Radxa's latest Dragon board pairs a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor with up to 32GB of memory, dual 2.5Gb Ethernet, and three 4K120 display outputs — but it takes the already powerful Dragon Q6A and improves upon every aspect of the previous gen.
Radxa has expanded its Qualcomm-powered Dragon lineup with the Dragon Q8B, a high-performance Arm single-board computer built around the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 platform.
While most SBCs are designed for hobby projects, lightweight servers, or inexpensive desktop builds, the Dragon Q8B feels closer to a compact Arm workstation or industrial edge-computing motherboard. It combines a laptop-class processor with up to 32GB of memory, two full-length M.2 slots, dual 2.5Gb Ethernet, and enough display bandwidth to drive three 4K120 monitors.
The Q8B sits above Radxa's existing Dragon Q6A, but it isn't simply a faster version of the same board — the two target noticeably different kinds of projects.
Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 at the Center
The Dragon Q8B is built on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (also known as the SC8280XP), a 5nm Arm chip originally designed for higher-end Windows-on-Arm laptops.
Its eight-core Kryo CPU splits into four performance cores clocked up to 3.0GHz and four efficiency cores up to 2.4GHz. Radxa pairs it with up to 32GB of LPDDR4X memory over a wide 128-bit interface.
Graphics come from the integrated Adreno 690 GPU, rated by Radxa at up to 2.7 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The board also includes Qualcomm's Hexagon processor and AI Engine, with a combined AI performance rating north of 29 TOPS.
That puts the Q8B in range for computer vision, local voice processing, automation, robotics, and smaller locally hosted AI models — Radxa specifically cites support for compact language models up to roughly 3 billion parameters, though actual performance will depend heavily on model format, quantization, and software maturity.
As always, TOPS figures shouldn't be treated as an apples-to-apples benchmark across manufacturers. Software compatibility and how much of that AI hardware a given application can actually reach often matter more than the headline number.
What Sets the Dragon Q8B Apart?
The processor and AI rating will likely grab most of the headlines, but the Q8B's connectivity is even more impressive compared to other SBC’s.
Two Full-Size M.2 Slots
Most SBCs offer a single M.2 slot, a short M.2 2230 connector, or a bare PCIe interface that needs an adapter. The Q8B includes two onboard M.2 2280 M-key slots — one running PCIe 3.0 ×4, the other PCIe 3.0 ×2 — opening the door to dual-NVMe storage, extra networking hardware, or other PCIe devices without needing an expansion board.
It also adds a UFS 3.1 module connector and a microSD slot, giving users several options for boot and storage media.
Dual 2.5Gb Ethernet with TSN
Rather than the single Gigabit port typical of smaller SBCs, the Q8B ships with two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports driven by a Qualcomm QPS615 bridge that supports several AVB and time-sensitive networking standards. That's a meaningful feature for robotics, industrial automation, and synchronized audio/video systems where network timing matters.
The dual NICs could also make the board a candidate for an Arm-based router, firewall, or compact edge server — though it's worth checking software and driver maturity before committing to a production deployment.
Three 4K120 Displays
Display output looks more like a compact PC than a typical maker board: one full-size HDMI 2.1 port plus two USB-C ports with DisplayPort 1.4 Alt Mode, all rated for up to 4K at 120Hz.
The video engine decodes up to 4K120 and encodes up to 4K60, with hardware support for H.265, H.264, and VP9. Notably, AV1 hardware decoding isn't listed in Radxa's published codec specs.
Standard UEFI and Arm ISO Booting
Radxa says the Q8B supports standard UEFI booting, ships with a default device tree, and can boot unified Arm ISO images directly — with listed support for Radxa OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Armbian, Arch Linux, NixOS, and Windows.
That should make the board feel much closer to a normal PC to set up. That said, booting an OS doesn't guarantee every component — GPU, NPU, multimedia engine, power management — will have equally mature driver support.
The Dragon Q8B is set to ship on July 31st and is currently available for pre-order on Arace.tech
I have already placed my pre-order and I'm greatly looking forward to its arrival next month!