Geekworm X1003 Tiny PCIe to M.2 HAT NVMe SSD PIP PCIe Peripheral Board for Raspberry Pi 5 & Official Active Cooler Support M.2 2230/2242 SSD

I bought two different solutions for adding an NVMe drive to the Pi 5. This one was simple to install and worked perfectly. The only downside is that it can not handle full length M.2 cards, but that's not a problem as long as you buy the correct sized NVMe SSD m.2 drive. My RPi5 now boots fast and apps launch fast. I am currently operating my Pi 5 with no SD card installed.I used the new network installer capability to install the OS to the SSD drive and worked easy as pi!As an aside, I accidentally broke the ribbon cable clip on the Pi 5 itself. I did some googling and found a suggestion to use cardboard from a cereal box to secure the ribbon cable. This work wonderfully. The ribbon cable clip on the Geekworm HAT was undamaged.Be sure to pay attention to which side of the ribbon and insert them properly.

Fits the Pi5 case perfect - make sure you use the official pi cooler!!LOTS of reviews about the ribbon cable not working, which i first experienced as well - the cable it specific as to which side needs to be connected where... after seeing the very small print, realized I had it reversed and works great. board powered up, but pi would not detect or boot properly, simple fix for me. I have used ribbon cables for years and have to be really careful with getting them snapped in.

Unlike some others, I didn't have any major hardware install issues. The software was a different matter. It does fit in the official pi case, though barely. The cable presses right up against the plastic, and I could get damaged if you take the pi in and out of the case often. I had no issues booting from it, even with Ubuntu Server. What sucks is that it won't run at PCI 3.0 speeds at all. If you add "dtparam=pciex1_gen=3" in config.txt, the nvme drive will stop showing up everywhere other than lspci. You'll no longer be able to run or boot from it. I'd suggest a hat from another manufacturer.

Yes I know it’s a WD and yes I’ve tried other SSDs (Intel & Kingston). The board is powered but the Pi doesn’t detect anything at all. The only explanation I could understand is that it might be a faulty ribbon cable.I hope to get in touch with someone and get a replacement ribbon cable

Works fine for me, pay careful attention to the orientation of the ribbon cable, makesure the correct end is attached to the NVMe PCB. The ends of the cable are NOT reversible, just because the contacts are on the correct side of the cable does not necessarily mean the cable is oriented properly. Also, this PCB can only be mounted with a Raspberry Pi Foundation Pi 5 cooling fan. Other fan styles will not work. There is no hardware for holding down a shorter 2230 NVMe device. It really should include the hardware since it can be hard for a hobbyist to find. I would have rated this device at 5 stars had it included that hardware.

Followed Geekworm directions and my RPI 5 recognized the drive. Cloned my bootable SD card to the SSD, shutdown, removed the SD card and booted - very fast and stable. Set to gen-3 speed and did some speed tests and wow - very fast. All running very stable with no issues following the suggested configuration.Make sure to update Raspberry PI OS and the latest EEPROM firmware. Fast speeds with this combo.

UPDATE 3-17-2024:I bought another RPI-5, and decided to give this board a second try. This time, the board was rock solid the very first time I tried it. I didn't do anything different, that I'm aware of. Maybe the stars aligned or something.I like this board over others because it doesn't affect the airflow from the active cooler and doesn't take up much room. I also like that it has a very low profile. This fits in a fairly shallow case.One additional negative is that this makes it difficult to use those pins for other project work.My original review concluded that I couldn't recommend this board. However, I am now very happy with it. So much that I ordered a second one.ORIGINAL Review:I fiddled with this quite a bit. I tried various settings on the PI and re-seated the cable multiple times. After several failed attempts I was able to get it working enough to be able to image the drive with an OS. but when I rebooted, it didn't show up. I tried various other cables, thinking it might be a bad cable. but I was never able to get it to work again. I then tried the cable with a different adapter, and it worked perfectly and has been working solid ever since. I can only guess that the cable adapter on the board is flakey.

Can't mount other HATs above, would give another star or two if it didn't eat the first six pins of GPIO connector.