NVMe Base for Raspberry Pi 5 by Pimoroni

Pimoroni Ltd. announced the NVMe Base for Raspberry Pi 5 small single-board computer.

Add fast storage to your Raspberry Pi 5 allowing for ast boots, NAS use, and snappy applications.

NVMe Base is a PCIe extension board for Raspberry Pi 5. Simply populate it with an M-key NVMe SSD (2230 to 2280 sizes supported) and mount it under your Pi for a compact and fast storage solution. It even comes with rubber feet.

It’s a solution for turning your Raspberry Pi 5 into a file server, media centre, reverse proxy, etc. – really any task that benefits from large amounts of fast storage, especially with random IO/s workloads. It’s a game changer.

NVMe base follows the new ‘PIP’ design guidelines provided by Raspberry Pi ensuring that it will be easy to use and be supported long term by updates to Raspberry Pi OS – though it is very early days and things are improving rapidly there!

Raspberry Pi firmware
For the most hassle-free experience, make sure your Raspberry Pi OS is up to date, and your RPi 5 firmware is updated to 2023-12-06 (December 6) or newer. This supports all the features of the RPi PCIe spec and means you don’t have to mess with config files to get started.

Base kit

NVMe Base PCB with M.2 Slot (M-Key)
‘PCIe Pipe’ Flat Flex Cable
4x Rubber feet
M2 bolt and 2x nuts for SSD mounting
4x7mm M2.5 standoffs for base mounting
8x short M2.5 bolts for base mounting
4x long M2.5 bolts for ‘pass-thru’ mounting with a HAT

NVMe Base + 500GB SSD bundle
The company also offer the kit bundled with a 500GB+ NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 or better)

The Raspberry Pi 5 will run at PCIe 3.0 x 1 speeds at best, even though this mode is unsupported officially, so most drives are limited to around 700-800MB/s read and 350-450MB/s write at peak.

Due to the tides and vagueries of the SSD market, the company will ship whichever drive offers the best value for decent specs.

The firm can say that:

It will have 500GB or better capacity
It will be rated by the manufacturer at PCIe Gen 3 or better speed
We’ll have personally tested the drive with the NVMe Base and it will be in the list below.
It’ll be backed by the usual Pimoroni guarantees and customer service.

Drive compatibility
The firm have tested NVMe Base with the following M.2 NVMe drives successfully.

It has usually tested one drive from one batch, so this is not comprehensive, or an ‘Approved’ list, but it’s a good guide for drives to seek out:

AData Legend 700
AData Legend 800
AData XPG SX8200 Pro
Axe Memory Generic Drive
Crucial P2 M.2
Crucial P3 M.2
Crucial P3 Plus M.2
Inland PCIe NVMe SSD
Kingston KC3000
Kioxia Exceria NVMe SSD
Kioxia Exceria G2 NVMe SSD
Lexar NM620
Lexar NM710
Netac NV2000 NVMe SSD
Netac NV3000 NVMe SSD
Origin Inception TLC830 Pro NVMe
PNY CS1030
Sabrent Rocket 4.0
Sabrent Rocket Nano
Samsung 980
Samsung 980 Pro (500GB/1TB)
Team MP33
Western Digital Black SN750 SE(Phison Controller)

‘ Maybe’ List. Works with quirks/not ideal.
These drives either needed extra power, were a bit quirky when the firm tested them or we’ve had reports of them being problematic. It may just be the drive we had, but they’re probably best avoided.

Kioxia BG4 2230. Performance very patchy. Runs at quite a high temp.
Patriot P300 – These drives have various controllers, some of which seem to be incompatible at this time.
Patriot P310 – These drives have various controllers, some of which seem to be incompatible at this time.
Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Runs at a higher temp. Some user reports of problems under heavy load or not showing up on boot.
Samsung 980 Pro (250GB). Reports of this size not working.
WD Blue SN550. Our fresh unit could be used as storage but could not be booted from.
WD Red SN700. Slow to boot first time, but worked and booted OK.
WD SN740. Our fresh unit worked well. YMMV.
WD Black SN770. Our fresh unit worked fine. YMMV.
Patriot P300. All units we’ve tested work but we have heard of a 256GB/1TB variant that doesn’t.

‘Avoid’ List. We’ve had problems or reports of problems.

Transcend 110Q (TS500GMTE110Q)
WD Green/Blue/Red/Black not in the above list. Variable results or not working because of quirks of a SanDisk controller/firmware. Our SN350 and SN570 prevented the RPi 5 from booting at all especially.

Otherwise most M.2 NVMe drive (Not SATA!) you have lying around should work fine.

Check out our benchmark results over at pibenchmarks.net!

Getting started
Video guide to installing the hardware.

Firmware
Make sure your Raspberry Pi OS and RPi 5 firmware are up to date and newer than December 2023. Software update on the RPi OS should do this for you, but you can force it by starting a Terminal and running sudo raspi-config and choosing ‘latest’ under firmware options, then running sudo rpi-eeprom-update in the Terminal. This will also tell you which firmware is running.

PCIe 3 mode
To enable experimental and not-officially-supported PCIe 3 mode, add the follow line to the [all] section at the end of your Raspberry Pi /boot/firmware/config.txt file like this:

[all] dtparam=pciex1_gen=3

Save and reboot – your drive is ready to use!

Formatting NVMe and booting from NVMe
If you want to boot from the NVMe drive, follow these extra steps:

Make sure your firmware is updated as above
Format the drive using Raspberry Pi Imager
You can do this with your NVMe Base installed by booting the RPi 5 from SD card and running Raspberry Pi Imager from the start menu.
Open a Terminal.
Runsudo raspi-config
Choose NVMe boot from the ‘Advanced’ section.
Reboot your RPi 5.

Notes

Always power off your RPi and disconnect the power supply before installing or uninstalling the NVMe Base.
NVMe Base offers a general purpose PCIe x1 connection – while we know most people want to add fast storage in theory you can use other devices with it, we just can’t help you make them work! 😀 What Would Jeff (Geerling) Do?