Raspberry PI 5 with NVME Base and SSD

 Pimoroni have recently released a base to interface a Raspberry Pi 5 to a Solid State Drive.

Components

Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of RAM.

A Raspberry Pi 5 Active Cooler (fan and heat sink).

The Active Cooler comes complete with pre-fitted heat sink pads.

A 500GB SSD. 

The Pimoroni NVME base.

The NVME pack contains the base plate itself, a pack of crews and nuts, a ribbon cable and some self-adhesive feet.

Of course you need a power supply.

Assembling the Raspberry Pi 5 with the active cooler

Take the Raspberry Pi 5 out of the box (remember to earth your self before opening the box).

Take the Active Cooler out of its box and check the power cable.

Remove the cap from the fan socket.

Remove the backing paper from the heat sink.
Check the operation of the spring-loaded attachment pins.

Align the pins with the relevant holes in the Raspberry Pi board.
When they are aligned, push the pins through the cooler board until they are attached to the Raspberry Pi board. Ensure alignment before releasing the pins so the heat sink material adheres to the required components. 

This is definitely not something to do when it is very warm as it makes the heat sink material very sticky.

Plug the cooler power lead into the Raspberry Pi board.

Create the OS SD card

The latest installer allows you to select the hardware, in this case a Raspberry Pi 5, as well as the operating system.

The NVME base requires 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS.

Select the 64bit Raspberry Pi OS.

Image the SD card.

Once the OS is ready, slot the SD card in and boot.

Finish the set up for the OS including a full update..

Building the NVME base

Once the Raspberry Pi is updated, shut it down and remove the power supply.

Place the Raspberry Pi 5 and the contents of the NVME pack on your work space.

Check the components:

• • NVMe Base PCB with M.2 Slot (M-Key)
• • 'PCIe Pipe' Flat Flex Cable
• • 4x Rubber feet
• • M2 bolt and 2x nuts for SSD mounting
• • 4x 7mm M2.5 standoffs for base mounting
• • 8x short M2.5 bolts for base mounting 
• • 4x long M2.5 bolts for 'pass-through' mounting with a HAT

The pack is suppllied with a number of spares, just in case.

Fit the short M2.5 bolts through the base and add the stand-offs.

Carefully remove the SSD from the packaging. In this case, there are instructions in the box showing how to remove the SSD (you use one of the finger holes and rotate it out of the plastic carrier). 

Take the M2 bolt and fit to the base for the size of SSD. Fix in place with one of the nuts.

Take the SSD drive and slot into into the slot on the board. Ensure the SSD in aligned properly and square to the connector. Fix in place with the second nut.

Take the Raspberry Pi board. Gently lift the cover on the PCIE connector.

Take the ribbon cable. The image ill face outwards when fully assembled and the Pi end is the smaller (so the text is the right way up when the NVME base is at the bottom.

Hold the cable in place (copper side towards the centre of the board) and push down the latches.

Turn the Pi upside down and bring the NVME base in.

On the NVME board, flip up the connector. Fit the ribbon cable. Once it is correcly aligned, flip the latch down.

Now screw the two boards together carefully.

Turn the Pi - NVME board sandwich (with its SSD filling) upside down.

Apply the self adhesive feet. The left hand end is easy as they can go in the top and bottom corners. The right hand ones can go just in-board of the screws.

Software installation

Switch on your Raspberry Pi.

Log in as normal (you should have already configured the SD card earlier).

The Raspberry Pi needs to have the latest updates including firmware. The normal update should  work, but you can force the update via  sudo raspi-config. Update the firmware using sudo epi-eeprom-update.

You can format the the SSD using the Raspberry Pi Imager. It should allow you to import the settings from the SDD card (locale, WiFi etc).

Once that has completed run sudo raspi-config in a terminal window.

Go to the Advanced section and change the boot order to boot from the SSD.

Reboot.

The Raspberry Pi will boot from the SSD.

Shut down, and carefully remove the SD card and put it in a safe place.

References

Raspberry Pi 5

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-5?variant=41044580171859

Raspberry Pi 5 Active cooler

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-5-active-cooler

NVME Base

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/nvme-base?variant=41219587178579

Assembling the NVME Base video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odG7FbptgWQ