OnLogic Factor 201 Fits The Raspberry Pi CM4 For Industrial Needs & Other Innovative Uses
OnLogic sent over a Factor 201 review sample for our testing of this Raspberry Pi CM4 industrial computer. OnLogic ships the device without any operating system otherwise offers options of Raspberry Pi OS with desktop or lite (no desktop), or Ubuntu 2.0.04 LTS either in desktop or server variants. To some dismay, only the 32-bit versions of Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi OS are offered but hopefully soon they will offer a Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit preload considering the significant performance advantages. (Update: OnLogic is currently vetting the 64-bit OS builds for offering them soon.)
The review unit was equipped with the 8GB Raspberry Pi CM4, 32GB of eMMC storage, and a 128GB SATA SSD running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Accessing the OnLogic carrier board inside the chassis was very easy to do once removing three screws from the bottom of the device. Inside there is sufficient space for any extra circuitry/components to be added. The carrier board does have a Raspberry Pi compatible 40-pin GPIO header exposed, the M.2 SATA slot is easily accessible for changing out the storage, and there is also an M.2 slot with USB3 connectivity for any extra peripherals.
Having the HDMI output on the Factor 201 was great for preserving a variety of use-cases beyond conventional IoT/edge purposes and making for easy setup and configuration. The connectivity overall makes it as easy as dealing with the Raspberry Pi 4 single board computer itself.
It was a stock Ubuntu 20.04 LTS pre-load on the Factor 201 and this Raspberry Pi CM4 setup with the OnLogic carrier board acted and performed as expected for any Raspberry Pi device. No issues were encountered during the testing of the OnLogic Factor 201 over the past several weeks so far and the testing remains ongoing.
The Factor 201 was able to sufficiently cool the BCM2711 SoC of the CM4. During the span of dozens of different benchmarks I ran a variety of different, relevant real-world workloads while also monitoring the system vitals.
The Factor 201 was successfully hitting the 1.5GHz clock speed rated for the Raspberry Pi CM4 and in fact the peak frequency being hit throughout the testing was most often sticking to that 1.5GHz mark or at times around 1.2GHz in less demanding workloads.
The passively-cooled Factor 201 led to an average BCM2711 core temperature of 57 degrees under load and a peak recorded temperature during the entire span of testing of a modest 66 degrees, which isn't bad at all compared to the bare Raspberry Pi 4 or other coolers.
Those wishing to see per-benchmark metrics for different workloads and the per-test CPU temperature/frequency metrics can see this OpenBenchmarking.org result page where I have uploaded all of the data.