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You might also need one of our tested 128GB, 256GB or 512GB NVMe drives or a clear acrylic case to protect your RPi5 and NVMe Base.
NVMe Base Duo is a PCIe Gen 2 extension board for Raspberry Pi 5. Simply populate it with one or two M-key NVMe SSDs (2230 to 2280 sizes supported) and mount it under (or over) your Pi for a compact and fast storage solution - It even comes with rubber feet!
It's the perfect solution for turning your Raspberry Pi 5 into a file server, media centre, reverse proxy, etc. - really any task that benefits from large amounts of fast storage, redundancy, or just to make use of a couple of spare disk - especially with random high operations per second (IOPS) workloads. In short it's a game changer!
NVMe Base Duo follows the new "PIP" design guidelines provided by Raspberry Pi ensuring that it will be easy to use and be supported long term by updates to Raspberry Pi OS - though it is very early days and things are improving rapidly there!
What's in the box?
1 x NVMe Duo Base PCB with M.2 Slot (M-Key)
1 x cable and bolts kit
NOTE: You cannot boot from NVMe drives installed on the NVMe Base Duo. We hope the RPi 5 firmware will support this in the future, but for now, it can only boot from drives that are the root device on the PCIe Bus. i.e. Not behind a packet switcher/multiplexer - you'll need to boot from SD and then the system can handover to the pair of fast SSDs!
NOTE: The shipping product may have minor differences to the photos, but will be the same in essentials.
Raspberry Pi Firmware
For the most hassle-free experience, make sure your Raspberry Pi OS is up to date, and your RPi 5 firmware is updated to 2023-12-06 (Dec 6th) or newer. This supports all the features of the RPi PCIe spec and means you don't have to mess with config files to get started.
Base Kit
NVMe Base Duo + 500GB (2 x 250GB) SSD Bundle
The Base Kit bundled with 2 x 250GB+ NVMe SSDs (PCIe Gen 3 or better, although this Base only supports Gen 2 speeds).
NVMe Base Duo + 1000GB (2 x 500GB) SSD Bundle
The Base Kit bundled with 2 x 500GB+ NVMe SSDs (PCIe Gen 3 or better, although this Base only supports Gen 2 speeds).
We recommend running the Raspberry Pi 5 at PCIe Gen 2 x 1 speeds with this Base. The total throughput is around 450MB/sec, or 220MB/sec+ per disk for simultaneous access as they share the bandwidth through the PCIe Switch.
Due to the tides and vagueries of the SSD market, we will ship whichever drive offers the best value for decent specs. We can say that:
SSD testing with the NVMe Base Duo is underway, in the meanwhile here is a list of drives tested with the single-drive NVMe Base.
We have usually tested one drive from one batch, so this is not comprehensive, or an 'Approved' list, but it's a good guide for drives to seek out:
' Maybe' List. Works with quirks/not ideal.
These drives either needed extra power, were a bit quirky when we tested them or we've had reports of them being problematic. It may just be the drive we had, but they're probably best avoided.