a RISC-V (RISC-V is open and royalty-free), 8 Core, the architecture is riscv64, (so not arm64/aarch64).

Linux risc5 6.6.63-ky #1.0.0 SMP PREEMPT Wed Mar 12 09:04:00 CST 2025 riscv64 riscv64 riscv64 GNU/Linux

It has two M.2 sockets, I have it installed with a 256GB NVMe drive, two Gigabits Ethernet ports, particularly useful for a direct interconnect in a cluster.

The 8GB memory version is around 70CAD/50USD, which is way cheaper than its equivalent, according to some benchmarks, it’s a bit faster than an RPi4.

I’m using them in a NATS cluster, with an RPi4 as third member, to self host some projects: Radio Amateur Quiz Canadian License, self hosted map of the world, WebSat.

Since Go is supporting riscv64 as a target, I was able to build all the tools I needed, Caddy, cloudflared is not supporting it officially but worked perfectly, LiteStream with NATS support and my toy self hosting project Narun.

Network Setup

In my previous k3s cluster, I had an incoming port NATed, but my router was not capable to act as a reverse proxy load balancer, I didn’t want to have a primary node or using VRRP solutions.

I went with cloudfared tunnels on both hosts, so that if one is down the other is taking over.

Rack Mount

I’ve created a rack mount, on Onshape, perfect for 10 inches racks.

Printed on a Prusa:

Conclusion

This little SBC is perfect for many usages, but we are still at the early stage of complete support, don’t go there yet if you are not a tinkerer.