SoC Family

RK3588 and RK3588S are the flagship parts: eight cores, Mali-G610 MP4 and a 6 TOPS NPU. RK3566 is a quad-core A55 with a 0.8 TOPS NPU for light work. Allwinner H618 is the budget quad-core A53 used in the Zero line.

GPIO Header Pinout

This is the trap. The Orange Pi 3B, 5 Pro, 5 Max, 5 Plus and Zero 2W use a 40-pin header, and the 3B matches the Raspberry Pi layout closely. The Orange Pi 5 and Zero 3 use 26-pin headers, so many HATs will not fit.

Storage: M.2 and eMMC

An M.2 NVMe slot transforms an SBC. PCIe 3.0 x4 on the 5 Plus and 5 Max reaches roughly 2 GB/s; the Orange Pi 5 uses PCIe 2.0 x4 and the 5 Pro just PCIe 2.0 x1. An eMMC socket is far more reliable than a microSD for a 24/7 server.

Networking

Check for onboard WiFi, because the plain Orange Pi 5 has none and needs a USB dongle or an M.2 card. If you are building a router, firewall or NAS, the dual 2.5GbE on the 5 Plus is the single most valuable feature in this whole lineup.

Cooling & Power

RK3588 boards pull real power under load and will thermal throttle bare. Budget for a heatsink or active cooler and a proper 5V/4A to 5V/5A USB-C supply. The H618 Zero boards are happy with 5V/3A and a small heatsink.

The Orange Pi 5 Plus swaps the RK3588S for the full RK3588 and spends every extra pin on I/O. You get two 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports on RTL8125BG controllers, an M.2 2280 socket wired for PCIe 3.0 ×4 (roughly 2 GB/s to an NVMe drive), a separate M.2 E-Key slot for a WiFi card, an eMMC socket, dual HDMI 2.1 outputs at 8K@60 plus an HDMI input for capture work, and a 40-pin header. That combination makes it the obvious choice for OpenWrt routers, OPNsense firewalls, small NAS builds, Proxmox-style container hosts and anything where storage and network throughput matter more than physical size.

The Orange Pi 5 Max is what you buy when you want the 5 Plus experience in a smaller, better-connected package. It keeps the full RK3588 and the M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 ×4 socket, upgrades the memory to LPDDR5, and finally puts proper wireless on the board with onboard WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Networking drops to a single 2.5GbE port and the board shrinks to 89 × 57mm, which makes it the most convincing Orange Pi desktop: dual HDMI 2.1 at 8K@60, an eMMC socket, four USB ports and a 40-pin header, all in something close to Raspberry Pi footprint.

The Orange Pi 5 Pro fixes the two things people complain about on the original Orange Pi 5: it adds onboard dual-band WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, and it swaps the 26-pin header for a 40-pin header with 28 GPIOs, 4 UARTs, 8 PWMs, 4 I2C, SPI and CAN. You also get LPDDR5 memory, an eMMC socket and dual HDMI output. The same RK3588S and the same 6 TOPS NPU are still there, which makes this the friendliest board in the range for edge AI work: RKNN model conversion, YOLO object detection, local speech pipelines and camera analytics all run without a USB accelerator. The one real compromise is the M.2 slot, which is only PCIe 2.0 ×1, so NVMe throughput is a fraction of what the 5 Plus and 5 Max deliver.

The Orange Pi 3B is the one to buy when compatibility matters more than raw speed. It measures 85 × 56mm, matching the Raspberry Pi 3B footprint, and carries a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO header, so your existing cases, HATs, fans and mounting plates mostly just work. The RK3566 gives you four Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8GHz, a Mali-G52 2EE GPU and a modest 0.8 TOPS NPU, alongside Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, HDMI 2.0 at 4K@60, an eMMC socket and an M.2 M-Key slot that accepts either an NVMe or a SATA III SSD. It is roughly Raspberry Pi 4 class in CPU terms, with better storage options.

The Orange Pi Zero 2W is the direct answer to the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and on paper it wins comfortably. Same 65 × 30mm footprint, same 40-pin header position, but with a quad-core Allwinner H618 at 1.5GHz, a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU, up to 4GB of LPDDR4 where the Pi Zero 2 W tops out at 512MB, mini-HDMI at 4K@60, dual USB-C ports and onboard WiFi 5 with Bluetooth 5.0. The trade-off is I/O: there is no Ethernet on the board itself, and the second USB port plus 100M Ethernet only appear if you add the 24-pin expansion board. For embedded builds where the board disappears inside an enclosure, that is usually fine.

