Raspberry Pi 5 NVMe HAT: 27 Boards, 2 Confirm SUSCLK

I do not own a Raspberry Pi 5. This site runs on a Mac mini, and the price math is why. But my Pi 5 NVMe compatibility list was the most visited page here last week, and the query that sits next to it in Google autocomplete is “raspberry pi 5 nvme hat”: 10 entries for the HAT itself, 8 for “nvme base,” 3 for “top hat,” out of 252 under that seed. Yesterday I did the cases. Today it is the boards. I read the vendor pages for 27 NVMe adapter boards from seven makers on 2026-09-07, plus the two documents almost none of those pages cite: the official M.2 HAT+ schematic and the Raspberry Pi PCIe connector specification. Four columns came out of it that the listings blur. The boards that also carry PoE are in a separate Pi 5 PoE HAT census.

What the compatibility list could not answer

When I audited the drive lists in August, the mechanism under the “WD drives don’t work” folklore turned out to be a clock signal. A Pimoroni staffer wrote on 2024-01-15 that some drives “need the extra SUSCLK clock signal to function. If it’s not present, you see nothing and the drive sulks,” and that Pimoroni was “loathe to make the product more expensive to support a specific niche of drives.” That told me the NVMe Base does not provide it. It did not tell me which boards do. Nobody puts SUSCLK in a spec table, so I went looking in the only places it would be written down.

The official M.2 HAT+ schematic (Rev 3, dated 2024-01-05) has it on the sheet: an X1 32.768 kHz oscillator feeding SUSCLK through a 33 Ω resistor to M.2 pin 68, annotated “OSC current 3.5mA max.” A Raspberry Pi forum regular, HwAoRrDk, said the same thing in plain English on 2024-06-26: the official HAT’s only significant difference from third-party boards is “an on-board 32.768 kHz oscillator that provides Suspend Clock (SUSCLK),” and “the majority don’t use it, hence why many third-party boards don’t provide it.” The only other board that says so is the Pineboards HatDrive! Nano, whose listing states that “the presence of SUSCLK improves” drive compatibility. That is the whole count. Two boards document the clock, one vendor says on the record it left it out, and 24 listings do not mention it either way. I have not written “no” in those 24 rows, because silence is not a schematic.

27 boards, four columns

The rail column is what the vendor says the 3.3 V regulator can deliver to the SSD. The PCIe column is the vendor’s own wording. Prices are the vendor store’s figure on 2026-09-07; Pineboards’ current site would not render for me without JavaScript, so those rows come from its 2024 listings via the Wayback Machine and carry no price.

