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January 22, 2026 by Debashis Das - 1 Comment

TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro – A Thunderbolt 5 fanless SSD enclosure with 80Gbps bandwidth, 7GB/s practical performance

TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro connected to MAC Mini

TerraMaster has recently launched the D1 SSD Pro Thunderbolt 5 fanless enclosure, an update to the previous Thunderbolt 4-based TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus. The new version features an 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 port, supports M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs with up to 8TB capacity, and has been tested at up to 7,061MB/s read and 6,816MB/s write speeds, nearly doubling Thunderbolt 4 performance. The enclosure uses a fanless, CNC-machined aluminum design that enables silent operation through passive heat dissipation. It also features smart LED indicators for connection speed, and offers compatibility with Thunderbolt 5/4/3, USB4, and USB 3.2 across Windows, macOS, and Linux, including boot support on macOS. With various protection features (short-circuit, surge, ESD) and a compact, rugged design, it is suited for 8K/4K video editors, power MacBook users, gamers who need real-time editing, ultra-fast transfers, and reliable external boot or workspace storage. TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro specifications Performance (claimed) – Up […]

December 11, 2025December 14, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

UP Squared Pro TWL AI Dev Kit Review – Intel N150 + Hailo-8L accelerator tested on Ubuntu 24.04

Intel N150 SBC Hailo-8L module with Heatsink

I’ve been asked to review three Intel-based UP AI development kits running Ubuntu 24.04 Pro. Last time, I tested the UP TWL SBC with Nx Meta and UP AI Toolkit, and most AI workloads would pass, but since these were running on the Intel N150 CPU or GPU, the performance was not optimal for most. I’ll now switch to the UP Squared Pro TWL “mid-range” AI devkit review with another Intel Processor N150 SBC fitted with a 13 TOPS Hailo-8L M.2 AI accelerator. Both the UP TWL and UP Squared Pro TWL come with a 64GB eMMC flash, and I found out it was rather tight since AI software and models can take a lot of space. The UP Squared Pro TWL has a few M.2 sockets, so I’ll install an NVMe SSD to expand storage before installing the UP AI toolkit. As usual, I’ll run a few benchmarks and […]

November 24, 2025November 23, 2025 by Debashis Das - 2 Comments

Waveshare’s updated Raspberry Pi 5 dual micro HDMI to HDMI adapter adds NVMe storage support

Raspberry Pi 5 PCIe To M.2 Multifunctional Adapter

Waveshare has recently released the Pi5 Connector Adapter (C), an upgraded version of its earlier Pi5 Connector Adapter, adding support for M.2 NVMe SSDs and enabling direct OS booting from an SSD. The board connects to the Raspberry Pi 5 via its 16-pin PCIe interface and supports M.2 NVMe SSDs in 2230/2242 sizes with PCIe Gen2/Gen3 speeds. It also converts the Pi’s micro HDMI ports into full-size HDMI connectors and brings all ports on one side next to the USB and Ethernet ports of the SBC. It offers two methods for power: a USB-C input or a screw-terminal supply. Pi5 Connector Adapter (C) specifications: Supported SBC – Raspberry Pi 5 (it can support the Raspberry Pi 4B too, but the SSD functionality will not work) Storage – M.2 M-key 2230 / 2242 socket for NVMe SSD (support direct OS boot) Display – 2x HDMI outputs via 2x micro HDMI input […]

November 8, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC review with Raspberry Pi OS “Trixie”

Today, we’ll review the Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC using the recently released Raspberry Pi OS “Trixie” based on Debian 13. It’s quite similar to the earlier Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC, but comes with more memory (16GB vs 8GB), a 256GB NVMe SSD, and a proper mechanical keyboard with replaceable caps and RGB LED lighting, so we’ll focus on these aspects during our tests, after going through the usual unboxing and teardown process. Raspberry Pi 500+ unboxing We received an early prototype of the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC with a UK layout, white design in a retail package. The bottom side of the package includes a list of features and confirmation that it’s indeed a UK layout keyboard. Not ideal for Thai users (we usually rely on the US layout), but that was probably the only layout available when Raspberry Pi sent us a sample in mid-September. […]

