“Mounting is a little jank. Attaching to the pi is fine, but they could have used the same standoff motherboards use for NVMe cards with a screw through the bottom and a recess to accomodate the half crescent mounting properly.
This might work with the heatsink case in place of the bottom cover, but you'll need to get non-threaded standoffs (the stock long screws are long enough and the same thread)”
“great product, clear instructions, all the bits you need are included and the design docs include all the dimensions you need to create an enclosure. moving from MicroSD to NVME means my pi boots in the same time it takes for the screen to wake up.”
“My second base. Combine this with Pimoroni's metal case and it makes for a compact but robust setup with good airflow for cooling. And of course better performance compared to an SD card. I used an R Pi SSD but you can use 2280 drives if you prefer. Simple and effective. Depending on your setup you might need a pair of tweezers to fit the connecting cable. That is it...”
“Absolutely Brilliant - Game Changer for Pi 5!
Just installed the Pimoroni NVMe Base on my Raspberry Pi 5 and I'm genuinely blown away by how well this works. Installation was incredibly straightforward - everything lined up perfectly and the build quality is exactly what you'd expect from Pimoroni.
The performance boost is remarkable! Boot times have dropped from around 45 seconds to under 15 seconds, and everything feels so much more responsive. Running applications that used to stutter on SD card storage now run buttery smooth. For anyone doing any serious work with their Pi 5, this is an absolute must-have upgrade.
What really impressed me is the thoughtful design - it doesn't add much bulk to the Pi setup, cooling is excellent, and the whole thing feels rock solid. No compatibility issues whatsoever, and my 1TB NVMe drive was recognized immediately.
The documentation and setup guides on the Pimoroni website were spot-on too. Even though I consider myself a beginner with Pi hardware, I had everything up and running in about 20 minutes.
Honestly can't recommend this enough - it's transformed my Pi 5 from a fun tinkering device into a genuinely capable desktop replacement. Worth every penny and then some. This is why I keep coming back to Pimoroni - quality products that just work perfectly!
If you're on the fence about this upgrade, don't hesitate. Your Pi 5 deserves this treatment!”
“It's working very well with a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus. I wanted to keep using the official Raspberry Pi 5 bumper, so I also bought the 50mm PCIe PIPE and used the standoffs that come with the base between it and the bumper. Then, I used some spare, longer standoffs between the base and the Raspberry Pi 5, increasing the gap between them and improving airflow. I could fit a heatsink on the SSD, but it doesn't seem necessary at the moment.”
“Nice card that does what it sets out to do.
However, the PCIe cable is short and fiddly when connecting to a Pi 5 in the NVMe case, and the mechanism for securing the NVMe drive to the board is awful - a bolt and 2 washers! Surely a better alternative to that could be provided?”
“This was a perfect fit for my existing raspberry pi5 and was so easy to setup. On top of that, Pimoroni has videos demonstrating how to set it up. Also, has a good documentation on which brands and models it supports by default. So keep an eye on the supported models while buying a nvme. I would recommend buyig a combo if it make sense to you. Now my Pi is booting up really fast and has more capacity.”
