Raspberry Pi 5 gets an M.2 PCIe HAT – Meet PineBerry Pi HatDrive

Raspberry Pi 5 PineBerry Pi M.2 HAT

The Raspberry Pi 5 SBC comes with a PCIe 2.1 x1 interface that has not been overly useful so far since it’s exposed through a non-standard FPC connector. Raspberry Pi Ltd is working on its own HATs to make use of the PCIe connector, but PineBerry Pi may have beaten them to it with the launch of the HatDrive M.2 HAT for Raspberry Pi 5. The HatDrive comes with an M.2 Key-M socket with a PCIe x1 interface and support for 2230 and 2242 modules, so you can install an SSD, an AI accelerator, or another compatible M.2 module. The HAT is connected through a 40mm long 16-pin FPC cable (that supports up to PCIe Gen3) as well as the 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO header for the I2C EEPROM required by compliant HATs, plus power supply monitoring and diagnostics, and to let users add another HAT on top if needed. […]

ZimaCube 6+1-bay NAS offers 2.5GbE, PCIe slots, with either Intel Processor N100 or Core i5-1235U SoC (Crowdfunding)

ZimaCube personal NAS

IceWhale Technology, the company behind the line of ZimaBoard x86 SBCs, has now introduced the ZimaCube (Pro) 6+1-bay NAS equipped with either an Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N processor or a more powerful Intel Core i5-1235U Alder Lake-P CPU with additional 2.5GbE ports, PCIe expansion slots, and M.2 sockets. Both models support up to six 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA drives, support for M.2 NVMe SSDs, offer 2.5GbE networking, six USB ports, and one or more PCIe expansion with either PCIe Gen3 (Processor N100) or PCIe Gen4 (Core i5-1235U) enabling the addition of a graphics card, high-speed network cards, and more. ZimaCube (Pro) specifications: SoC ZimaCube – Intel Processor N100 quad-core Alder Lake-N processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel HD graphics @ up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W ZimaCube Pro – Intel Core i5-1235U 10-core/12-thread Alder Lake U-Series processor with 2x Performance cores @ 1.3/4.4GHz, […]

Morefine M600 6900HX review – A Ryzen 9 6900HX mini PC tested with Windows 11 and Ubuntu 23.04

Morefine M600 6900HX Review

Under review today is Morefine M600 6900HX mini PC which is a generational update to the previously released S500+ (5900HX or 5700U) although it should be noted that Morefine will soon be releasing a newer version of the M600 with either a Ryzen 7 7840HS or Ryzen 9 7940HS. The current M600 (6900HX) brings both processor and iGPU improvements over the S500+ together with a couple of port upgrades and the welcome introduction of USB4, DDR5, PCIe Gen 4.0, and an additional M.2 storage slot. This review will look at Windows 11 performance together with a quick look at running Ubuntu 23.04 and experiences from using the new features. Morefine M600 6900HX product specifications The Morefine M600 6900HX specifications are as follows:   Product overview Overview of hardware The M600 physically consists of a 149 x 145 x 40 mm (5.87 x 5.71 x 1.57 inches) square metal case with […]

Corsair MP600 Mini M.2 2230 NVMe SSD delivers up to 4800 MB/s read/write performance

Corsair MP600 Mini

Corsair MP600 Mini is a high-performance M.2 2230 SSD based on the Phison E21T controller that delivers up to 4800MB/s sequential read and write performance and designed to be used in Valve’s Steam Deck, Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 and 9, and other products that won’t take a M.2 2280 SSD. We are seeing more and more single board computers and other electronics products use M.2 sockets for storage, but the smaller boards won’t take the traditional M.2 2280 SSDs that usually deliver better performance than smaller M.2 2230/2242/2260 drives, and so performance may be impacted on this type of hardware. But the Corsair MP600 Mini changes that with high sequential and random read/write performance. Corsair MP600 Mini specifications: SSD Unformatted Capacity – 1TB NAND Technology – 3D TLC NAND Host interface – PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 Performance Max Sequential Read – Up to 4,800MB/s tested with CrystalDiskMark (CDM) Max Sequential […]

