“Almost perfect, but a couple of screw holes aren't quite perfectly aligned, so a bit of force is required to get things aligned for putting it all together. The USB holes in the chassis are also a few mm off. Other than that the setup was a breeze.
Installing drivers and getting the fan and front USBs to work was simple, a combination of the github readmes and realising some base packages were missing for the deskpi scripts to run meant it took less than 10 mins.”
“Nice case for RPi 4 . Very compact and heavy outer case. Convenient way to package SSD with the pi.
The instructions regarding booting from ssd are good but getting the extra front mounted usb sockets to work is beyond me! I’ve tried the method in the manual and it doesn’t work. I found many people on the internet have had the same problem and done as I have … given up trying.
The power supply is neat but there isn’t a proper shut down provided by the front panel switch.”
“Fiddly and requires a knowledge of how to add repositories to Linux and add drivers to utilise its capabilities, but it's a rewarding upgrade for a PI to add functionality and avoids the small cooling fans that have a notoriously short bearing life, leading to squealing from the cooling fans. The addition of a M2 slot is welcome, but having some SATA connectors for a 2.5 SSD would have made this much more appealing. I love it, although I wouldn't recommend this to a beginner or someone who finds it difficult to follow complex instructions, and at some point, your experience will differ from that in the manual, so a more comprehensive manual would have helped. I had to solve a few problems on this myself, but then I chose a different base setup to the standard Raspbian and used Ubuntu”
“Pros: One extra USB-port, five total. Two in the front. Very good build quality. No weakening of the wifi signal, mostly due to the plastic end covers. Barrel jack 12V power supply. Full size HDMI. Audio jack in the back, SD-card slot and power button in front.
Cons: None.
Bought this to get rid of the micro HDMI and get an overall solution a little more pleasing for the eye. The 12V power supply should make it possible to run spinning rust on this without extra power. Not tested by me, I run it with a 240 gb SSD.”
“Case is lovely
Thermals and thermal control/ fan compatibility for OS is very poor
Fan is clunky
Would be an excellent case if thermals were better handled,.as it stands it's borderline useless”
“Straightforward to assemble. I had an SSD already prepared and it all worked first time. A much more elegant way than having the disk dangle off a cable. The fan means the Pi no longer complains of raised temperature.
The GPIO flexy is a bit squashed as it passes next to a pillar. Pihut's pictures show the power socket as USBC but mine was supplied with a normal round connector, which is a bit disappointing.
The USB link to the SSD board is a bit of a bodge but that is a limitation of the Pi. However, the link supplied has about 5mm of visible metal between socket and plastic, while the plastic obstructs the USB socket below and needed to be filed down. It could be a more elegant object.
Being pedantic, the pillars for the SSD board aren't quite the right length. Assembled as is, the board looks a bit wonky and it took some washers and a bit of trial and error to level it out.”
