GeeekPi M.2 NVME SSD Storage Expansion Board for Raspberry Pi 4 - Only Supports M.2 NVME SSD, Pi Board Not Included

Use case. I'm building a 3-node k3s HA control plane on Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB nodes. Each control-plane node runs etcd, which is sensitive to write latency and intolerant of disk drops, so SD cards and shaky USB enclosures are non-starters. I need a Pi 4B-compatible USB-to-NVMe path that survives sustained random I/O without falling off the bus. That's exactly the bar this HAT cleared — with one important asterisk on the power supply. Read this first if you're on a Pi 4B power supply. With the official Raspberry Pi 4B 15.3W USB-C power supply — the brick that ships in the standard kit — this drive never enumerated on my unit. Wouldn't show up at all. Swapped to the official Raspberry Pi 5 27W USB-C power supply (5V/3A delivered to a Pi 4B since there's no PD negotiation), and the board came up immediately and stayed up through every test below. If you're running a stock Pi 4B on the kit PSU, consider the 27W upgrade as part of the cost of this combo. This might not matter so much if you're running an NVMe that's not as power hungry as the WD SN770 Black. I read one other write up where the reviewer mentioned this and I wish I knew what card they were running. What I tried first, and what failed: - UGREEN USB-NVMe enclosure (Realtek RTL9210, USB ID 0bda:9210). Drive enumerated cleanly at SuperSpeed, then idle-disconnected ~3 minutes later before any I/O ran. dmesg showed "Enable of device-initiated U1/U2 failed" four times at enumeration — turns out to be a well-documented LPM handshake bug between the RTL9210 and the Pi 4B's VL805 xHCI controller. Replug to a different port, same result. - Sabrent USB-NVMe enclosure (also RTL9210, 0bda:9210). Same bridge silicon under a different brand. Got further — passed enumeration, started mkfs.ext4 — and then the xHCI host controller logged a Host System Error mid-format, the kernel marked it dead, and both USB root hubs dropped. Reboot required. VL805 EEPROM was at latest; not a firmware issue. - SSK USB-NVMe enclosure (JMicron 152d:0576). Got past mkfs, started the fio soak, then the same xHCI HC-died pattern killed the bus mid-run. Different bridge family, same outcome on the Pi 4B. [[I'm not going to be reviewing those products as I don't think testing for this use case speaks to their buyers.]] For all three failures vcgencmd get_throttled stayed at 0x0 — power held; the failure was bridge-side, not undervoltage. This board (ASMedia ASM2362, USB ID 174c:2362) is the one that worked. Same WD_BLACK SN770 1TB drive, same Pi 4B. Once I gave the Pi the 27W PSU, this combo passed a 30-minute fio soak (70/30 random 4K mixed read/write, 2 jobs, iodepth 32) end to end. No USB resets, no kernel errors, no throttling. Light benchmarks from the 30-min soak (fio 3.39, 4K random 70/30 mixed, Pi 4B 8GB on the Pi 5 27W PSU, bare board with small stick-on aluminum heatsinks on the SoC, USB controller, and RAM — no case, no fan): - Read: ~16,400 IOPS, ~64 MB/s, p99 latency ~0.46 ms - Write: ~7,000 IOPS, ~27 MB/s - Drive composite temperature held steady at 55C (controller sensor 77C) for the full half hour with the board's bare aluminum heat-spreader; vcgencmd get_throttled clean throughout. The p50 fsync latency wasn't so impressively different on the board compared to the microsd (Amazon Basics 64GB) - 0.98/1.66ms. That's ~60% improvement, but not all I was hoping for on USB 3.0 / microsd speed. Where this setup really shines though is the p99 and p99.9 latency (and beyond). There you see better than 11x and 23x improvement respectively. The max was 8.69ms on this setup vs ~4s on the microsd. Pay attention to these numbers if you're running stateful workloads on your setup. It might matter for Home Assistant even if all you want is reliable performance and don't need the speed. The consistency matters. Keep in mind that these are USB 3.0 numbers, not native-PCIe numbers — you don't get the SN770's full Gen4 ceiling over USB, and that's fine for the etcd workload I'm targeting. It just means my card is overpowered as I can't utilize the extra performance - hey, I got a great deal on recertified drives on ebay and I'll use them in other projects. The point is that the link stays up under sustained queued I/O, which the RTL9210 and JMicron enclosures didn't. The benchmarks don't compare this well to other products with the right bridge. But the compatability of the bridge means a lot. Will I buy more? Yes — at least two more. I need this combo on three Pi 4B control-plane nodes for the HA cluster, and I'm not going to mix bridge chips across nodes once I've got one that works. Bridge silicon matters more than enclosure brand on a Pi 4B; "USB 3.0 to NVMe" without a named chip on the listing is a coin flip on whether it'll soak clean. This one names the chip, the chip works on the right PSU, and the soak gate cleared on the first run that completed setup. I'm more than satisfied with the purchase for the price, so I'm giving this 5/5. However there are some things that I would improve about the product listing: 1. The body says that it's compatible with multiple models, while the Final NOTE says it's only compatible with the Pi 4. 2. It doesn't name the bridge chip. I had some reservations that it could be one I'd already tried, but how to go with the fact that compatability was already considered as it's specialized to the pi 4. 3. The listing doesn't mention that it's USB 3.0, which could confuse people who don't know that Pi 4 doesn't expose PCIe and you'll never get the speed of modern NVMe cards with that. 4. They don't mention the power supply situation I stumble into, which is highly relevant for cards that want more power. 5. The don't list performance benefits. The improvements of USB 3.0 over microsd go far beyond extending disk space. 6. The use cases overstate USB 3.0 performance. This doesn't make your Pi ready to provide a network storage solution / NAS replacement. 7. Doesn't say anything about thermals. It turned out to be fine, even for my drives but I wondered what I'd need to do for cooling. Hope you enjoy this board. It ended a lot of painful searching for me.

