Official M.2 HAT for Raspberry Pi

It accepts M.2 2230 or 2242 form factors, to which it can supply up to 3A and transfer data at up to 500Mbyte/s via the Pi’s single PCIe 2.0 channel.

Being compliant to the HAT+ specification means that board and the M.2 device it is carrying will be detected automatically by Raspberry Pi OS.

“We wanted to make sure that our product really was a HAT+, which in turn meant we had to resolve a few last wrinkles in the Raspberry Pi HAT+ specification,” said the organisation. “Raspberry Pi specifications, like our 40pin GPIO connector and our three-pin debug connector, often become de facto standards for the rest of the industry, and we have a responsibility to get them right.”

Firmware has been updated to increase the number of NVMe drives that are compatible, and to automate installation.

“If your Raspberry Pi 5 has up-to-date firmware, and an M.2 HAT+ attached, an installed PCIe device will be probed at power on and, if it’s an NVMe drive, it will be available as a boot source,” said Raspberry Pi.

Something else that has settled during design of this accessory is the allocation of the two pins on the 16pin PCIe flexi cable that are not directly associated with PCIe: one is now a power enable for downstream devices, and the other doubles as a board detect and a wake signal.

Spacers are provided with the card, which is a HAT – hardware attached on top, to keep it clear of the Pi’s processor and cooling fan.

The schematic has been published as a reference design for third parties creating Pi 5 PCIe accessories.

Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ will remain in production until at least January 2032, said the organisation, and has been priced at $12.

Pimoroni’s NVMe Base is a similar product that fits under a Raspberry Pi 5, forming a base as well as holding M.2 flash memory in sizes 2230, 2242. 2260 or 2280 – as well as a dual M.2 slot version, although this one cannot be booted from at the moment.