Sanctuary Systems’ Sentinel Core is a Raspberry Pi CM5 mini-ITX carrier board with a PCIe x16 slot to easily connect a graphics card to accelerate 3D graphics, video transcoding, or AI workloads.
It’s basically a larger Raspberry Pi CM5 IO board with a prototyping area, a PCIe slot, and a 24-pin ATX power connector. The Sentinel Core also comes with two HDMI ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports, MIPI DSI/CSI connectors, and the usual 40-pin GPIO header.
Sentinel Core specifications:
- Supported module – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 via 2x 100-pin B2B connectors
- Video Output – 2x HDMI 2.0 ports
- Networking
- Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port
- Optional WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.x on Raspberry Pi CM5
- USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port
- PCIe – High-speed, full-length PCIe x16 slot with PCIe 2.0 x1 signal (PCIe 3.0 unofficially supported)
- Expansion
- 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO header
- Breadboard-like prototyping area with through holes
- Power Supply – 12 V via 24-pin ATX connector
- Dimensions – 170 x 170 mm (mini-ITX form factor)
The Sentinel Core is an open-source hardware project with KiCAD hardware design files, including schematics and PCB layout, available on GitHub. The documentation website provides step-by-step instructions for selecting the hardware (e.g., AMD Radeon RX 6000/7000), assembling it, configuring Home Assistant (they use a fork for some reasons), and selecting and configuring a local AI Voice Assistant using add-ons from Home Assistant. Some (default) voice assistant components include Llama.cpp, Whisper speech-to-text, Piper text-to-speech system, and Wyoming speech integration, some of which we played with when reviewing the SunFounder Fusion AI HAT+.
It’s not quite the first mini-ITX carrier board for the Raspberry Pi CM5, but other products like the EDATEC ED-SBC3300 and EXAVIZ Cruiser target other applications and use the single PCIe lane for an M.2 socket used for NVMe storage or an AI accelerator. As far as I know, the Sentinel Core carrier board is the only one that features a PCIe slot to insert a graphics card or other standard PCIe module, and that’s exactly why it was created.
The Sentinel Core Mini-ITX board ships with an I/O faceplate. You’d need a Raspberry Pi CM5, a CM5 heatsink, a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth antenna (optional), an ATX power supply, GPU or other PCIe cards, and a mini-ITX case. One of the advantages listed for the CM5 carrier board is the “lower entry point” (cost-wise) against x86 equivalents, but it’s unclear whether that is still the case with the most recent Raspberry Pi price increase, since, for instance, a Raspberry Pi CM5 with 16GB RAM and 64GB eMMC flash (no wireless) now sells for $325.
However, that’s not really a problem if you already own a CM5 module. Sanctuary Systems has just launched the Sentinel Core mini-ITX motherboard on Crowd Supply with a $1,250 funding goal. A $129 pledge is asked for the motherboard, and options include a $195 Raspberry Pi CM5 Wireless (8GB/32GB), a $5 antenna kit, and a $5 heatsink. Shipping is free worldwide for the board itself, but adds $8 to the US and $18 to the rest of the world for optional accessories. Accessories can ship this month, but the Sentinel Core is expected to ship by the end of August 2026.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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