I set this up the other day and seems to be working flawlessly using a Patriot P300 M.2 PCIe Gen 3 x4 128GB Low-Power Consumption SSD. This is for a Home Assistant install which can have heavy disk usage that burns out most SD cards too quickly. To install the image on to the M.2 drive, I used a USB to NVMe adapter and it worked fine directly from the Pi imager software... you will still need an SD card to set the Pi to boot from USB first (there is a utility in the Imager) since, by default, it wants to boot from the SD slot. After that option is set, you don't need an SD card at all. This mounts to the bottom of the Pi, so you can still use hats with it, but you will likely have to figure out your own case. It comes with a plastic bottom shield to prevent shorts but a case would be better. The only other down side was that you cannot easily install the drive with this mounted to the Pi... you could do it if you have a 2280 and a very low profile right-angle #1 phillips but most won't have that. And forget about it if you have a 2242 or 2260! The screw which mounts the standoff at the end of the drive is facing the bottom of the Pi, they need a better option so the drive can be changed easily. Overall I would definitely recommend this if you want to use an NVMe with your Pi!

Works just fine. However, there are no boxes made to enclose the pi and this card.

I was waiting for this. Ok. So, I jad an extra samsung 980 pro 2tb just laying around and figured why not. So, I got this. At first I was aprehinsive about writing a review but everything is amazing. I thought from the other reviews I was needing to configure the raspberry for this to work. Its almost plug-n-play. I added this board to my raspberry pi 4b/8g. I was able to download the kali/pi image from the pi site. Yes, it does boot from the 980 pro with no need for a micro sd card. It just makes the pi a bit bulky but you can live with that. Lol.

Excellent. Love it. Easily boots with decent speeds I have mine auto-mounting at every boot then all my scripts auto-run so I don’t touch much of anything and I blame this. This thing helps tremendously. The design is sleek and nice. Very good kick for your money. And it by itself acts as a heatsink for the pi underneath it’s awesome. (I see a “noise level” thing? Ummm this is an SSD storage there’s 0 moving parts… sooooo there’s no noise! Besides from the fans on your pi (I’ve got a 140mm and 2 80mm it’s loud) but other than that your golden)

This adapter appears to be DOA. I did the installation following the instructions (which I had to download, and they weren't perfect) and rechecked the installation. I then inserted a working SSD and applied power. No matter what I did, the board would not detect the drive. I then inserted the SSD in another computer, and it worked fine. I asked Amazon for a replacement, thinking this may be a case of infantile failure. The product appears to be well-designed and constructed, but I am going to rate it as a 1 due to a lack of product support from the manufacturer.

To be clear (since the seller is not) This will not NOT accept a M + B key NVME. ONLY M KEY. Hope that helps the next guy. I'll let you all know if it works after getting a strictly M-key nvme to slap in it.

In the pictures, the Pi4 is mounted on the base from the GeeekPi Acrylic Case, is using a GeeekPi ICE Tower Cooler for Raspberry Pi, and the NVMe board is loaded with an Inland TN320 SSD - all of which are also available on Amazon. This configuration works perfectly together. Some NVMe sticks don't work with some Pi boards, and some case kits don't work with either the NVMe board or the fan unit. But all of this came together flawlessly.

Nothing I disliked, it fitted my requirements perfectly!! Add reliable NVMe storage to my Pi4. Sorted!!

Excelente producto, tenía problemas conectando los USB pero al final pude hacerlo

Works great for setting up an SSD with your raspberry pi.

Add any cheap NVME and you're in for a pleasant performance increase. Ensure that you have the latest eeprom update by running "sudo rpi-eeprom-manager -a", add then use the "SD Copier" app to copy your existing SD card OS to NVME. With new eeprom update, the RPi 4 will boot from USB.

Works great with my raspberry Pi 4b.