“It works, but with some caveats.
If you are using higher capacity nvme drives (2tb/4tb) you will need to provide extra power via the on board 5v/ground connectors. Soldering is needed. Would have been nice if there was a JST female connector already soldered.
Using M2 standoffs and scews for mounting the nvme drives is a bit odd. What is wrong with M2.5? I had to source my own screws because the provided screw heads were not wide enough to hold the drives.
The ribbon could be longer.
Even if the price would double using a gen3 switch, I would have liked to have that buying option.”
“Everything works out of the box super cool look! the only thing I would like is a case for this kind of base hat. I hope you guys will come up with something soon!”
“These are a brilliant idea and work well for out of the box NVME drives (esspecially with PCIe 3 enabled). It would be even better if it came with an option to provide larger stand-offs and flexible cables to enable the installation of heat sinks on the NVME's. For instance I use 4 TB and 8 TB NVME storage and these pump out a bit of heat when working.”
“Main reason for not giving 5 stars is the lack of assembly instructions. In practice it is very similar to its single drive stable mate. I was initially confused as the two m.2 socket were at opposite ends from the ribbon cable connection the pi 5 and this device from the single drive version. Studying the images in the online listing enabled me to solve my confusion.
I am now running it with two Samsung 970 plus 2TB drives which are not on the list of known good drives and they have been fine for at least two days. If a little warm.
Overall this is an excellent addition to the pi 5 and is well worth the cost. It. Creates a very easily transported general purpose computer and media centre.”
Ahoy Graham
Thanks for the review! We now have a assembly guide, which should make things a little easier :)
https://learn.pimoroni.com/article/getting-started-with-nvme-base-duo