Board	Where	M.2	PCIe (vendor wording)	3.3 V rail	Extra power in	SUSCLK	Price
Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+	top	2230/2242	Gen 2, 500 MB/s	up to 3 A	none	yes (schematic)	$12 list
Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ Compact	top, in official case	2230	Gen 2	up to 3 A	none	no schematic published	$15 list
Pimoroni NVMe Base	bottom	2230–2280	Gen 2; Gen 3 “unsupported officially”	not stated	none	no (staff)	£11.25, out of stock
Pimoroni NVMe Base Duo	bottom or top, 2 slots	2230–2280	Gen 2 only (ASM1182e)	not stated	none	not stated	£18.75
Geekworm X1000	top	2230/2242	“-”	3.5 A	GPIO 5 V	not stated	$12
Geekworm X1001	top	2230–2280	“-”	3.5 A	XH2.54 5 V	not stated	$13
Geekworm X1002	bottom	2230–2280	“-”	3.5 A	GPIO 5 V	not stated	$16
Geekworm X1003	top	2230/2242	“-”	3.5 A	GPIO 5 V	not stated	$12
Geekworm X1015	top	2230–2280	“-”	3.5 A	GPIO 5 V	not stated	$16
Geekworm X1004	top, 2 slots	2280 × 2	NO Gen 3 (ASM1182e)	3.5 + 3.5 A	GPIO 5 V	not stated	$29
Geekworm X1005	bottom, 2 slots	2230–2280 × 2	NO Gen 3 (ASM1182e)	6 A	GPIO 5 V	not stated	$29
Geekworm X1011	bottom, 4 slots	2230–2280 × 4	NO Gen 3 (ASM1184e)	10 A	DC jack 5 V 10 A	not stated	$45
Geekworm X1001-Max	top	2230–2280	PCIe 3.0 “Yes”	8 A	USB-C PD 27–120 W or DC 9–20 V	not stated	$32
52Pi N04	top	2230–2280	“Gen2 & Gen3”	3 A	none	not stated	$12.60
52Pi N05	top	2230/2242	“Gen2 & Gen3”	3 A	none	not stated	$12.75
52Pi N07	bottom	2230–2280	“Gen2 & Gen3”	3 A	none	not stated	$13.60
52Pi N10	top, small	2230/2242	“PCIe Gen3 x4” (the Pi has one lane)	not stated	none	not stated	$11.99
52Pi N20	top, 2 slots	2242 × 2	Gen 2 (ASM1182e)	3 + 3 A	GPIO 5 V	not stated	$29.99
52Pi N21	bottom, 2 slots	2230–2280 × 2	Gen 2 (ASM1182e)	3 + 3 A	pogo pins	not stated	$9.98
Pineboards HatDrive! Top	top	2230/2242	“Gen2 and Gen3”	not stated (Lite: 3 A)	none; current monitor	not stated	—
Pineboards HatDrive! Top Lite	top	2230/2242	“Gen2 and Gen3”	3 A	none	not stated	—
Pineboards HatDrive! Bottom	bottom	2230/2242/2280	“Gen2 and Gen3”	3 A	4-pin, up to 2 A at 5 V	not stated	—
Pineboards HatDrive! Nano	top, in official case	2230/2242	Gen 3	3 A buck	none	yes (listing)	—
Pineboards HatDrive! Dual	2 slots	2230/2242 × 2	Gen 2 (ASM1182e)	per-slot buck	none	not stated	—
Waveshare PCIe TO M.2 HAT+	top	2230/2242	“Gen2 or Gen3”	not stated	none; power monitor chip	not stated	$8.99
PCBWay NVPI5-2242T	top	2230/2242	“Gen3 x1”	“M.2 standard-compliant”	none	not stated	—
PCBWay NVPI5-2280B	bottom	2230–2280	“Gen3 x1”	“M.2 standard-compliant”	ext +5 V	not stated	—

Counts, for people who skim: 14 boards take a 2280 drive and 13 stop at 2242. Seven boards put the drives behind a PCIe switch. Two document SUSCLK. Nineteen advertise a 3.3 V rail of 3 A or more, and that last number is the one that sent me to the connector spec.

The ribbon carries 5 W; nineteen boards advertise more

The Raspberry Pi Connector for PCIe specification (build 2024-01-15) is one page of pinout and one sentence that matters: “The 16-W FFC connector provides 5V power via pins 1 and 2. These pins are each rated at 500mA (for 1A total current).” That is 5 W into the board before any regulator loss. The official HAT+ advertises “up to 3A” to the M.2 device, which at 3.3 V is 9.9 W. Geekworm’s 3.5 A is 11.55 W, and Geekworm is the one vendor whose own table admits the gap in a footnote: “FFC cable: 5V/1A rated input, max 5W. Actual input current varies with SSD.” 52Pi and Pineboards both write “up to 3A for the 3.3V power rail, compliant with M.2 (NGFF) standard,” which is a statement about the regulator, not about the ribbon feeding it.

So the rail column sorts into two kinds of board. Thirteen have somewhere else to get power: the X1001’s XH2.54 header, which Geekworm says is “for use only when SSD power is insufficient”; the HatDrive! Bottom’s 4-pin cable, “up to 2A at 5V”; the X1001-Max’s PD port; the X1011’s jack; the N21’s pogo pins; PCBWay’s +5 V input; and the Geekworm boards that also take 5 V through the GPIO header. The other fourteen draw everything through the ribbon, and for those the 3 A on the box is a ceiling the ribbon cannot reach. A drive that actually pulls more than 5 W at spin-up is exactly the drive that shows up in the “not detected” threads.

