Samuel Hedrick Does What Raspberry Pi Didn't: Fits a Working PCIe M.2 Slot to the Raspberry Pi 500
If your shiny new Raspberry Pi 500 is crying out for a little warranty-voiding, this mod unlocks that missing M.2 slot's full functionality.
Maker Samuel Hedrick has become the first to unlock the PCI Express lane on the new Raspberry Pi 500, figuring out the components required to populate the pad for the device's missing M.2 slot — compatible with Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) drives, artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators, and more.
"Just got the M.2 slot on my Raspberry Pi 500 populated and working," Hedrick announced of his project on Twitter over the weekend. "I'm working on pulling together a [Bill of Materials] list of the parts I needed to pull this off."
The Raspberry Pi 500 launched last week as the highly-anticipated successor to the Raspberry Pi 400, using the same computer-in-keyboard 1980s micro-inspired form factor as its predecessor but with an all-new single-board computer inside powered by the same Broadcom BCM2712 chip as the Raspberry Pi 5.
The launch brought with it one key disappointment, though: the presence of unpopulated PCB footprints for an M.2 slot, which had it been fitted, would have made it possible to access the otherwise-spare PCI Express Gen. 2 lane from the BCM2712. Rather than waiting for Raspberry Pi to make use of the footprint, Hedrick fired up a soldering iron and added the missing feature himself — using the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ for the Raspberry Pi 5 as a reference.
"I found that the M.2 HAT+ board uses larger (0402, I think…) SMD [Surface-Mount Device] passives," Hedrick notes," while the [Raspberry] Pi 500 board has 020 (0603 metric) passives. The standoffs, screw post, and regulator IC were pulled off the official [Raspberry] Pi 5 M.2 HAT+ board."
The mod, as you might expect, invalidates the warranty of the Raspberry Pi 500 in spectacular fashion — though for anyone versed in small-footprint surface-mount soldering, shouldn't prove too much of a challenge.
More information is available in Hedrick's Twitter thread, while a full BOM has been made available as a CSV download.