I've been running a prototype unit for a few months, and it's a game changer. It makes the Raspberry Pi feel as fast as one of my development VMs on AWS.
What sets this Raspberry Pi-sourced hat apart from other units like those from WaveShare is its compatibility with drives. I didn't need to check which controller my drive had—it just worked.
Since the Pi 4, Raspberry Pi has claimed it can truly be your main computer. With the Pi 5 and the M.2 hat, this claim finally holds credibility—the quality of life and speed improvements are that good.
The hat is quite wide compared to some other NVME hats. Do you see any chance of some 3rd party creating a passive cooling case that would still fit this one inside?
In my mind NVME + passive cooling would be such a perfect combo for Raspberry Pi to make it a tiny, silent and durable computer you could just hide somewhere out of sight.
Makes sense. I remember an early gen atom was horrendous on hard drive and totally usable on an early ssd. Useful to hear compatibility is good on this one.
This is good to see! I have been testing with some of the Pimoroni NVMe bases, but a major issue with those is that the unshielded cable completely blocks 2.4GHz WiFi signals. Hopefully that's an artifact of the base sitting under the Pi (so the cable curves around the WiFi antenna) -- a HAT theoretically doesn't have the same issue.
Though the question arises of how to use this HAT with the active cooling system... if we can get both an SSD and a fan on the same Pi (without sacrificing WiFi), that gets us to basically full blown computer performance!
On the surface, this seems like a pretty nice way to build a cheap DIY NAS.
Pi5 (4GB RAM).-.$60.00
M.2 HAT+ - $12.00
Power Supply - $13.60
Total $85.60
Even after purchasing a case (if you want one) and the NVMe drive of your choice, that doesn't seem too bad. I do wish there were 2 M.2 slots so that there could be redundancy. Is there anything else I'm missing here?
- Somewhat faster multicore performance, identical single core performance
- Disk buses run at full speed
- Runs any standard x86-64 OS and software instead of Pi/Arm specific ones
- Has double the RAM
- Comes with a 256 GB m.2 SSD (unfortunately not an option to buy without), can be replaced if you want more.
- Comes with the case
For slightly more you can get one with 2 drive bays in the factory case instead of having to build some external drive mount solution e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-4-Cores-N5095-Computer-Ethern.... If you aren't as worried on the CPU performance there are options in the $80 range that still hold these other advantages.
Pi's are fun but they are slightly overhyped in terms of the absolute value for things you can do with a standard PC like build a NAS, host a server, or use as an actual PC. The biggest values are where the 1 GB RAM model can do more than you need and it's a really great value for a non-used device or where the Pi's non high speed interfaces are a benefit like IP KVMs where the GPIO can control the motheboard, the CSI can capture the HDMI output, the USB OTG can act as the USB/CD drive/Keyboard/Mouse, the NIC/Wi-fi make it easy to access, and the size makes it fit inside existing equipment without issue.
Exactly. The Pi is useful for some stuff if.you need a lot of GPIO or legacy hat support etc. or just hate x86 for some bizarre reason. Otherwise I can see literally no benefit to a Pi over an N95 or Nx00 box. I using them all over the place and have been rock solid. And you can get them with multiple nvme sockets, sata, etc.
The Pi obsession truly boggles my mind. I can see it with the RP2040 etc but a regular Pi? Why?
I bought several Pi 4 2GB models for $30 back before COVID hit. At that price point they make sense for running some dedicated things, like my DNS servers, GPS-synchronized NTP server and such.
But yeah, at $85, even with a bit better performance, I'm not seeing it.
For a NAS use case, I'd be more inclined to use one of the PCIe to 4 SATA adapters and use SATA drives (whether spinning or solid-state). Each drive has lower performance than NVMe, but you get redundancy and still a reasonable speed connection.
From the photos, it looks like it doesn't support standard size 2280 SSDs. Which seems like a pretty big loss to me, I've got a few of those lying around, whereas the smaller form factor SSDs are a bit less widely available (and generally more expensive and/or perform worse).
m.2 is a form factor, not a speed. It could have been the SATA type m.2 instead of the NVMe type m.2 but then it would have needed a SATA controller on the PCIe bus for no benefit. The cost/GB of cheap (SATA or NVMe) drives is about the same regardless if peak read is 500 MB/s or 1500 MB/s anyways.
Okay fair, I just always think of NVMe drives with 5000-7000 MB/s read speed when M.2 gets mentioned and I misremembered that SATA (non M.2) SSDs were cheaper.
Neither of these takes is necessarily incorrect. Officially yes, out of the box it's 1x PCIe 2.0 and you get ~500 MB/s. There is also an boot flag to switch the PCIe from 2 to 3 and it doubles the speed to ~1000 MB/s. That mode is not officially certified as PCIe 3.0 compliant though due to the way its run but it seems to work for just about anything so long as you don't use a really long ribbon cable. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/forcing-pci-express-g...
My concern is that I'd like to be able to swap SSDs with other standard form factor devices (I.e. any recent PC desktop and many laptops) rather then buy something specifically for a raspberry pi.
It seems that by using the PCIe interface for the M.2, once it's being used for the main disk you cannot share it with other peripherals for example GbE otherwise it won't boot if the OS is being accessed from the M.2 interface.
There's a sibling comment that wished for two M.2 slots for the HAT+, perhaps this the reason why.
Could you expand on that?
Are you saying that if I get this HAT and set my rpi5 to use only the that drive without any sd card, I won't be able to use Ethernet port ?
My understanding is that the PCIe expansion is being used for the HAT+ only works for one disk peripheral if it's being used for booting the OS.
For example, since for HAT+ you can have a maximum 2 stacks of HAT+ boards expansion. Let's say you have one M.2 HAT+ and another is GbE board available from PineBerry [1]. The new additional GbE port on the HAT+ (not the original on-board GbE on the RPi 5) will interfere with the M.2 disk on the HAT+ if it's being used for booting.
[1] PineBerry Pi launches five additional HAT+ boards for the Raspberry Pi 5 with 2.5GbE, GbE, M.2 NVMe, and more:
What sets this Raspberry Pi-sourced hat apart from other units like those from WaveShare is its compatibility with drives. I didn't need to check which controller my drive had—it just worked.
Since the Pi 4, Raspberry Pi has claimed it can truly be your main computer. With the Pi 5 and the M.2 hat, this claim finally holds credibility—the quality of life and speed improvements are that good.