Want a desktop replacement?

Start with the Orange Pi 5 and an NVMe drive. Step up to the 5 Max if you want LPDDR5, WiFi 6E and 2.5GbE built in.

Building a router, firewall or NAS?

Only the Orange Pi 5 Plus gives you dual 2.5GbE plus PCIe 3.0 ×4 NVMe, which is exactly what OpenWrt and OpenMediaVault want.

On a tight budget?

The Orange Pi Zero 3 gives you 4GB of RAM and Gigabit Ethernet for less than the shipping on some boards here.

Running AI models at the edge?

The Orange Pi 5 Pro pairs the 6 TOPS RK3588S NPU with onboard wireless and a proper 40-pin header for sensors.

Migrating off a Raspberry Pi?

Choose the Orange Pi 3B. It matches the Pi 3B footprint and pinout, so your HATs, cases and fans carry over.

Squeezing Linux into a tiny enclosure?

The Orange Pi Zero 2W puts up to 4GB of RAM and WiFi into a 65 × 30mm Raspberry Pi Zero footprint.

Is an Orange Pi better than a Raspberry Pi?

On hardware, usually yes. An Orange Pi 5 gives you four Cortex-A76 cores, a 6 TOPS NPU, PCIe NVMe and 8K video, which no Raspberry Pi in the same price bracket matches. On software, no. Raspberry Pi OS is polished, mainline-supported and backed by a decade of tutorials, while Orange Pi relies more on Armbian, vendor kernels and community images, and support for a given board can vary a lot. Buy Orange Pi when you want the performance and are comfortable troubleshooting Linux; buy Raspberry Pi when you want something that works the first time and stays supported for years.

Will my Raspberry Pi HATs and cases fit an Orange Pi?

Only on some boards, so check before you buy. The Orange Pi 3B is the closest match: 85 × 56mm, Raspberry Pi 3B layout, and a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header, so most HATs and cases work. The 5 Pro, 5 Max and 5 Plus also have 40-pin headers, but their board outlines and port positions differ, so cases usually will not fit and some HAT pin functions may not map identically. The plain Orange Pi 5 and the Zero 3 use 26-pin headers, so full-size HATs are out. Also note that Raspberry Pi libraries like RPi.GPIO do not work directly. You will use WiringOP, Python periphery, libgpiod or the OPi.GPIO port instead.

Which Orange Pi is best for a home server or NAS?

The Orange Pi 5 Plus, and it is not close. Two 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports let you run a router, firewall or link-aggregated file server without a USB adapter, and the M.2 2280 socket runs at PCIe 3.0 ×4, so an NVMe drive can reach roughly 2 GB/s instead of being bottlenecked. Add the eMMC socket for a reliable boot device and 16GB of RAM for containers and virtual machines and you have a genuinely capable little server. If you only need one network port, the Orange Pi 5 Max keeps the PCIe 3.0 ×4 slot in a smaller board with onboard WiFi 6E.

Do RK3588 boards really need a heatsink or fan?

Yes. A bare RK3588 or RK3588S board will hit its thermal limit within a couple of minutes of sustained load and start dropping clock speed, which shows up as stuttering video, slow compiles and inconsistent benchmark scores. A large passive heatsink is enough for light desktop use, but anything continuous, such as transcoding, compiling, NPU inference or a busy server, wants active cooling. Pair that with a proper USB-C supply rated at 5V/4A for the Orange Pi 5 and 5 Plus, or 5V/5A for the 5 Pro. Undersized power supplies cause random reboots that look exactly like software bugs.

Which operating system should I install on an Orange Pi?

Start with the official Orange Pi images, which are Debian or Ubuntu builds on a Rockchip or Allwinner vendor kernel and include the drivers for video, NPU and wireless. For a better long-term experience on the boards it supports, Armbian is usually the better choice: cleaner packaging, more frequent updates and an active forum. Android images exist if you want a TV box or a kiosk, and there are DietPi and Ubuntu Server builds for headless work. Whatever you pick, always download the image for your exact board and revision. Images are not interchangeable across Orange Pi models, even ones with similar names.