“The board was fairly easy to install following the excellent video. I was pleased to have the option of mounting it with the official Pi5 active cooler heatsink in place. Previously I had used a usb data drive (originally on my Pi4) but this new board plus 500Gb drive blows that out of the water. I ran benchmark tests and it scored 43584. Disk read was 815.54Mb/s on the supplied ADATA SX8200 PRO. I adjusted to board to run Gen-3 and have had no problems running at the speeds this gives, having used the board for nearly a week.
Well done on an excellent product.”
“Worked first time - the Pimorini video and setup instructions made things straightforward (if a bit fiddly). Now have my Pi 5 booting off the 500GB NVME SSD. The Pi no longer fits in the case I had bought but I guess thats to be expected - the little feet included with the base make it perfectly useable without case..”
“Arrived quickly, super easy to install and works great. It makes such a difference to the performance of the Pi over using an SD card. It boots up much quicker and in use feels like a regular PC.”
“This is a great piece of kit and makes the Pi5 fly ! I have been getting 800MB/s sustained read in tests.
As it makes the pi much taller I decided to design a 3D printed case specifically for this board and you can find it on the Printables website.
https://www.printables.com/model/722026-raspberry-pi-5-case-for-pimoroni-nvme-ssd-base/comments”
“I recently dove into the Raspberry Pi 5 world, jazzing it up with an NVMe expansion board and a slick KIOXIA-EXCERIA SSD – talk about a game-changer!
Getting everything up and running was surprisingly smooth. The NVMe board slotted right in, and my KIOXIA-EXCERIA SSD worked like a charm from the get-go. The speed boost is mind-blowing; data moves at lightning speed, making the whole setup feel turbocharged.
What blew me away even more was how rock-solid this system is. I'm throwing everything at it – demanding apps, multitasking galore – and it handles it all like a boss.
In a nutshell, if you're eyeing an epic Raspberry Pi upgrade, this combo is the real deal. The Raspberry Pi 5, NVMe expansion, and KIOXIA-EXCERIA SSD combo has taken my tech game to a whole new level. Thrilled with my purchase!”
“It all works well together. I have the rpi5 booting from NVMe with no SD card in it. I needed the SD card to bootstrap the process.
Only issue I hit is that as far as I can see is the the CLI option for rpi-updater does not allow you to configure sshd for the build so I needed to write that from a PC rather than just doing it from the rpi5 booted from SD card.
I bought a USB caddy for the NVMe drive to write it as I was too lazy to open up my PC and use an NVMe slot on the motherboard. It is dark and dusty below the desk!”
“Installation was simple, if fiddly due to the ribbon connector for the PCIe.
Definately needs a case - I was moving the Pi5 while it was running and must have nudged the PCIe link, the system hung and wouldn't boot off the NVMe drive until I re-checked the ribbon connectors.
The PiBow case doesn't support this as there isn't enough length on the PCIe ribbon cable to go around the PiBow. I was tempted to dremel the case but instead I used it on another 5 and will look for a protective case.
Definitely worth the upgrade if you want the reliability and performance (not tested) but I run a number of Pi4s on USB connected M.2 drives.”
