RDK X5 first week: 10 TOPS NPU, ROS 2 out of the box, and the thermals nobody mentions

I've spent the last week bringing up a D-Robotics RDK X5 (10 TOPS NPU, 8x Cortex-A55, 4/8GB) and wanted to share notes for anyone considering one — the things that surprised me, the things that bit me, and where it actually fits.

Specs

• SoC: 10 TOPS NPU (int8), 8x Cortex-A55, decent ISP for MIPI CSI cameras
• Ubuntu-based image with ROS 2 preinstalled — boot to a working ROS 2 environment out of the box
• 40-pin GPIO header, CAN, GbE, USB 3.0, MIPI CSI 4-lane

The good

• ROS 2 support is genuinely first-class: hobot packages for camera/perception, and the NPU runtime ships precompiled YOLO models. I had YOLOv8-class detection running within an hour, mostly copy-paste from the docs.
• The ISP + 4-lane MIPI CSI combo is nice for vision projects — the camera examples just work.

The not-so-good

• Thermals. Under sustained NPU load the heatsink gets genuinely hot to the touch — it needs active cooling (a quiet 5V fan dropped temps ~20C in my test). Don't run it in a closed case without airflow.
• Power: it wants a solid 5V/5A supply. With a weak adapter I saw USB devices drop out under load.
• The 'comes with everything' experience ends at the board — you'll still want a USB-TTL debug cable and a breadboard/jumper kit for bring-up.

Where it fits

• Between a Pi 5 and Jetson-class boards: way more NPU headroom than a Pi for vision, cheaper than a Jetson, and the ROS 2 story is better than either out of the box.

Happy to answer questions — thermals, ROS 2 bring-up, camera setup, or what I'd add to the bench setup.