SDG #346 LattePanda Mu Small Board Computer

The LattePanda Mu takes a different approach to the usual single board computer formula. Rather than a fixed layout, the compute itself lives on a small SO-DIMM style card carrying an Intel N100 quad core CPU, 8GB of LPDDR5-4800 and 64GB of eMMC, which then drops into either a custom board of your own design or the DFRobot carrier board used here. That carrier is what turns it into something usable on a desk: USB 3, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, USB-C power delivery, a DC barrel jack, two M.2 slots and, unusually for this class of hardware, a PCIe x4 slot.

Assembly is covered properly, including cleaning the CPU die before fitting the supplied cooler, installing a 1TB M.2 2230 SSD and an Intel AX210 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth card. The AX210 has no on-board antennas, so a bracket-mounted pair is improvised using a spare screw point on an empty area of the PCB.

Power measurement is the most useful part of the review for anyone planning an always-on build. Standby sits under a watt, boot peaks around 10W, and idle under both Windows 11 and Ubuntu settles at roughly 5 to 7W. BIOS exposes adjustable PL1 and PL2 limits (15W and 25W by default) so the board can run fanless if you accept less headroom. Benchmarks put it marginally ahead of typical N100 systems, with integrated graphics as the obvious weak point, hence the value of that PCIe slot.

The practical use case shown is DMX lighting control via Art-Net, running Q Light Controller Plus on Ubuntu with Wi-Fi for the network and Ethernet dedicated to the lighting controller. At around 150 it costs more than a Raspberry Pi 5, but x86 compatibility and PCIe expansion justify the gap for the right project.