Tiny $10 Raspberry Pi 5 PCie board brings low-cost, high-speed storage – the end of micro SD is nigh

The Raspberry Pi 5's PCIe connection is proving to be the inspiration for a plethora of Pi products and super-fast storage is leading the charge. Pineboard's (formerly known as Pineberry Pi) latest PCIe-powered add-on is the HatDrive! Nano , a smaller footprint board for NVMe storage and other PCIe boards. The board goes on sale today for €9 (approximately $10) plus taxes.

We've reviewed the HatDrive! Top and HatDrive! Bottom and they are both excellent platforms on which to base a project, but at $10, the HatDrive! Nano is an enticing product.

The board design ensures it clears the heatsink of the official Raspberry Pi Active Cooler (and it should also clear the Argon THRML Active Cooler ) but the cooling fan is kept clear. This means that the fan can pull cool air over the SoC (System on Chip), and push it through the cooling fins of the heatsink. The team has thought a lot about heat, and includes a 3-Amp buck converter (a step-down converter that decreases voltage while increasing current) which provides high-efficiency, low-heat output.

Living up to the "Nano" part of its name, the board measures just 55 by 34mm which could make it the smallest M.2 HAT available. Certainly, the smallest that we will soon have in for review. Compatible with 2230 and 2242 M.2 M-key boards, the HatDrive! Nano offers a significant speed boost over even the best MicroSD cards for the Raspberry Pi , while keeping the build small.

The small size means that this isn't a HAT compliant board. To meet that requirement the board must match the footprint of the GPIO and the four M2.5 mounting posts. But don't let that put you off, as the HatDrive! Nano is secured using two screws and provides access to the GPIO. A quick look at the blog post announcing the new board and we can see that all of the GPIO is accessible (HATs will need a header riser, but that is an easy fix. Access to the dual camera / display connectors is unfettered, handy for those of us who want to play with the official Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 . In fact, we don't need to connect an NVMe SSD to the HatDrive! Nano, we could add the Hailo-8L NPU, as used in the official Raspberry Pi AI Kit , or any other PCIe-based board.

Pineboards is also keen to point out that the HatDrive! Nano easily fits inside the official Raspberry Pi 5 case. This may not be a case that features on our best Raspberry Pi cases page, but it offers protection for your Raspberry Pi 5, and now your HatDrive! Nano too.

We've got a unit on the way for review, which will detail all of the information that you need to know before parting with your cash.