Raspberry Pi 5: Pimoroni NVMe Base arrives as cheaper way to add M.2 SSDs to popular single-board computer

Pimoroni has introduced a new option for connecting an M.2 SSD to the Raspberry Pi 5 (curr. $145.95 on Amazon), building on the Pi HatDrive that Pineberry announced last month. In summary, Pineberry created two models, which sell as the Pi HatDrive Top and Pi HatDrive Bottom for M.2 2230/2242 and M.2 2280 drives, respectively. Please see our launch article for more information.

Supposedly, the Pimoroni NVMe Base can run M.2 SSDs at PCIe 3.0, which equates to 800 MB/s. By default, the Raspberry Pi 5 provides PCIe 2.0 support for roughly half the speeds of PCIe 3.0. Tom's Hardware notes that it should be possible to enable PCIe 3.0 though by altering the Raspberry Pi 5's /boot/config.txt file. While the website has not provided any details about this, Jeff Geerling has discussed enabling PCIe 3.0 on his blog.

At any rate, Pimoroni's NVMe Base only connects to the bottom of the Raspberry Pi 5. However, it accepts M.2 2230, M.2 2242 and M.2 2280 SSDs, making it more versatile than either of Pineberry's equivalents. Also, the Pimoroni NVMe Base is a fair bit cheaper. Specifically, the Pimoroni NVMe Base will retail for £13.50 (€15.73) compared to €20 (£17.16) and €25.99 (£21.45) for the Pi HatDrive Top and Pi HatDrive Bottom, respectively. Currently, Pimoroni lists the NVMe Base as 'coming soon' on its website with no indication of availability.