We’ve seen a spread of PCIe HAT(+) for the Raspberry Pi 5 taking one NVMe SSD, however Geekworm X1004 is totally different as it might probably take as much as two normal M.2 2280 SSDs over the Pi 5’s PCIe connector and 40-pin GPIO header.
The official Raspberry Pi 5 M.2 HAT+ shouldn’t be accessible but, however we have already got a humiliation of alternative with merchandise such because the PineBerry Pi HatDrive, Waveshare PCIe To M.2 HAT+, Pimoroni NVMe Base, and the Geekworm X1003. The newest X1004 provides much more choices with assist for 2 M.2 SSDs for as much as 8TB storage, though this may increasingly not make that a lot sense on the Pi 5 as we’ll talk about additional beneath.
Geekworm X1004 specs:
- Supported SBC – Raspberry Pi 5 solely
- Chipset – ASMedia ASM1182e PCI specific packet swap with 1x PCIe x1 Gen2 upstream port and 2x PCIe x 1 Gen2 downstream ports
- 2x M.2 sockets for as much as 8TB storage capability (4TB+4TB) with M.2 NVMe solid-state drives (2280 dimension solely)
- Max information transfers – As much as 5 Gbps PCIe 2.0, as much as 8Gbps with PCIe 3.0 (be aware: this appears unimaginable with the ASM1182e)
- Host interface – Raspberry Pi 5 PCIe FFC connector (30mm FFC cable supplied) and 40-pin GPIO header
- Energy Administration
- 5V DC through 40-pin GPIO header
- 2x DC/DC step-down converters delivering a most of three.5A+3.5A to energy SSDs
- appropriate with the HAT+ standby energy state, mechanically turning off when the Raspberry Pi 5 shuts down.
- Dimensions – 87mm x 57mm
The Geekworm X1004 HAT+ growth board appears to be like to be made by SupTronics Applied sciences and can also be known as the “RPi5-PIP NVMe Defend X1004”. The PCIe swap shouldn’t be named within the specs supplied by the corporate, but when I learn that appropriately that might be the ASM1182e PCIe 2.0 x1 swap. If the knowledge on the web site is right then PCIe Gen 3 shouldn’t be an possibility which means the highest pace ought to be restricted to five Gbps, or in sensible phrases we might have 400MB/s shared between the 2 storage gadgets (200MB/s if each are used concurrently).
Some individuals are utilizing an SSD as an alternative of a microSD card for booting the OS on the Raspberry Pi, however the ASM1182e shouldn’t be supported by the Raspberry Pi 5 firmware right now (and sure by no means will likely be), so that you’d want a microSD card as well Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 23.10 or different supported OS, and the 2 SSDs can solely be used for storage as highlighted on Geekworm’s wiki. You would possibly as properly join a less expensive 8TB USB 3.0 exhausting drive that ought to ship acceptable sequential learn and write pace (e.g. 160 MB/s for a Seagate Desktop Drive), though I reckon random I/O will likely be a lot slower, most individuals gained’t look after storing information, versus operating the OS from there.
If regardless of the caveats talked about above, you’d nonetheless assume it’s one thing you’d prefer to attempt, the Geekworm X1004 may be bought on Aliexpress for $42.99 plus delivery, and may quickly be supplied on Amazon with the opposite M.2 NVMe HAT+ boards. It’s fairly costlier than different SSD HAT+ for the Raspberry Pi as a result of PCIe swap.
By way of Liliputing and MiniMachines
Jean-Luc began CNX Software program in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, earlier than quitting his job as a software program engineering supervisor, and beginning to write day by day information, and evaluations full time later in 2011.
