News Add-on board lets you use four NVMe SSDs at once with Raspberry Pi 5

[Admin]

The Raspberry Pi 5's PCIe interface sees an ever expanding selection of products and this new board from Geekworm offers up to four M.2 NVMe SSDs in one convenient package

Add-on board lets you use four NVMe SSDs at once with Raspberry Pi 5 : Read more

 

[HideOut]

It's true that it is pcie 2*1 but you can also edit the confirmation file to change it to 3*1. Jeff G. Has videos on that.

 

[geerlingguy]

It's true that it is pcie 2*1 but you can also edit the confirmation file to change it to 3*1. Jeff G. Has videos on that.

Unfortunately even if the Pi's bus is at Gen 3, all devices downstream of the X1011 (all the NVMe's in this case) are downgraded to the speed of the switch chip, which is Gen 2.

 

[Notton]

$50 for 4x NVMe slots that doesn't require bifurcation?
Why does this thing not exist as a PCIe card?
I would finally have a use for all those 128~512GB drives I swapped out from PC upgrades.

 

[Bluoper]

Funniest part is that the Pi's usb 3, has more bandwidth than the pcie Gen 2x1.

 

[mavroxur]

It's like an adapter that lets you connect the output of a fire hydrant to a garden hose.....

 

[mavroxur]

$50 for 4x NVMe slots that doesn't require bifurcation?
Why does this thing not exist as a PCIe card?
I would finally have a use for all those 128~512GB drives I swapped out from PC upgrades.

It doesn't require bifurcation because the board has a PCIe hub on it (since the RPi only has a PCIe 2.0 x1 port). There's already several cards on the market that allow you to insert 4+ M2 drives into a desktop PCIe slot and have onboard PCIe switches and don't require bifurcation....

 

[Notton]

It doesn't require bifurcation because the board has a PCIe hub on it (since the RPi only has a PCIe 2.0 x1 port). There's already several cards on the market that allow you to insert 4+ M2 drives into a desktop PCIe slot and have onboard PCIe switches and don't require bifurcation....

Yes, I understand that the card has a switch/hub on it.
What I am saying is, the current "4 slot NVMe PCIe expansion card w/ PCIe switch" market minimum cost is $400.
If your mobo supports bifurcation, then you only need a $20~100 card, and it uses up 16x PCIe lanes.

This RPi card might be slow, but it only costs $50ish, has 4x NVMe slots, and also only uses 1x PCIe lane.
So, if you are like me, and have a bunch of 128~512GB NVMe SSDs laying around, doing nothing, then this would be very handy without shelling over $400+.