Pineberry Pi Unveils the First Raspberry Pi 5 PCIe Add-Ons: The HatDrive! Family

Pineberry Pi, creator of add-on devices for the Raspberry Pi range of single-board computers (SBCs), has announced the first — unofficial — M.2 Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) for the Raspberry Pi 5, allowing the use of high-speed Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) storage and more with the board.

When the Raspberry Pi 5 was unveiled, one of its most highly-anticipated features was a free PCI Express Gen. 2 lane brought out to a connector at the left-hand side of the board. Previously the reserve of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 family, the PCIe connectivity promised support for high-speed storage and the potential to expand the board with other high-performance peripherals — potentially including graphics cards, network cards, and machine-learning accelerators, pending software support.

While the Raspberry Pi 5 has now launched, though, the official M.2 HAT accessory which turns the FFC connector into something more easily used has not — and thus far there's no word of a launch date. Pineberry Pi, then, is hoping to be first to market with its own third-party alternative to the M.2 HAT: the HatDrive! Top.

Designed to attach to the general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header at the top of the Raspberry Pi and to the PCIe FFC connector with a flexible cable, the HatDrive! Top brings the PCIe lane out as an M.2 M-key slot — with mounting points for NVMe SSDs in 2230 and 2242 sizes. The company also claims that the board supports PCIe Gen. 3 speeds on a Raspberry Pi 5 — while Raspberry Pi's own version will be officially limited to Gen. 2, albeit with a software override available.

The company also has an alternative for those using the Raspberry Pi 5 Active Cooler to keep their processor's temperature tamed: the HatDrive! Bottom, which as the name suggests sits underneath the Raspberry Pi 5 rather than on top. This version, the company explains, keeps the top of the Raspberry Pi 5 free for ventilation — and makes use of a larger available footprint to support 2242 and the more common 2280 NVMe drive sizes.

Both variants include an I2C interface for power monitoring and diagnostics, Pineberry Pi says, and the boards should be ready soon. "We have completed the engineering and testing phases," the company claims of its progress on the project. "All necessary components have been acquired and we are now commencing mass production."

Pre-orders for the HatDrive! Top and HatDrive! Bottom are now open on the Pineberry Pi website, priced at €20 and €25.99 (around $22 and $28) respectively. No firm shipping date has yet been provided.