Gen 3 is a checkbox seven boards cannot tick

Raspberry Pi’s own line is unchanged since launch: “The Raspberry Pi 5 is not certified for Gen 3.0 speeds. PCIe Gen 3.0 connections may be unstable.” The connector spec repeats it: “Signals can be run at Gen 3 speeds, but this is not officially supported.” Against that, 52Pi prints “PCIe x1 interface in both Gen2 & Gen3 standards” on three boards, Pineboards and PCBWay put Gen 3 in the product name, Waveshare says “Gen2 or Gen3,” and the X1001-Max gets a “Yes.” Geekworm’s table is the honest one: a dash for the single-slot boards, meaning you can force dtparam=pciex1_gen=3 and take your chances, and a flat “NO” for the X1004, X1005 and X1011, because “even though we forced to enable PCIe Gen 3.0 setting in Raspberry Pi 5, it is limited by ASMedia ASM1182e PCIe switch, and speed is still PCIe Gen 2.0 5Gbps speed.” Pimoroni says the same for the Duo in throughput terms: “around 450MB/sec, or 220MB/sec+ per disk.” That covers all seven switch boards. And the 52Pi N10’s “PCIe Gen3 x4” is not a claim the Pi 5 can honour with one lane.

HAT+ or not decides one EEPROM line

The bootloader documentation for PCIE_PROBE says it “is required for custom PCIe expansion designs that don’t support the HAT+ specification. HAT+ compliant devices are auto-detected and don’t require this setting.” The compliance signal is an EEPROM. The official board has an M24C32 on the schematic; Waveshare writes “HAT+ design, with on-board EEPROM chip”; Pineboards says every board sold after 2024-03-11 got “HAT+ power management”; 52Pi’s N20 and N21 claim the “HAT+ STANDBY power state.” For everything else, booting from the drive means adding PCIE_PROBE=1 to the EEPROM config, and for anything behind a switch the bootloader has to be new enough: Geekworm’s X1004 and X1005 rows say “Requires EEPROM 2024/05/17 and later version,” and Pimoroni’s Duo page says firmware “2024-05-17 (May 17th) or newer.” Before that date, two-drive boards were storage, not boot devices, and the Pineboards Dual listing from May 2024 still says “booting from NVMe storage through a PCIe switch is currently not supported.”

What owners report, including on the official board

SUSCLK is not a cure. The thread where HwAoRrDk explained the oscillator was opened because an official M.2 HAT+ with a TimeTec MS57 1 TB drive was not recognised, with “PCIe timeout: 0x0001e08f” and “Failed to open device: ‘nvme’” on the boot screen; what fixed it was nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=2500 in cmdline.txt, an APST setting, not hardware.

The Pineboards HatDrive! thread on Jeff Geerling’s PCIe database is the longest owner record I found. On 2024-01-16 shain wrote that with three HatDrive! Tops and WD SN530 drives, “once I reboot or shutdown, the Nvme drive is no longer recognised until I unplug the pi from the power supply.” Another owner got detection only after bending the ribbon. The founder replied the next day that “it is not feasible to send spare ribbon cables knowing the costs of international shipping,” and two days after that: “we do not recommend ANY Western Digital drives at the moment.” Pineboards’ compatibility page now says the 2024 revisions fixed the SN530, SN350, SN740 and SN550 for them, “but your mileage may vary.”

Geekworm’s X1001 has its own thread: “brcm-pcie 1000110000.pcie: link down,” an HP EX900 Plus that never appeared, and a supply that was “a bit less than 5A,” which on a Pi 5 is the first thing a forum moderator asks about. For the 52Pi N04 the one test thread ends with “Cable is not shielded and this can cause I/O errors on boot.” And a 2025 X1001 thread with a Foresee M.2 module looping “error 8” and “error 10” is a reminder that no adapter fixes a drive that is eMMC behind an M.2 edge; the bootloader speaks NVMe only. In the Pimoroni thread, a WD Black SN850X 4 TB was “not seen on the bus no matter what I tried.” Reddit threads are not in this list because the search tool I use cannot open them.

