Seaberry mini-ITX Raspberry Pi carrier board features no less than 11 PCIe slots and a robust port selection

Raspberry Pi carrier boards usually come in very small form-factors given the processing power restrictions, but, with the latest AI developments, the demand for more slots and connectors is now leading to the advent of solutions such as the ALFTEL Seaberry mini-ITX board. For regular PCs, the mini-ITX standard is among the smallest out there, but for Raspberry Pi users, this form-factor actually allows for an impressive expansion potential. The Seaberry carrier board is designed to fit the latest Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and offers no less than 11 PCIe slots for expansion, plus a host of connectors.

Even though the Raspberry Pi itself can handle only a single PCIe 2.0 lane (5 Gbps), the Seaberry board integrates a Broadcom PCIe switch that can handle up to 16 PCIe devices through one PCIe lane. This could accommodate 7x Tensor Processing Units for advanced edge computing applications or connect multiple Ethernet and Wi-Fi interfaces for wardriving and advanced networking.

The Seaberry board even features a x16 PCIe slot for full-fledged GPUs, although the Pi does not really support Nvidia and AMD graphics as of yet. Other slots featured on this board include 4x mini-PCIe, a PCIe x1, 4x M.2 E-Key, plus an M.2 2280. Port selection includes 2x USB 2.0, a Cisco-style serial console connector, micro-USB, microSD card slot, 2x HDMI video outputs, GbE jack and a 12 V barrel plug for power. Additionally, there is a 12 V aux power jack, a PoE header, a 40-pin GPIO, a 14-pin CM4, a PWM fan header, an RTC, a camera / display  connector and even a berg plug. Youtuber Jeff Geerling demonstrates in one of his videos how the Seaberry can handle up to 20 PCIe devices identified and used at the same time by the Raspberry Pi.

Unfortunately, this great amount of I/O comes with a pretty spicy price that essentially turns the Raspberry Pi philosophy on its head. The Seaberry board itself can easily rival the most advanced PC motherboards, as it is currently listed for US$435 on Tindie, although it is out of stock.

Buy the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 8 GB Lite on Amazon