October 14, 2025October 15, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Radxa Orion O6N – A smaller, cheaper 12-core Armv9 Nano-ITX SBC based on CIX P1 (CD8160) SoC

Radxa Orion O6N is a Nano-ITX SBC powered by CIX P1 (CD8160 variant) 12-core Cortex-A720/A50 processor with a 30/45 TOPS AI accelerator, up to 64GB LPDDR5, support for UFS and M.2 NVMe storage, and plenty of interfaces. It’s a smaller and cheaper version of the Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard introduced at the end of last year. It offers most of the same features, but is equipped with a CD8160 SoC instead of a CD8180 with a slightly lower CPU frequency for the Cortex-A720 big cores (2.6 vs 2.8 GHz), more storage options, fewer display interfaces, no dedicated audio port, 2.5GbE networking instead of 5GbE, and a few other differences you can see in the specifications below. Radxa Orion O6N specifications (highlights in bold and strikethrough show differences against Orion O6): SoC – Cix P1 (Codename: CD8160) 12-core DynamIQ processor 4x Cortex‑A720 big cores @ up to 2.6 GHz 4x Cortex‑A720 […]

September 25, 2025September 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC gets 256 GB NVMe SSD, 16GB RAM, RGB LED lighting

The Raspberry Pi 500+ is an upgrade to the Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC, getting a mechanical keyboard with RGB LED lighting, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and 16GB LPDDR4x memory. Apart from that, the rest of the ports and features are exactly the same for the new “Plus” model: two 4K-capable micro HDMI ports, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, three USB ports, a microSD card slot, and a 40-pin GPIO header. Raspberry Pi 500+ specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM2712 CPU – Quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 processor @ 2.4GHz GPU – VideoCore VII GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.1 graphics, Vulkan 1.2 VPU – 4Kp60 HEVC decoder System Memory – 16GB LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM Storage 256 GB NVMe SSD preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS; connected to M.2 PCIe 2280 socket MicroSD card slot Video Output – 2x micro HDMI ports up to 4Kp60 Networking Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port Dual-band […]

September 4, 2025September 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Review of TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus Thunderbolt 4/USB4 NVMe SSD enclosure

TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus USB4 NVMe SSD enclosure review

TerraMaster has sent me the D1 SSD Plus portable SSD enclosure for review, and helped me get a 2TB WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD for testing, since the PCIe Gen4 x4 storage device reached up 7,300 MB/s to sequential read speeds, and 6,600 MB/s sequential write speeds, well beyond the 40Gbps capabilities of the enclosure. I had reviewed two ORICO NVMe enclosures previously, namely the ORICO COM2-T3 and ORICO M234C3-U4, which were both based on an Intel JH7440 Thunderbolt 3 chip. I tested the COM2-T3 up to 3166.71 MB/s with a fast SSD, but TerraMaster claims up to 3,853MB/s sequential read speed and 3,707 MB/s sequential write speed with a 4TB Samsung 990 PRO SSD, while connected to an Apple M4 Pro Mac mini (MacOS version 15.3.2) using AJA System Test software. So I thought it might be a good idea to give it a try. TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus unboxing […]

August 18, 2025August 17, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

BIWIN Mini SSD offers an alternative to the microSD Express standard

There’s now an alternative to microSD Express if you want ultra-fast storage in a tiny form factor. Meet BIWIN Mini SSD storage with a size (17x15mm) only slightly bigger than a microSD Card and a read speed of up to 3700 MB/s. The new Mini SSD form factor was introduced at Embedded World 2025 last March, but it only recently got some news coverage as mini SSD slots will be found in the upcoming GPD Win 5 handheld gaming PC and ONEXPLAYER Super X gaming tablet. BIWIN Mini SSD highlights: 3D TLC NAND technology Integrates the controller and flash memory modules Interface – PCIe Gen4x2 with NVMe 1.4 protocol Read speeds up to 3700 MB/s Write speeds up to 3400 MB/s Capacity – 512 GB to 2 TB Features – Dynamic SLC caching, wear leveling, TRIM, and garbage collection Dimensions – 17 x 15 x 1.4mm; note: a microSD card measures 15 […]