A Pimoroni announced its latest Raspberry Pi 5 peripheral. The NVMe Base is an NVMe SSD board that promises to bring high capacity, fast and affordable storage to our favorite single-board computer.
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Pimoroni’s NVMe Base because the Raspberry Pi 5 is not a HAT, so it probably won’t make it to the list of best Raspberry Pi HATs. But it’s a candidate for our best Raspberry Pi accessories list. The board is mounted on the underside of the Raspberry Pi 5, using spacers to distance the SSD from the Raspberry Pi 5. A flexible flat cable connects the Pi 5’s PCIe to the board, providing power and data. Additional power for boards with higher power consumption can be provided through a supplemental power connector.
The NVMe Base is a monochromatic PCB, with just a touch of color from the integrated components. The PCIe extension board is designed for M-key NVMe SSDs between 2230 and 2280. Officially operating around 300 to 400 MB/s (PCIe Gen 2 speeds), you can push the board to provide 600-800 MB/s (PCIe Gen 3) with just a few adjustments in the /boot/config.txt file (something we are currently testing with Pineberry Pi boards). Previously, adding NVMe storage required a USB 3 adapter for NVMe, a bottleneck for some of the best SSDs. The PCIe x1 connection won’t provide us with all the available bandwidth for NVMe, but it will provide a faster solid-state boot drive than even the best microSD card for Raspberry Pi.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (if so, welcome back to the world), the Raspberry Pi 5 was announced at the end of September 2023. This was a big surprise, as Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton stated that we wouldn’t see a new Pi until 2024. The Raspberry Pi 5 brought a new PCIe connector to the format, something the community has already hacked to connect GPUs, and Pineberry Pi made two SSD HATs.
Pimoroni’s NVMe Base will be available soon for £13.50, or about US$13 when you remove UK VAT. We’ll have a complete review for you as soon as we can get one and test it.