The Raspberry Pi 5 has a dedicated PCIe connector, giving you another way to plug in more boards and accessories without USB. Raspberry Pi has now released the M.2 HAT+ board, which uses the PCIe bus to give your Pi 5 an M.2 expansion slot.
There were already a few third-party devices for adding an M.2 slot to aRaspberry Pi 5, such as theMcuzone MPS2280, but now Raspberry Pi has released its own version for $12. It connects to the single-lane PCI Express 2.0 bus on the Raspberry Pi 5 board, giving you a standard M.2 slot that can be used for NVMe drives, AI accelerators, and other cards.
Raspberry Pi said in a blog post, “When we launched Raspberry Pi 5 we also showed off a prototype HAT+, which bridged between our FFC connector and the standard M.2 M-key form factor used by NVMe drives and many other small PCIe devices. After several revisions, simplifications, and a whole lot of testing, that prototype became the product you see today.”
TheRaspberry Pi M.2 HAT+supports devices with the M.2 M key edge connector, in both 2230 and 2242 form factors and a power supply of up to 3A. The company is promising transfer speeds of up to 500 MB/s, which isn’t anywhere near as fast as you’d get from an NVMe drive in most standard PCs. That’s still a lot faster than most SD cards, though, and it’s a great way to add more storage without taking up USB ports. You should be able toboot the operating system from an NVMe driveas well.
Raspberry Pi mentioned the HAT+ board was tested with “a wide variety of NVMe drives and other peripherals,” and delays in testing and development are partly why the HAT+ board wasn’t available at the Pi 5’s launch. Still, better late than never, and $12 seems like a decent price for expanding the Pi’s connectivity options.
You canbuy the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+now from Raspberry Pi’s approved resellers. Keep in mind that it’s only compatible with the latest Raspberry Pi 5 model—earlier boards and the Pi Zero lineup do not have the required PCI Express connector.
