NVMe Base for Raspberry Pi 5 – NVMe Base

Add super-fast storage to your Raspberry Pi 5 allowing for lightening fast 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 the perfect 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 high operations per second (IOPS) workloads. In short 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!

Kit includes:

• 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
• 4x 7mm 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

Drive compatibility:

We have tested NVMe Base with the following drives successfully:

• Western Digital Black SN750 SE Series
• Samsung 980
• Crucial P3 Plus M.2 Series
• Netac M.2 NVMe SSD
• Inland PCIe NVMe SSD
• Samsung 980 Pro
• Lexar NM710
• Sabrent Rocket 4.0
• Kioxia Exceria 2.5
• Crucial P2 M.2 Series
• Lexar NM620

But pretty much any M.2 NVMe drive you have lying around should work fine. Check out our benchmark results over at pibenchmarks.net!

Note: pibenchmarks.net for some reason lists the Kioxia Exceria LRC10Z500GG8 as a 2.5" SATA SSD - this is an error in their data it is of course an M.2 NVMe disk!

Getting started:

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/config.txt file like this:

[all]dtparam=pciex1_gen=3

Save and reboot - your drive is ready to use!

If you want to boot from the NVMe drive follow these extra steps:

1. Format the drive using Raspberry Pi Imager
2. Shutdown
3. Remove your microSD card
4. Power back on

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! :-D What would Jeff (Geerling) do?
• We do not recommend WD Green SSDs at this time. Drives such as the SN350 are temperamental with the CM4 and RPi 5.
• The final shipping design and included hardware will differ very slightly though the photos here do reflect how it will look and the performance will not be changed!