Hardware : AmigaOne X5000

Introduction

After the success of the AmigaONE X1000 it quickly became apparent that using the PA6T CPU was not going to be a long term solution after Apple made it an end of life CPU. So unfortunately demand out striped supply and the CPU prices started to go up and so it was never possible to decrease the cost of the Nemo board, a new solution was needed to really support the Amiga platform going forward so a £1.2 Million contract was signed to ensure this and a new motherboard would be needed. Project Cyrus began, the goal was simple to replace the X1000 with the goal of making it more affordable if possible and future proof the motherboard and have long term support in place, part of the contract with the makers of the system Varisys is that the board is to have at least 10 year support and this time the CPU in PPC terms to be used was to be the very latest CPU core and the motherboard was designed from the outset to be able to use three different CPU chips this not only gives A-EON options for the future but also protects themselves with falling into the same trap.

The X1000 project was a very good learning process with how to handle the community and how to build a successful system. Taking this knowledge forward, A-Eon and Amigakit overcome some of the issues they experienced with their first system. Again like the Nemo Project a beta team was selected, this time of just 50 users to test for bugs and allow development of AmigaOS4 on this system to begin. In March production of the beta boards began and shipped in 4Q of 2014.

Three New Amigas? X3500 - X5000/20 - X5000/40
As discussed, the Motherboard Cypus was designed to support three different CPU chips and so three models were originally planned for the next AmigaONE.

X3500 was to be the cheapest and was to be equipped with a P3041 CPU an e500mc quad-core CPU running up to 1.5 Ghz, during the development it was decided to cancel this model in favour of making an even cheaper AmigaONE solution which became the AmigaONE A1222.

X5000/20 is the main board available and was also the beta test board that AmigaOS4 was developed on first. The CPU is a P5020, an e5500 dual-core running up to 2.0 Ghz and was finally released in October 2016, full price of pre-build system is at £1,799.99, unlike the X1000, it was possible to buy the motherboard on its own priced at £1,399.99 to allow Amiga users to build their own system to try and bring down cost for users to own a next gen Amiga.

X5000/40 is the daddy of all next gen Amiga to date, the CPU will be P5040 quad-core CPU at 2.4Ghz, a limited supply of beta board were made in late 2017 and AmigaOS4.1 beta is running on the system, but it's not known when or if this system will be widely commercially available. Estimated price for a full system will be £2,000+ (this board could be the bases of, X5000 Plus).

At Amiwest 2022 it was confirmed that the X5000/20 is now sold out and that now only X5000/40 system would be available.