What I would buy, by requirement

If the drive is 2230 or 2242 and you want the folklore to stop applying to you, the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ is the only board in the 27 with SUSCLK on a public schematic, an EEPROM so PCIE_PROBE is never needed, and a stated 3 A rail. Its costs are the 2242 ceiling and, as yesterday’s post covered, the official case lid. If the case lid matters more than the drive length, the M.2 HAT+ Compact is 2230 only and cannot sit over the Active Cooler; the HatDrive! Nano is the other in-case board and the only third-party one that claims the clock.

For a 2280 drive the cheap top board with a second power input is the Geekworm X1001, and the fact that it ships an XH2.54 header at all is Geekworm admitting the ribbon budget. The 52Pi N04 is the same length at the same price without that header, and one owner would add a shielded cable. The Pimoroni NVMe Base is the bottom-mount option with the most honest drive list, but it is the one board whose maker says outright there is no SUSCLK, so pick from that list, and Pimoroni’s own store showed it out of stock today. Pineboards’ HatDrive! Top is the one with current monitoring on I2C, if you want to measure the rail question instead of trusting it. Two drives means accepting Gen 2 and a 2024-05-17 bootloader; the 52Pi N21 at $9.98 is the cheapest way to do that. All of this assumes a Raspberry Pi 5 on a 27 W supply, because the X1001 thread above that ended in “link down” started with a supply under 5 A.

Whether a Pi 5 with an NVMe HAT is the right server at all is a separate question; I ran that math against the Mac mini this rig uses and the answer moved this year. If you already have the Pi, the drive list and this board list are the two pages I would read before ordering.

Does the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ support 2280 SSDs?

No. The official M.2 HAT+ takes 2230 and 2242 drives and the Compact takes 2230 only. For 2280 you need a third-party board: Geekworm X1001, X1002 or X1015, 52Pi N04 or N07, Pimoroni NVMe Base, Pineboards HatDrive! Bottom, or PCBWay’s NVPI5-2280B.

Do Raspberry Pi 5 NVMe HATs run at PCIe Gen 3?

The Pi 5 defaults to Gen 2 and Raspberry Pi says it is not certified for Gen 3. Single-slot boards will run Gen 3 if you set dtparam=pciex1_gen=3, at your own risk. The seven boards with an ASMedia switch (Pimoroni Duo, Geekworm X1004, X1005 and X1011, 52Pi N20 and N21, Pineboards Dual) are Gen 2 regardless of that setting.

Which Pi 5 NVMe boards provide SUSCLK?

Two document it: the official Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+, whose schematic shows a 32.768 kHz oscillator on the SUSCLK pin, and the Pineboards HatDrive! Nano, whose listing claims it. Pimoroni staff have said the NVMe Base does not provide it. The other 24 boards in this census do not mention it either way.

Update, 2026-09-07

The SUSCLK column above turned out to matter more than I expected. In a census of 77 Pi 5 NVMe not-detected threads the drive was the confirmed cause in 25, and one reporter got a WD SN850X to enumerate on a Pimoroni base only after soldering a 32.768 kHz oscillator to pin 68. The power supply, which every checklist puts first, was the cause in three.

If the board is going into a rack, the follow-up Raspberry Pi 5 rack mount census stacks these HAT heights against the 1U clearance that two mount makers actually publish.

Method and sources: the 27 rows are vendor pages read on 2026-09-07: the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ product brief (September 2025) and Rev 3 schematic, and the Raspberry Pi Connector for PCIe specification, all at datasheets.raspberrypi.com; the M.2 HAT+ and PCIe pages of the Raspberry Pi documentation; wiki.geekworm.com’s X10xx family table; 52pi.com product listings; shop.pimoroni.com listings for the NVMe Base and Base Duo; waveshare.com’s wiki and product page; Pineboards listings from 2024 and 2025 via the Wayback Machine (its live site needs JavaScript) plus its NVMe compatibility page; and Jeff Geerling’s Raspberry Pi PCIe Database for the PCBWay boards. Owner quotes are from forums.pimoroni.com thread 23863, forums.raspberrypi.com threads 372596, 363734, 367935 and 387687, and issue 559 on geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices. Reddit was not read. I own no Raspberry Pi 5 and none of these boards; the rail-watt chart multiplies vendor amp ratings by 3.3 V and measures nothing. Some links are affiliate links (Amazon Associates, eight IDs registered for this post); any commission lands on the public ledger.