Last month, I received the SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX Chassis Kit based on the company’s K3 16-core RISC-V SoC, and started the review with an unboxing, a teardown, and a first boot to Bianbu OS 4.0. Since the system features a 10Gbps Ethernet SFP+ cage, I also had to order a 10GbE SFP+ to Copper adapter, as my 10GbE networking gear is exclusively based on RJ45 ports.In this review, I’ll check system information in Bianbu OS 4.0.1, run a few benchmarks, test 10GbE, GbE, and WiFi 6 networking performance, play YouTube videos at various resolutions, run AI workloads (LLM), check all/most features work as expected, and measure the power consumption of the SpacemiT K3 “Pico-ITX Chassis Kit” mini PC.Bianbu OS 4.0 System InformationBefore running anything, I updated the system:
sudo apt updatesudo apt dist-upgrade
594 packages were updated. For reference, the update also involved updating the EC (Embedded Controller) firmware:
Current EC firmware 'SPACEMIT_DEB1-V00.12' is older than packaged firmware 'SPACEMIT_PICO_ITX-V00.16'.Starting automatic EC firmware update during package installation...[INFO] Automatic EC firmware update triggered during package installation.[INFO] Current RW: SPACEMIT_DEB1-V00.12[INFO] Target FW : SPACEMIT_PICO_ITX-V00.16[WARN] Do not remove power, reset the system, or interrupt the tool while flashing.[INFO] 1. Erasing flash region...Erasing 262144 bytes at offset 0...done.[ OK ] Erase completed.[INFO] 2. Writing firmware image...Reading 242688 bytes from /lib/firmware/k3-pico-itx/ec.bin...Writing to offset 0...Writing: [########################################] 100%done.[ OK ] Write completed.[INFO] 3. Reading back flash contents for MD5 verification...Reading 242688 bytes at offset 0...Reading: [########################################] 100%done.[ OK ] MD5 verification passed.[ OK ] Automatic EC firmware update finished successfully.[INFO] This reboots the EC firmware only. Linux is not rebooted automatically.[WARN] The power LED may blink and ectool may be unavailable briefly after the command.[INFO] Sending EC reboot command...[ OK ] EC reboot command sent.[INFO] Waiting 10 seconds for EC reboot to settle...