ASUSTOR FLASHSTOR NAS supports up to 12 M.2 SSDs, 10GbE networking

ASUS FLASHSTOR SSD NAS

ASUSTOR FLASHSTOR 6 and FLASHSTOR 12 are network access storage (NAS) devices powered by a quad-core Intel Celeron N5095 Jasper Lake processor and designed for respectively 4K audio and video content consumption for the former and 4K video editing for the latter. Both models come with 4 GB of DDR4-2933, two USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 ports, and HDMI 2.0b video output, but the FLASHSTOR 6 supports up to 6 M.2 NVMe SSDs and 2.5GbE networking, while the FLASHSTOR 12 can take up to 12 M.2 NVMe SSDs and handles 10GbE networking. ASUSTOR FLASHSTOR specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N5105 quad-core Jasper Lake processor @  2.0 GHz / 2.9 GHz (Turbo) System Memory – 4GB SO-DIMM DDR4, expandable up to 16GB via 2x SO-DIMM slots Storage 8GB eMMC flash for the OS FLASHSTOR 6 (FS6706T) – 6x M.2 2280 NVMe drive slots, up to 14x drives with AS6004U expansion unit for […]

Cytron CM4 Maker Board review – Part 2: NVMe SSD, RTC, Buzzer, Grove modules, ChatGPT…

Cytron CM4 Maker board Review

We’ve already checked out Cytron’s CM4 Maker Board kit with a Raspberry Pi CM4 system-on-module and booted the system with the included 32GB “MAKERDISK” Class 10 microSD card preloaded Raspberry Pi OS in the first part of the review. For the second part of the CM4 Maker review, I’ve mostly used the 128GB NVMe SSD provided by the company and played with other features of the board including the RTC, the buzzer, some Seeed Studio grove modules, and even got help from ChatGPT for one of the Python programs I used. Booting Cytron CM4 Maker Board with the “MAKERDISK” NVMe SSD I connected several Grove modules with GPIO and I2C interfaces, a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3, an Ethernet cable, two RF dongles for a wireless keyboard and mouse, an HDMI cable to a monitor, and finally inserted the provided 5V/3.5A USB-C power adapter. The MAKERDISK SSD comes with Raspberry […]

CM4 Maker Board review – Part 1: specifications, unboxing, and first boot

CM4 Maker Board Review

Cytron CM4 Maker Board is a carrier board for the Raspberry Pi CM4 or CM4 Lite system-on-module with plenty of I/Os, support for one M.2 NVMe SSD, and RTC backup battery, a buzzer, and various LEDs for GPIO status that makes the board especially well suited for the education market and prototyping. The carrier board also comes with the usual Gigabit Ethernet and full-size HDMI port, four USB 2.0 ports, five Grove connectors, one Maker port, the omnipresent 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO header, and support power input from 7V-18V DC jack or 5V via a USB Type-C connector. CM4 Maker Board specifications Cytron CM4 Maker Board specifications: Supported SoM – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 or Compute Module 4 Lite Storage microSD card slot M.2 PCIe 2.0 socket for NVMe 2232/2242 SSD Video Interfaces Full-size HDMI 2.0 port MIPI DSI display connector Camera – MIPI CSI connector connector Audio – […]

Compute Blade – A Rack-mountable PoE-powered Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier board with an NVMe SSD (Crowdfunding)

Compute Blade Raspberry Pi CM4 rack

Uptime Lab Compute Blade is yet another Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier board, but it’s kind of unique with its long design designed to be mounted in racks and the board features an M.2 socket for an NVMe SSD plus an Ethernet port with PoE+ support. The board is designed for high-density, low-power consumption, plug-and-play blade servers for home and data-center use and users can build Home labs, edge servers with lower latency than cloud services, and CI/CD systems (build farms) for testing and software development. Compute Blade specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi CM4 support and potentially alternative system-on-modules such as Radxa CM3 and Pine64 SoQuartz Storage NVMe SSD socket up to 22110 (2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 also supported) Optional MicroSD card slot Video Output – Optional HDMI port up to 4Kp60 Networking – Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port with PoE+ USB USB Type-C port to flash the bootloader, eMMC/SD card, and […]